Original subtitles

We're going to talk about workflow right now.

And if you've actually learned from me in

business, that you know that I strongly encourage

you to work on your business rather than

just in your business.

Now, in your business is basically doing all

the Photoshop, doing all the day-to-day

work that anyone can do.

Doing the on the business stuff basically means

that you're working on profitability, maximizing what you

do, your efficiency, and then keeping everything in

order and just keeping the engine running.

Now, so with my workflow, there's certain things

that I do and there's certain things that

I basically give away.

And I'm here to basically tell you exactly

what I do in my workflow and why

I get up to a certain point and

why do I outsource all the rest of

those things.

So let's, for example, we're going to talk

specifically about shooting a wedding.

So liken anything that I talk about, any

genre that you're doing, liken it to a

wedding.

If you're photographing a wedding, well, of course,

usually there's only one chance of getting it

right.

Like I wanna say usually because I could

get divorced and I get remarried, who knows,

whatever, but you've got one chance to get

this right.

So at the end of a wedding day,

what I want you to do is before

you actually leave the venue, I wanna get

all your cameras together where they're actually using

multiple photographers.

I want you to have all of your

cards in one particular case, make sure it's

a hard case, make sure that you can't

crash it.

It doesn't, you know, it's waterproof, all these

different things.

Just make sure that the case that carries

the cards is perfect and strong and reliable.

So now you have all the cards that

photograph that wedding, whether it's multiple shooters or

not or whatever, everything's in one case.

Keep it on your person.

You might be driving, let's say home after

a wedding and you've stopped off at 7

-Eleven to get a drink.

You've left all your camera gear in the

car, including your cards, and then the card

gets stolen.

You can replace everything other than those photographs.

So make sure no matter what you do,

you keep the cards on your person and

your routine sticks the same with every time

you photograph a wedding and every time you

come home.

Now, what does that mean, routine keeping it

the same?

Well, after the wedding, you'll come back and

you'll have these cards, this precious story in

the palm of your hands.

Now, whether you have a safe, whether you

actually keep it somewhere next to your bedside

table, let's say for example, you're downloading the

cards the very next day, whatever your routine

is, make sure it's exactly the same.

You keep your cards away from children, you

keep the cards away from pets or anything

like that, but you keep them in a

very, very safe, dry place.

Now, you've got the cards, you're right there

in front of your computer.

Nothing can interrupt you while you're downloading all

the photographs on those cards.

So make sure your routine is very, very,

very, very similar.

You're basically putting one card in, they're all

facing, let's say for example, the label of

the card could be upside down.

That basically means that you've used something on

that particular card.

Now, you get those cards, you load them

up, and now let's go to the computer

here.

So what I normally do is I just,

for the moment, I just name the actual

folder the name of the couple.

So I've got Lisa and Dylan Wedding, okay?

So I've got all the RAW and JPEGs

here.

Make sure that the actual quantity matches.

So your photographs RAW and JPEG, there's 146.

Sometimes there might be an odd number in

this folder.

It means that you may have actually photographed

a multiple exposure.

Maybe your camera system doesn't allow for a

RAW file for that.

It could be that you've got a DAT

file or one of those weird extension files.

Just make sure there's an even number of

photographs based upon the camera system that you

use and everything like that.

So again, nothing interrupts you in between you

uploading all the files.

Now, why do I say nothing interrupts you?

Let's say, for example, you've been interrupted by

a phone call.

You've been interrupted by a family member or

something.

You've put the card in, you haven't dragged

the photographs on the actual, in the folder,

and then all of a sudden, you come

back and you think you've done it and

you take that card away and you put

a new card in, then you've all screwed

up.

So you wanna make sure that every single

card has photographs within it.

Now, some people, they actually may name the

cards, card one, card two, card three, card

four.

You also may put folders, like rather than

just putting one folder of all the photographs

in there, you may have card one, card

two, card three, card four, and so on.

Now, it depends on what your system is.

For me, I like to just dump all

the photographs into one particular folder, I'm done,

nothing interrupts me while I'm doing it, and

now I've got every single photograph there.

Now, in terms of backing up, at this

point, I've got the photographs on a hard

drive, it could be the hard drive of

your computer, it could be an external hard

drive, but you've also got the cards on

your cards itself.

I want you to put them in a

self-sealing bag, like a little Ziploc bag,

and put the name of the couple.

It could be Lisa and Dylan, June 1st,

2020, whatever it may be.

So now, you're basically gonna go back and

review your photographs and cull them down and

get rid of duplicates and blinks and things

like that, and also, you'll be able to

remember what's been photographed, but all the cards

still exist in a particular Ziploc bag, and

you don't touch them.

You don't touch them yet.

Now, in terms of backing up, there's huge

conversations that could be had now about how

do we back up, what do we do,

what system do we use?

I've heard of RAID system, what do they

mean?

Quite simply, guys, you gotta work out what

technology, what suits you the best, and your

workflow, based upon what you can afford and

what's simple to you or not.

Now, I think the golden rule here is

that when you're backing up your photographs and

with whatever you're doing, try to keep three

copies of your files.

I like to keep one particular set of

files on a drive.

I call it the mothership, like a big

drive.

I think for, as of 2020, we're using

a G technology, what is it called, Shuttle

XL drive.

Basically what we do is we put it

on that particular drive.

There's redundancy there, so if one drive fails,

it can actually rebuild itself and you've got

your files back and there's no problem.

So one goes on usually a desktop.

Once I edit everything from here, it goes

on a drive, a bigger drive here.

I call it the mothership.

And then I have one offsite.

So for example, if you have someone that

works with you, you could have it at

their place at a different location.

And then you can put one in a

cloud.

Now, what does a cloud mean?

A cloud is a glorified drive somewhere in

the world, somewhere underground in some particular state

in a country near you.

But in the end of the day, it

is actually offsite as well.

Now, if you're like me, I've been photographing

digitally now for 20 odd years.

And for me to upload all of my

files that I've done digitally to a cloud

-based system would take forever.

If you're just starting out, if you haven't

photographed professionally for a very long time, you

can actually put those on a cloud and

be safe and you've got several of your

files all over the world and you're totally

covered.

For me personally, going a bit more personal

now, I actually put my photographs on my

desktop.

I call all my photographs on my desktop.

Then I put them on a portable drive.

So they're now on my desktop and a

portable drive.

From that portable drive, I'll go to the

mothership.

They'll actually also go to Australia because I

live in two countries.

And they'll also go to Joe who works

with me as well.

And now I've got several copies.

The thing is when I'm traveling, I make

sure I keep the last six months worth

of work on a portable drive, solid state

drive, two terabytes usually.

And then this now stays with me at

all times.

I've got the mothership version.

I've got some work, like I said, on

Joe's particular drive at his house as well.

And we're covered in many, many ways.

So I'll let you be the judge as

to which way you go with it.

Just make sure you're covered and don't put

all your eggs in one basket and all

of your shots in the one place because

if your house burns down, you are done.

So please keep multiple versions of your work.

Now let's ignore that for the moment.

And now we've actually got all the RAWs

and JPEGs in one particular folder.

So now you've imported all your photographs and

you've actually uploaded them in Photomechanic.

Now Photomechanic is the industry standard.

It's an incredible program.

It actually will view the embedded JPEG of

your RAW file the quickest on planet earth.

And it'll link up the RAW file to

the JPEG and whatever you do with one

of them will happen to both of them.

So as you can see here, we've got

the NEF file.

So I shoot the Nikon camera system plus

JPEG.

All of them are actually linked.

And now what I do is this.

I'll double click on one.

We'll expand this particular view.

It'll actually open up a separate window.

All right, so let's do that.

And maximize it.

So as you can see now, I've got

the numbers right here.

I'm seeing the first photograph.

Now these have already been culled, but let's

assume that I was culling it more specifically

as an example of every single photograph that

you've taken at a particular shoot.

And now I'm seeing them for the very

first time.

So with one finger on the number one.

So if you look at this first photograph,

if you look down here, you see how

one makes it pink?

Or magenta?

Then if I was to click other colors,

like two, three, four, five, six, all these

colors will change.

So in essence, we're flagging that particular photograph

as what we like or what we don't

like, depending on how you like to do

it.

Some people, depending on how loosely you photograph,

if you have, let's say, more photographs that

are test shots or bad shots, then you

may just wanna choose which ones you like.

If, and then vice versa, depending on your

workflow.

So for me, I like to just choose

what I like.

So for now, I put the one finger

on the arrow button, one finger on the

number one.

And what I do is I simply go

through them.

And then as I'm pressing the arrow, I'm

clicking pretty much what I want.

So I've avoided that one, although I like

it.

Let's avoid it as if it was a

blink or a duplicate.

I'm gonna, I like that one, so I'll

click on that.

I like that one, don't like that one.

I'll miss out on that one, no problem.

I like that.

I don't want that, so I'll avoid that.

I'm gonna click on this one.

I like that little small smile.

I'll click that.

That'll go with it, beautiful.

So sometimes what I'll do is I'll look

back and forth to see a comparison.

Now, yes, in this system, you can actually

click on multi-view and see two photographs

at the same time if you wanna compare.

In my case, I tend to look at

the thumbnail sort of broadly and then I

will go back and forth.

So with this one, let's say for example,

I like that photograph, I like that one.

I like that one as well.

Let's see, I like the smile.

And again, I probably would have chosen all

of these.

It's purely on an example on culling.

So I go through these pretty quickly.

I like that, that.

And this is how you'll do it.

You'll probably even hear the keys as I'm

pressing them.

Don't like these, these were just examples.

I like that, I like that.

I like that one.

I prefer those ones.

Looking in the camera, great.

Let me go back and forth.

Looking away, smiling, looking in.

So again, it's just a very, very quick

perspective.

Okay, so let's have a look at what

we've done here.

If we double click, you'll notice as we

scroll down, some are colored, they're flagged as

magenta and they go down or pink, depending

on what you wanna call it.

Now what I'll do is this.

I will go here and click on color

class.

And because at the moment, it was based

upon file name.

Now, if you're actually photographing with one camera,

you can easily collate it and actually sort

it by file name.

Now, yes, if you're shooting with multiple cameras

yourself, multiple photographers, you will traditionally wanna do

here, capture time.

Capture time is going to give you all

of the photographs that you took in the

exact order that they were photographed.

Of course, that implies that all of your

cameras were synced, as in you place the

same time zone and date and time on

every single camera.

So syncing all your cameras is incredibly important.

Then when you bring it in this program,

you will first sort it by capture time.

And then, of course, we can come back

and do some other things, which I'll show

in a moment.

At the moment, it's all sorted by file

name, which happens to be because I, like

I said, I had already culled these, I

already renamed them.

And that's why capture time and file name

are the exact same in this situation.

Now, being sorted by capture time, now you'll

see gaps where I haven't actually flagged it

and haven't favorited the actual photograph.

So what I do now is I'm gonna

sort this by color class.

And you can see now that everything is

in chronological order based upon sorting on capture

time.

And then you'll see where it starts to

literally have no flag at all.

The magenta basically means that I want it.

And then, of course, you've got this, which

means it's a reject.

I strongly encourage you, do not delete your

rejects.

Because there could be, let's say, for example,

multiple family portraits that you've done, and you

might have flagged this photograph as a reject,

but then the ones that you've chosen, when

you were flagging them, your hand was quicker

than your eye, and you've missed a particular,

someone blinking, and you have to grab the

face from a reject and place it over

one that you liked because they've blinked and

so on.

Or it could be a particular scene that

you're like, you know what, I don't really

like this particular scene.

And that's the scene that the bride remembers,

that she had to do this awkward posing

for, and now you don't have it because

you just didn't like it.

So you've got to bring those back and

resurrect them, so to speak.

So never actually get rid of your reject

files.

At the very least, if you're running out

of space, get rid of your rejects after

your album is done.

And at least you have a bit of

a backup solution now.

Now, there's several ways of doing this now.

Now, what I personally do, I like to

separate these into different folders now.

So I could literally go in here and

select them and then rename them.

I could do that.

But I want to actually look at them

in a little bit more detail and separate

them.

So let me explain this.

Now, what I do, guys, is I have

what I call a structure folder or folder

structure, and it's basically done by year, month,

and day and the name of the particular

couple.

So if we say year, you might, okay,

so as of today, 2020, so month and

day.

So let's just go over here.

So 2020, so month is 03 and then

07.

Then you might put the name of the

couple.

And you also might put what it was.

Okay, so I've got the exact date in

year, month, and day, the name of the

couple, and then wedding.

And of course, you can separate the name

of the couple with an underscore there as

well.

So that's how I do my structure.

Now, if you click into this, you'll see

where it says all, JPEGs, MOVs, movie files,

RAWs, and regex.

Now, traditionally, all the photographs that I've actually

photographed, every single photograph from those cameras there

and those cards would be put into the

all folder.

For simplicity, I decided to actually just name

a temporary folder and be done.

But now I'm going to do this.

So I've got all the photographs already there

that I've chosen.

These are the ones that I want.

I'm gonna put them first in RAW.

Okay, so now they're there, which basically means

that if I come back here, you'll see

that these are all the regex.

There's nothing flagged, there's nothing missing.

So what I do now with these, these

are my regex.

I'm gonna select them, put them in the

regex folder.

Okay, so now this one's gone.

Don't need this, this is empty.

So now I have regex.

I have the RAW and JPEGs currently in

this folder.

If you were to photograph any kind of

movie files that'd be in there, we don't

need that, so we'll delete it.

You've got JPEGs and all.

All is redundant now because we didn't put

them there in the first place.

So now we simply have three folders.

What we have to do though first is

I like to do it this way.

I'm grabbing the RAW, I'm bringing them back

into Photomechanic.

Now, as you can see, even though the

file name and capture time in this case

are exactly the same, okay, so we haven't

moved at all, I feel that this photograph,

for example, and these ones should be at

the end.

In other words, if you're photographing a wedding

and you are shooting, let's say, some shots

that look like they were done at nighttime,

you wanna reorder them and put them in

different positions.

So what you do in Photomechanic is great

because you actually get the ability.

So in this case, I can actually reduce

the size of the thumbnails, maybe go a

touch bigger here.

Okay, so now I'm going to grab this

one and these two because they very much

shoot sort of towards the end of the

night.

You would even say that this one is

probably the last one.

And as we go through them, there's all

sunlight, it gets a bit softer here as

well, and it's quite harsh here as well.

So I would put the sunlight ones in

here.

Okay, you've got soft reflected light, you've got

a bit of sun here as well.

So again, I'm gonna reorder these and you

can see how my cursor is moving and

it tells me where those photographs will end

up going.

Okay, these are window light and then arguably

you would say those window lights probably should

have been first.

So if I look at these ones, I

will put those first.

I start with those.

So I'm thinking out loud here, this is

exactly what I would do after I color

wedding or anything like that.

These are sort of a greeny feel, put

that there.

Actually that goes together well there.

So what I'm doing is also looking at

different groupings in terms of color palette, the

light conditions, temperature, mood, feeling, all that kind

of stuff.

The more I play here, the easier it's

gonna be when I'm actually designing the album.

So I've got window light, I've got some

tungsten light, so in makeup lights, I've got

sunlight.

Then I've got sort of like a bit

of an overcast, then I've sort of got

backlight with a diffuser reflector.

I've got that there as well.

Let me, I'll leave that there for a

moment.

And then I've got a bit more softer,

and then it gets a bit darker and

moody, more dramatic.

I might put that there because that progresses.

So now that we have them in complete

order and the exact order that we want,

we have to rename them.

So we select them all, we press rename.

And again, depending on your folder structure in

your file names, you might wanna know exactly

when this was taken.

So you have no, there's just no hint

of a doubt when this wedding photographs were

taken.

So in this case, we do 2020, we

do month, 03 in this case, and then

we do day, 07.

Now you could certainly put an underscore and

then Lisa Dillon.

You could even put wedding if you want.

Otherwise, sometimes it can get quite crazy with

the extension names.

My suggestion is keep it like that, add

wedding if you wish.

Now you want a sequence.

So what I'm gonna do here now is,

actually let me cancel out of that.

Let me go sequence.

I'm gonna put a dash there so that

it gives me a dash before the actual

number of the file.

I'm setting a sequence.

Make sure that you add a couple of

zeros before what you're doing.

Because if you, for example, say, I wanna

start at number one, as you get in

multiple digits, when you're sorting your file names,

it'll all come up really weirdly.

So just be careful.

If you're photographing multiple, if you're getting into

the double digits, triple, quadruple digits, always add

the zeros of, that's gonna give you an

understanding of how many digits it'll end up

being.

Does that make sense?

So in this case, if it was a

thousand images or so, I would go 0001.

And then you can sort of see the

files here.

And if I go rename, and if I

make this a bit larger, you can see

how it's got the year, month, day, the

name of the couple.

And now, it's funny because I put these

in a certain arrangement.

So it's kept that particular order.

Now, if I go to file name, it

will give me the exact order in which

I reorder them.

So one to six, and as it goes

down, this is now the current order.

Okay, I'm happy with that.

I've got RAW and JPEGs in perfect order.

They're the exact same name.

And now, what I do is this.

Let me go new finder window, and let

me go to desktop.

Let me go to Lisa and Dylan.

What I do is I'm gonna basically, so

as we remember, RAW and JPEGs are currently

in that exact same folder.

An easy way of actually sorting them out

now is going on this particular view and

going kind, as in all the JPEGs are

in the same place.

And you know that when your scroll bar

is around about the middle, that's when you

know to select all the JPEGs, and that's

basically it.

So now let's look at the JPEG folder

and the RAW folder to see if we

have the exact amount of files in there.

So as you can see, it's numbered perfectly.

We've got one to 42.

There's 42 images.

And with RAW, we've got one to 42.

I always extend it and always look at

it, and that's great.

And then I've got the regex there as

well.

So now I've got my working folder.

So now you can back it up accordingly.

Once you've done that, you know they're all

there.

The cool thing is that even though that

I strongly insist on outsourcing a lot of

your work, especially when it comes to post

-production, I like the fact that me being

the photographer, I've actually downloaded the files.

I feel responsible for my own work.

And also I can check, I know what

I've photographed, which means that if there's a

big chunk missing, let's say family photographs, well,

I know because I photographed it.

I know that I can go back to

those original cars that are in a Ziploc

bag and I can grab them out and

I can maybe upload them again or download

them again because again, they're there.

Now that I've got this folder, you back

them up in a way, of course, in

a way that you feel more comfortable with.

Like I said, my suggestion is have one

with you portably if you travel a lot,

one on your mothership, one in a different

location, and perhaps one in the cloud, so

to speak as well.

So now that we've done this, what do

we do now?

Okay, so now we have JPEGs, which is

pretty much redundant because you are gonna convert

those RAW files.

Regex, which is sort of redundant, but gives

you a bit of a backup.

Now, when it comes to me and my

workflow, the RAWs, you've got to convert.

Now, whether you use Capture One, whether you

use Lightroom, it doesn't really matter what program

you use.

You do the corrections that you wanna do

based upon what you've got.

My suggestion is do not retouch every single

image to the nth degree because they haven't

purchased them yet.

All you've gotta do is correct your exposure,

your color balance, and that's pretty much it.

If you've exposed correctly, you shouldn't really have

to do more of that.

Yes, these other programs like your Lightrooms and

like Bridges and things like that, you can

use those programs to do what I exactly

just did.

But I'm telling you, Photomechanic is the fastest

on planet Earth right now, and it has

been for many years.

It is the industry standard.

If you wanna buy that as of 2020,

go to camerabits.com, camerabits, B-I-T

-S, camerabits.com, and then you can download

the latest version of Photomechanic that does that

for you.

Now, I'm not gonna show you what I

do in Lightroom or what I do in

Capture One because I don't do it.

I believe this is where you can outsource

and you can just get rid of it

because there's just no point.

You are wasting your time if you do

this.

You might say, well, Gerry, it costs me

money to do this.

Well, I'd rather you actually focus on being

more profitable, being more efficient, and doing things

that only you can do, whereas in this

case, converting raw files to a JPEG that

you can use for proofing and so on

can be done by somebody else.

So what I do, as of 2020, I

use a company called MyLavalu, or lavalu, L

-A-V-A-L-U, mylavalu.com.

I literally put these raw files on an

FTP and then I get high-res exported

JPEGs back, and that's it, and it's fantastic.

I don't have to think about it.

Everything's converted.

I make sure that one person who does

my work at a particular company knows me

and does the work, and they get to

know me and my style.

In other words, if I have photographed an

image of a bride with bright sunlight on

her, and then I've got deep, dark shadows,

well, I'm saying, I say to my retouchers

and the lavalu, for example, please do not

increase those mid-tones and bring out all

these things.

In other words, just bring out the best

with the way I've photographed it.

If you know that I'm trying to give

you a dramatic shadow to the bride of

this particular photograph, leave it, don't touch it.

And you basically begin to understand how you

work and you have some continuity and a

nice little flow and symmetry with what you're

basically doing.

So now that I've actually submitted the photographs

to a company, they've now converted RAW to

actually high-res JPEG.

Now, with those JPEGs, I will upload them

to a gallery.

So it's quite customary that, especially in the

wedding industry genre, that you will actually give

a gallery to your clients.

And as of 2020, I use a company

called CloudSpot.

It's a very clean interface.

It's fantastic.

I don't wanna bore you with the details

because it's a very simple program.

It's very intuitive, but you upload them in

the order that you actually photograph them.

You can put them in different folders.

For example, if you're photographing a wedding, you

could do groom's home, bride's home, ceremony, family,

locations, reception.

You can put them in different folders.

You can put a watermark if you want

to.

And of course, you could even put pricing

on there and people can pay for them

accordingly.

Now, whether you want them to be downloadable

or not, that's really up to you.

So now that we have them on a

gallery, we've actually taught you about how to

design an album properly with a client in

a different segment.

But in the context of this conversation, you've

photographed the wedding, you've culled it, you've renamed

it, you've reordered it, you've backed it up,

you've converted RAW to JPEG.

Now you have these JPEGs and now you

need to design the album.

Well, how do we do that?

So I use a program called Fundie Designer.

And at the moment, as of 2020, it's

version 10.

I click on it and I want to

design a new project.

So of course, you will nominate where you

want it to save it to.

In this case, we are designing an album

for Lisa and Dylan and I'm gonna press

okay.

Depending on the company that you actually use

in terms of who produces your albums and

things like that, you have to work that

out.

Now, in the meantime, I will go back

to...

Now, when I get my files back from

the company that I've outsourced my proofing to,

in this particular folder now, there will be

a folder called...

One second.

This will be a folder called proofs.

These are my converted JPEGs.

So what I'll do now is I'll just

drag these across and now this program is

going to import all of these photographs.

So now what Fundy software has done is

actually uploaded the actual high-res JPEGs and

now giving me a low resolution proxy image

that I can play with quite easily and

fast.

And then of course, we have to work

out what we're doing afterwards in terms of

the album.

But for now, you've converted those photographs from

RAW to JPEG.

You've uploaded the proofing JPEGs into your program

like this and now we design an album.

So I click on the album module.

I click on new album.

I use Graphy Studio.

So I click on that.

I'm gonna design a 12 by 16 wedding

book.

So wedding book USA.

I click on that and I come down

here and I find 12 by 16 horizontal,

which is there.

I click on next.

I'm gonna basic cover next.

And then the album could be called main

album, create album.

So now I have this spreads waiting for

me to populate.

And then I've got these photographs here as

well.

Now guys, of course, you can download a

trial software of Fundy.

You can get into it.

You can do whatever you like.

I'm not gonna waste my time in all

the ins and outs of all the buttons

and all that kind of stuff.

Every so often I'll reference what I'm doing

but please download the software yourself.

I've used many for decades literally and also

even help with the designing of this particular

software.

I believe in it.

It's fantastic.

And it makes your life so much easier.

So what we're basically doing now is we

are pre-designing an album that your couple

will eventually see.

And then you will walk through with to

basically be able to sell it.

So for the moment, we're just simply talking

about workflow.

So if you press the end button, you

will see the name of the file there.

If you click it off, you can do

that as well.

Now there is an auto designer here, which

is quite amazing.

You could simply go in and flag the

photographs that you want.

And so if we go back here, so

if you look over here, for example, if

you double click, this window will open.

Now you can use the star method.

You can use a favorite or a hot

method.

You can do whatever you like.

It doesn't really matter.

It just depends on the way you wanna

do it.

Me personally, what I like to do is

I like to get my thumbnails bigger.

So I know at a glance that because

I photographed a cell, I know what's gonna

go with what.

So what I'll do is rather than basically

favoriting and hiding them and things like that,

I can filter the ones that I wanna

use here if I wish, or as I

sort of somewhat suggested before, you can actually

design an album automatically, literally at a click

of a button, and then using these different

filters and parameters with everything.

Now, I think this is a good way

to start.

I think that as you become more sophisticated,

you don't want the program to do the

thinking for you.

My suggestion is to grab these shots, simply

drag them to a spread, grab these two

shots and then drag them.

So what I'm basically doing right now is

I am pre-designing the album.

See, I might like this photograph, but I've

pretty much got it there already.

So I'm gonna ignore that.

I might put that across two pages, maybe.

I might bring these two here.

And again, guys, I'm gonna go fast without

sort of teaching you per se, because I

wanna show you realistically how I do things.

So I am grabbing the photographs that I

want on these spreads.

And if you've watched the segments of me

teaching you how to shoot to sell and

not overshooting, then you'll know this to be

a much easier process if you actually go

down that route.

Great.

It's designing itself.

How easy is this?

I'll come back.

I must've clicked that accidentally.

Don't worry about that.

That might go there.

So now I'm looking at all these shots.

I'm like, okay, that and that can go

together.

It's probably gonna be on its own.

We'll come back to that potentially.

I might put those together.

And then I might end with that.

So now I've got the album.

It's sort of given me a suggestion as

to where to start from.

I'll double click on this.

Now I know what I've got to work

with.

Now, the cool thing about Fundy is that

you can actually click on these layouts, pick

something that's close to what you want and

then refine accordingly.

In this case, I quite like that design.

And you can see when you press the

G key that the guides will vanish.

Now, the red denotes the cut zone where

your album supply, in my case, graphically will

cut the album to make it all symmetrical.

Your green area is a safe zone.

This is what you want 100% to

be in that particular design.

Now, what I'll do is I often will

just go right up there and butt up

right against that safe zone because I know

it's very reliable.

In this case, I'm designing it this way.

And remember guys, this is unretouched.

Nothing's been done to these photographs.

They are straight from the camera.

Quite like this, I might flip this around

and I might want his, you see that

particular jacket there sort of to be nice

and close together.

And I quite like that sort of cinematic

feel where we're flipping it out and we've

got two shots there as well.

Guys, there's no point overthinking this.

You just got to get it done.

In this case now, do you sort of

see how close I am to the edge

of the frame and I don't want her

finger chopped, then I will go here and

make sure that's in.

Now, whether that deserves a full page or

not, I don't really know, probably not, but

we're just designing something here.

So in this case, I quite like the,

no, I quite like that.

No, let's go back.

I'll design this out over here like this,

fit it, and this one can be in

set.

And again, guys, I'm not explaining every little

button, last button, but this gives you an

idea of what this will look like.

Now, I can flip this one so she's

facing herself per se and I can fit

it in there.

But we might think, well, you know what?

Her ear is going to be a problem.

Therefore, if we move over here, we've got

more space to play with.

There's more critical information here, so we do

that.

So as you can see with this, we're

sort of fanning her face out to the

left, fanning her face out to the right.

Now, this gap, this gap, and this gap

are all similar.

The minute you take the guides away, it

feels disconcerting because you think, well, wait a

second, I want this gap, this gap, this

gap to be the same.

Well, once it's cut, it will be, so

take that into account.

Let me go into layouts and see if

there's a design that I like.

I quite like this one.

Well, actually, let me have a look here.

No, I quite like this.

I'm going to make that full bleed to

the edge, as you can see, and then

I am going to inset this one.

Great, and guys, don't overthink this.

You just got to get it done.

The more I look at this, I think

that we could probably even put this across

two pages.

Yes, his ear's being cut off, but it's

in the shadow.

I actually don't mind that.

I'd probably darken it by the time it

gets to here, but this would be like

a nice wow shot to include.

Actually, the ear's in now.

That's cropped quite nicely.

That's what it is.

Again, let's go to layouts.

Let's pick a layout that we like.

To be consistent with the designs that we've

done so far, we can go full bleed

on one side and not the other.

Quite like this one, but let's have a

look and see what designs there are.

The more I look at this, I sort

of like the idea of fanning it out

like this.

So I'm going to have, actually, I might

crop in like that, and that can go

full bleed.

Now, the problem with this is I don't

have much space to sacrifice.

So I think if I flip it, now

I do, and that will save me.

Negative space is totally fine, in my humble

opinion.

I will crop it this way.

Problem is I'm not really getting his shadow

there, so depends on what you guys want

to do with that.

I quite like that particular crop, and then

sometimes I will literally get this in the

middle and then, again, place it in the

middle.

Negative space left and right, and that works.

Click on Layouts.

I might do something like this, again, to

go with the theme that we've been discussing.

If I double-click on the particular window,

it'll make it full bleed, so I sort

of know where I'm going with it.

So I go about here.

It's a bit more room to that photograph.

Oh, one second here.

I will just go there.

Beautiful.

I'm going to make this full bleed, and

then I'll flip this image.

So then now that just bleeds in, which

looks awesome.

And I might even do the same with

this.

I quite like the way the fern fans

out a bit, which is beautiful.

I then fit it, and, again, you can

see in other segments, guys, as to exactly

what I'm doing in more detail in terms

of design-wise, but now I'm just sort

of showing you sort of my workflow.

We did mention that there was one too

many photographs here.

The color palette here actually looks very similar.

It looks really beautiful.

Let me have a look and see.

Okay.

So let's just fit this here.

Because every square inch of that photograph is

important, at least that negative space, I'm going

to crop there, and then I'm going to

go full bleed on this one.

Great.

You know, I don't normally like to crop

into an ear, but I think that because

she's the main focus of this shot, I

actually quite like that as a double-page

spread.

This is important, but I like the way

this sort of bleeds in.

So I'm going to do that.

I love that.

You get some dark space, leads your eye

in.

We've got the blur sort of blurring into

each other, and then she looks at you.

And this one, I am going to more

critical space here in terms of like every

square inch is important.

I do have some negative space around here

to allow for the cut zone as we

discussed.

I could also flip this image, which gives

me more space, and that negative space blends

in.

Fantastic.

Now this one, part of the charm, of

course, was the reflection in this shot.

So we're just going to see whether, how

we feel about this or not.

We go back here.

Okay.

Quite like the idea of putting it in

the center with some negative space, just like

that.

And in this case, we've got the guides,

and I'm going to put them, this one

over here.

Sometimes I'll do it very perfectly and symmetrically,

and then sometimes I'll eyeball it because it

just optically looks better than being mathematically perfect.

Quite like that.

And then we've got this one to end

off the album.

And I usually like to end off on

the left-hand side page.

So we designed a 40-sided album there

very quickly.

And of course, if you're shooting an event

like a wedding, for example, it's going to

be multiple images per spread.

Please look at our other segments based upon

album design and workflow.

I wanted to show you that in the

context of this conversation, to show you how

actually easy it is with this kind of

software to use.

Now, what happens from now?

So let's say, for example, you've, let's just

reiterate, you've downloaded the cards.

You've backed everything up.

You've reordered them.

You've culled them.

You've got the working files.

You get them either yourself or you actually

get them converted from RAW to JPEG.

Now you've got the proofing JPEGs.

You put them online so your couple can

see them.

In my case now, I upload those proofing

JPEGs into this program, unretouched, straight from the

camera.

I pre-design what I pre-design.

And of course we sell it.

Now, please watch our other segments that are

based around the process of actually selling to

your client and all the techniques that go

behind it.

So please, please do that.

Now we're just talking about flow.

Let's say, for example, now I've sold the

album and this is exactly what they want.

This is exactly what they want.

And now I need to actually get it

retouched.

Now, personally, I don't retouch my own photographs.

I'd be remiss to actually now sit here

and try to retouch where I don't do

that as part of my workflow.

I would rather you go, like I said,

work on your business than in your business

and get your photographs retouched and color corrected,

whatever it is you'd like to do in

post-production by somebody else.

What I do at this stage is this.

I will, let me see here.

I will go to, export list of images

in use.

So I go to my desktop and it'll

give me a CSV file and I'll save

it.

So now what I've got here is a

list of every photograph actually used.

Now, the cool thing is that if you're

like me and you use the same company

to convert your raw files to color corrected

JPEGs, you use the same company to do

the retouching, well, they actually already have your

raw files and your converted JPEGs.

So I will send this list to the

company that I'm actually working with, Lavaloo in

this case, but I'm not ready yet.

So here's what I do.

I need to export the design.

Now, here's why the design is important, guys.

The design is important because if this photograph

on the left and the one on the

right, for example, if these two shots, which

they are on the same spread, their color

harmony has to be exactly the same.

So that your designer or retoucher has to

know the design of the album so everything

can look harmoniously on a particular spread.

So what I do is this.

I export for web and I'm gonna create

a folder, Lisa Dillon album design, create,

I select.

Now, this is an important one.

Print file names on design for proofing because

we need to correlate the number of the

file along with the visual reference as well.

So I'm gonna say yes.

I wanna print all of them and I

want to do that.

So I press export.

So now what the program is gonna do,

it's gonna basically design this album in a

low resolution format and show my designer with

number references exactly what this design looks like.

So now with the list of images and

a visual reference, now they know what to

retouch.

So now Fundy Designer has exported proofing JPEGs

of the exact design with file numbers.

Let's just look at it.

So you can see here very clearly this

is a design and we've got the number

of the photograph and that of course correlates

with the number that we have here as

well.

So let's just double click that.

Okay, so we have all these numbers here

as to what we need to basically work

along with the visual reference and the guide

that we have here as well.

Now, if you have specific notes about a

particular photograph, let's say for example, this one,

she says, look, retouch my skin, retouch the

little flyaway hairs over here, whatever it may

be, you would put these notes in this

particular file because they actually have every single

number in there and you could make notes

in these particular fields.

So now that I've done that, I am

going to send the particular list of numbers

in use, the exact design and I will

send that to the company that I use.

And like I said, in my case, it's

Lavaloo.

So now they have a reference file, now

they have a list of images in use,

they will go ahead and retouch everything based

upon to my specifications.

What is my workflow?

That's really it, I don't do much else.

In a sense that my retouching is limited

to color correction and retouching, nip tucking skin,

but I don't use at this particular case

and I like to keep my Photoshop invisible.

So I like to achieve what I achieve

in camera and then of course, I can

just give up everything else but my retouching

is invisible, you can't see what I've done

and it's very simple.

Let's say for example now, I get the

photographs back.

So they're on FTP, I've downloaded all the

photographs that have been retouched, they're exactly the

numbers that have been given, exactly the same

numbers.

What I will do then is do this.

So this is my design.

So I've got the original JPEGs, the proofing

JPEGs that I used to upload into this

program, I've designed it, I've exported them, list

of images in use and the particular layouts,

they've come back and now I do this.

I put, there's a few ways of doing

it but you can go add and update

images or re-sync or rebuild but basically

I'll normally go add an update.

What I'm doing now is I'm pointing the

program now to the actual files that have

been retouched, not the ones that were just

meant for proofing.

So if I was to, I don't have

the retouched files in this particular case but

if I did, I would go to my

original folder, this will usually be called album

worked, I will click on the ones that

need to be linked up again and I

will click open.

So what's happening now is the program will

point to the actual retouched images.

So now we've re-synced the photographs, this

design, this program is pointing to the retouched

images and all you have to do is

come here and then you are going to

export for print.

Now you can order directly through Fundy Direct

or you can order it independent of that.

In this case, let's just be global about

it, pick a common denominator that most people

will use, you will simply go here and

of course you can point back to the

actual folder structure that you did and this

will be called album to print, don't know

why I keep on putting capital L, create

and then I select.

Now of course, I don't want the file

names on there, you basically got to pick

the profile that your lab uses, in our

case, sRGB and you press export and this

will give us high resolution prints or as

in images and files ready to print.

Okay, and there you have it, the actual

design has been exported, ready to print, it's

a high resolution and let me just show

you that.

So we put album to print and there

it is.

Now yes, it's unretouched and all that kind

of stuff, we're assuming you've got it retouched,

we're assuming you've done everything you need to

do and it's all there.

You can see that it's high resolution, you

can sort of see the pixel dimension and

of course the size of the file and

there it is.

So now that I've done that, all I

have to do is order the album.

Now in my case, I use Graphy Studio,

so in this case, I will go in

there and choose basically all my specifications, I'll

choose my paper choice, my size, the paper

that I want, the finish, any extras, anything

like that at all, I simply just do

and then I check out accordingly and then

it'll actually give me a particular FTP area

where I upload the files and guess what?

I come back and I have a finished

album.

I can drop ship direct to the client,

I usually get the album delivered to me

so I can make sure I give up

my own quality control, just to double check,

make sure everything's cool.

Usually I might even film me turning the

pages so I've got a little bit of

a keepsake for myself and then of course,

if your couple lives close to you or

your studio, you get them to come in

and you'll show them the album accordingly or

of course you'll ship it to the client

if they live either overseas or interstate.

But that's basically it guys.

Workflow doesn't have to be crazily just complicated.

For me, I believe on doing the things

that only I can do and do best

and leaving all the post-production for other

companies to do.

I'm a strong believer in outsourcing.

I've survived my whole career by not doing

the digital production.

In the film days I did and ironically

that was actually even harder but now with

digital, I believe you only should be doing

a certain amount but leaving the full-on

hardcore color correction and retouching and all the

conversion that you do to somebody else.

Those hours that you have free now to

do what you need to do is gonna

be so much more fruitful than doing the

post-production.

So there it is.

I hope that simplified the workflow for you

and of course in conjunction with this particular

segment, if you watch the business segment, you'll

understand in more detail why I believe in

outsourcing so much.

But remember those processes.

Remember those systems.

You'll find that you'll get your own little

flow.

You'll do things your own way.

Whatever you do, keep it consistent.

Make sure that it is all streamlined.

You can follow the process accordingly.

Make sure that you don't quote your clients

exactly what time it takes to produce all

of this.

In other words, you think it takes eight

weeks, therefore you'll tell your client eight weeks.

I will usually tell my clients this will

be ready in 12 weeks and that gives

me almost like a four to five week

buffer if in case for some reason the

retouching has been delayed, the album comes back

wrong or dented in transit and then I

can just get it redone and now I

can deliver it in 10 weeks rather than

12 and now I'm a hero rather than

giving it in 13 weeks and I told

them 12 and now I'm a villain.

So keep your workflow steady, consistent, streamlined and

I'm sure you've probably got your own ways

of doing this even easier and better than

I do but I wish you all the

best.

Remember, you've actually already made the money if

you get to the post-production stage.

So focus on your business rather than in

your business but this gives you a glimpse

into my world as to how I do

things.

Hope you enjoyed that.