Lessons

Lesson Info

Post Shoot Workflow - Batch Processing

Just glance through some of these photos and they're actually pretty pretty stupid funny I love it wear all about being stupid fun and this is definitely about stupid fun so just to kind of show you this is how many people we photographed here and so this is what it's going to look like. You're going to keep filling this up and we got done and so we were able to just put the card here so we still only have one. But if you have multiple stations longer periods of time throughout the day this is going to get completely full. You can keep compressive it's going to get full when this gets full or like I said, when your memory card gets full you want to pull these off with the memory card with it put rubber bands put it in a bag, a ziploc baggie tape something toe hold it all together toward this will just be that one station these cards will be that these these note cards the images will be on the card attached to it. So that's what we would do on photo day that's the on ly thing that we d...

o from a workflow standpoint for the most part besides the separation of our issues besides making more time for our kids that need more time besides me that stuff will do that with our different stations but then we would make sure we have these separated and the reason why we course cody told you in the previous segment is for work flow issues to help you solve those problems because for the most part every issue that we're dealing with that we're telling you about we've actually had way screwed upon it happened us in a job it caused us to lose a job it calls us tohave heartache or heart, you know, just hardships in our jobs, so we really kind of want to go over all the negative aspects in the hopes that you understand how to solve them when they happen to yu very much like we did in our tea all creative life class, so if you could switch over to my computer, I don't know if they are just kind of wanna show very simple, but if you notice up here I have a creative live july thirteenth, two thousand thirteen folder what I suggest doing when you get home and it doesn't matter your pc or mac at this point make a master folder for the main job and in here because we have two different office is in a sense I have the seattle photos that we just took it out of the san francisco photos that we took two weeks ago we can half ago and so this could be almost like station one station too if you wanted to. So what I always try to do is download my files like I'm going to the saddle folder my ralph older files right away, I'll download um, and if I have multiple cards or multiple stations within my raw folder, here will actually be another sub folder that says, like station one station to station three, and I'm going to sub categorize and keep my card separate as much as possible in my role format. We're gonna blend them all together into one folder here after we process him, but for right now, I want to keep him separated as much as possible. And the reason why you want to do that from a file organization standpoint is if you let's say, you crop in image or you work your batch processing let's say I did a job before in a batch process and it's a little too small it's perfect for an eight by ten, but maybe they want a sixteen by twenty it's a rare case that someone wants to sixteen by twenty I need to go back to the raw file. Maybe I missed something. Anything you need to go back to the raw file ice heaping this separation. You're dealing with thousands of images even if you only have your three hundred students that which I keep going back to ladies since you mentioned it with the barcode and one image you're still looking at six hundred images just for those three hundred kids and that's a perfect scenario which is never going to happen so you're looking at least a thousand images the more you can keep everything separated the easier your workflow will be so we try to keep everything separated on a roll format obviously we don't need this separated because we only had the one but here's some of the images I love exactly this one right here is awesome me consoling whatever he is I'm not real sure what he is but if you notice so we have a little lee the barcode and then all these images he scared and we'd have the keeper and then we forgot the photograph of bar code and we have barcode and then keeper and it just keeps going on so realistically this is pretty similar to what your raw images will look like way narrowed it down towards the end when there's really just the one image barco keeper image barcode keep room and because we know what we're doing we're trying to speed the process up because we're live but the reality is this is something you're similarly going to get so for us what we do once we download what I'm gonna do is open a bridge, you open up a white room, open up whatever you want, it doesn't have to be particular to the software's, but it's, just whatever you guys use, whatever you're comfortable with and you're going to find your photos and you're going to bring them up, and I'm getting there, sorry should already done this when we were closed. All right, so here's, all my photos and I'm actually going to make these a little bit larger, so you guys can see and what I do is I simply what I like to do, first of all, as I'll go through and I'll literally quickly not even paying attention to all the other images, but see, I know I missed a problem here that's so pretty if you're not like in volume yet, people. Oh, I don't know what's wrong with you. Holy moly, how about being my grandfather? So I'm gonna just go through and I actually barca I mean star and I'm using the star system and I'm gonna barcode I mean star each of my bar codes. What is that? That is so good, I love it. So I'm gonna barca, I mean star and so here's a perfect example, go over some safety features of cody or susie, whoever shot this, they had to take two shots, but they caught it. So this one it back focused in on your subject and the barcode was blurry, so she was able to catch it and notice it. But one of the safety features which cody talked about, which I want to bring up, you notice how you barcode and you lower that marco, where you can see that students face see their clothing. So that is another safety feature you can do very easy why you're photographing during your workflow scenario so I can still match let's. Just say, for some reason my finger was on the market or the kid wrinkled it up so bad you couldn't read it. I still could go back and see because I know by looking at her clothes, that's that person and I could match up that card or this number to that person manually if I have to. That's worst case scenario. So when you're photographing these, if you notice no need to bark of that image that I forgot, you want to continue to lower it to where you can see their faces. We have quite a few handwritten cards, so we're basically and I'm trying to go through this pretty fast cause I don't want to spend a ton of time on this and here's apart example got several images you don't know and I'm not even worried about that at this time and I'm gonna tell you why that's nice it's this's be a perfect case of until joe, you all had a banana here's the banana, these they're so fun like they don't call it creative live for nothing, I give you that and give you that this is good news that this is my first time to see all alone, so I'm seeing him is you guys are too seems a few, but and so the reason why I do this? I know it sounds a little redundant the reason why you want to do this is in many times, especially if you break these down into multiple groups, multiple stations, there's our host that's funny, you know, actually this kind of fits him actually better now that I've gotten to know him over the weak oh, really you're a good girl, and so the reason why we like to do this is once I get through these barcode images, wei are getting education, I promise you a lot of creative life people, I promise you nice the reason why we mark this barcode images they're very e I think I've seen it like ten times I can't get through it they're very easy to spot they're very easy to notice and so you can go through all of them very quickly and markham all down so now when I have all my barcode images I can actually go over to my filters it'll tell me right now I have sixty two images that have one barca but I have one star so I should have sixty two regular images as well and so if you have like for instance on our seniors which I'll show you here shortly either in the second of the next when we get to do in our templates I'll show you we do four poses for our seniors again would you have three cap and gowns and we have one casual I use this bark in the star system on that same thing but I'll use my star system one time one star my barcode the first pose will have two stars the second postal have three stars the third postal have four stars and my fourth puzzle have five stars so I literally can look at each individual by separating using the filter tabs here by separating looking just my one stars just my two stars just my three stars and I want to make sure each one of those has this case would be sixty two so I literally would have sixty two images of each pose so it's a very easy way to break up the poses but also to make sure you were actually selecting for images per person you're not missing someone in your workflow that kind of makes sense, but I always start off with the barcode first because it is the easiest visualized I don't even worry about the other ones then I will go back and I'll pick my winning images and again in this case I would use to stars and so this is a part of example ko to use it so you're going through and this is when he said this is when he felt like he has the power you can choose whatever kind of want to use the one that I mean when he's he's so sweet I'm so sweet I just made you feel so much better and then we got our winning image and so now I want to start that one and then this one doesn't have a bar code so unfortunately now you know in your mind and I make notes I have image whatever it is is gonna not have a bar code with me so that's going to be one of my problems now normally I would actually pull that out and sort of separately for my normal work flow but today I want to show you how if you forget one or you miss one how it's going to pop up into your system being an era and we're going to sort that through the software so we can show you because this is a very, very normal problem. Then we have farmer john wade got some kind of witch and some kind of hawaiian pirate and then my yearbook photo on then I became a cop. So that was my midlife photo. I never was a viking never was wonder woman. So you basically right now since we just took one for most, but now you just go through and you basically to star all your keepers and this is going to take some time and this is important. Obviously, in this case, we only have one for most of our students, but this is where you really want to make sure, like, for example, I mean, what do you want? The one that you smiling so you would choose that one? And so you really want to make sure you take the time and this guy's tough because you're almost gonna have to do in hd are to make sure that shows up, but you want to take the time to actually pick the best image. This is like, what is he kind of looks like a creeper in the park with long coat, no comment and so you make sure you select all the all which one should I do with georgie? Okay, once football and so we're going to go through, we're just going to select all these and I'm doing it very quickly so we can get through the process. But again, this is where you want to take your time in real life hopes women, which one do you want this one? All right, and go through and select the images, right? You get one that's really nice and everybody's like ahh and so this is there's no rocket science to this guy's this is very simple, very easy to do and you just go through the entire process. We're going to speed things up. I'm not going to do everything is going to be kind of like a cooking show where we're going to show you some stuff and say this is what the final product will look like, but at least want to show you which one you want yeah, yeah that's definitely that's definitely a little singing star that's good. I like the tattoos of the southern states on his arms to it goes perfect. I'm just gonna leave that there for a second, for she'll get mad at me and hit me after the workshops over that's our producer, just in case you're wondering and see, I actually feel like I have a little bit of power here because I'm actually yeah, I mean, look, we can go there that's really cute host with which one do you want, sweetie, you want to fly balls looks creepy and you never all women, you want that one? Or do you want that one second more life? Okay, more crazy. I don't even know. And so this this is not going to leave her on air because she she she's refused to be on air the whole time, and I told her I was going to get her on air, and she's really means that she's gonna beat me up. So if I come back on the force segment with a black eye, everybody will know why of you, and so we're going to get theirs. All right, so now we have him on if you noticed over here sixty two and sixty three and that makes sense because we were one barcode short. So now you also know by doing this, maybe you didn't realize that your barcode short your numbers aren't matching up now's the time to solve that issue and why your numbers aren't matching up. It's a nice little simple way that's already built in a bridge or light room on helping you figure out how these things work and help you keep that work flow going so now what I'm gonna do is I'm just going to look at just those those images and you could process and this is where use the artist you could do whatever you want you make them black and why you khun mean literally whatever you want any of you notice we didn't barcode these and these are actually pretty pretty well lit I mean they're nothing spectacular but it's pretty well lip the cropping is maura the issue than anything in this point we'll take care of that and photo velocity or you can take care of it here we can do it in both and I'll show you since we're kind of speeding it up I'm not going to really crop him here I'll cross him and photo velocity just to kind of safe from time but the whole point is is once you have these what you would do is what I like to do is I'll select them all and now I'm going to go into a battery name I'm gonna rename my keeper images whatever I want on the name I mean we're just going to say this is the seattle so if it's his if this was like station one I would do day one dash station one dash and then zero zero want all the way up and then the next numbers would be maybe day to station one day two station to from now on renaming all my keepers in raw format and their unique individual folder and then we're going out put them all to one folder so now they all have different names they're all going to fall in together they're all gonna be in america order or time sync the basically the way you captured him so you know day one station alone will be the first images day too I mean day one's station two will be the next one that fallen after that it also helps you keep everything organized and simple to figure out does that make sense? So we're just going to rename these real quick since we don't have multiple stations so to say but these are just my keeper images so then and these were already j pegs, but generally and we did j pegs just to speed up this process, guys but generally we shoot raw we'll shoot small wrong, which is plenty date if you have a new camera that allows you shoot small role and it's not necessarily the size because j pegs plenty is, well, plenty big the reason why we like to shoot raw is for the divers the actual range that I can process if I need to if I mess up storages pretty cheap these days memory cards are pretty cheap, so I don't mind the extra storage fee you can choose j pick if you want if p queen is watching out there, he definitely knows since his cameras was the one that had the contrast all the way up on our very first volume job when we were shooting in j peg and you couldn't hardly see anyone in the back of his lcd, and so we really had to do a lot of work because it messed everything up and we we were so I mean, it took a six to seven hours to set up everything that first job we're now takes us like an hour, forty five minutes to an hour when we were that protective over everything and we still messed up, so I just like to shoot raul because if I have a redhead that comes in that's very, very pale that has a really bright light redhead and my hair like blows her hair out, I'll have that role that I could bring it back on that one image over I have an african american that's really, really dark and maybe my lights don't fire, you know, there's some reason and they're really, really under exposed I can bring that up because the problem is when it happens, it's going to happen on something like that really, really getting hurt you worse. The raul allows me to fine, fine tune all the images most of time, ninety nine percent of time. I don't need the raw it's. Just that one percent that I'm going to need it. So I shoot that way the whole time. Can I ask a quick question? I'm glad that you were talking about that because somebody in the chat room is asking if you ever delete the bad images as you go from your card, can you talk about that? We do not. And I'm gonna tell you why? Because it's a bit us in the back side before, sometimes when you're shooting fast like this, and images of burning to the card, if you start viewing and deleting before they're completely burn, it can corrupt a car because it's happened to us and so for us, we would rather delete here it takes more time on the photo day for me to stop and look and delete. I don't need to think that on my photo day, I just need to think personal customer service and what I need to do to get through the photo day so I grab the card hey, john, how you doing? Have a stand here, shoot, come on, that's, not a great smile, come on, that's great come on, give it to me get our perfect we got it and I know I have it and then we move on and then I worry about this in the confined area and that way also, if you're trying to look, they want to look, I don't want them to see I want to just have that very smooth process in and out in and out on our phone today, and I worry about all the post later. Thank you. Have a question in the audience. Three guys good. All right, so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna actually just highlight these. What I normally would do is I would literally just open these up in came a raw open these up back home however you want to do what I lots of times I'll do is I'll actually set this up to where I can actually have, like presets in light room or actions and photoshopped or even some scripts when they go into photo shop that I can color correct. However, that job is going to be, and I set this up beforehand, and I even make multiple examples of how my final photo will look and show them to the client and say, hey, which ones do you like better, bessie if it's the first time job because I want them to be happy, the odds are whatever they tell you, you could do something different. They're never going to notice the difference when you show him the image, but by going to them and really interacted with them, it really helps, especially the first time for customer service. So generally what we do is nothing major. I will generally maybe do a sinner crop in an eight by ten for matt and make sure he's in eight by ten it didn't have to be eight by ten, it could be anything I usually try to center crop most of my images little backs level, we're not going to do that today because we're speeding through the process, so I just want to kind of show you some of the tips that we do, and generally I'll lower my clarity just a little bit just to kind of show because it kind of softens up the face is just a little bit, you don't have to do it too much, and you don't want to do it too much, and lots of times I will actually raise up my blue saturation. I know it seems kind of weird, but it really especially here in seattle, on the west coast, when you have cloudy days, if you're shooting outside for a volume event where you're not using studio strobes and everything kind of looks a little dingy. I did a little blue kind of pops up little skin tone it really kind of adds a little a little flesh colored back to their skins but don't want to do it too much, so I really don't do a lot. I might do a little bit of post crop come on computer post crop vignette ng so no matter how I end up propping it, you're going to have a little vignette and that drawls the viewer's eyes to the images, but this is all set up and pre sets, so when I actually batch out from raul to j peg, it applies all this automatically the more you khun do on automatic level, the better you're going to do in volume. This is not a high end service, it is in a sense, but you can't take every one of these images and processing individually, you've got to do some former batch, and so this is up to each and every one of you to figure out how you want to do this. I don't care what you do, just learn if I want underexposed overexposed on a vineyard on add blue I wanted maybe make one black and white learn all this, get your pre sets built up, get your your actions built up, and then just literally I have actions for like our are crediting that we shoot I know exactly the look that they need and I literally have actions built in that I will run. That process is just like that and it's taking a while to figure that out. But it saves so much time. So when you do commercial work, especially in volume is a lot of commercial work in it they're all under time restraints. I mean, it's all about I need it yesterday and so the faster you can get this and then even if you're in doing regular volume, I need to get this part done fast so I can get it sorted. I can get up to the lab orders and get him back so we can have him out when you do sports leagues, they start, you know, they're about two months long, lots of sports leagues, maybe three months. You think? Oh, that's, plenty time. But you shoot on opening day, you come home, you download your process, you crop, you do all the stuff, you get him up, get laid orders in everything else by the time you get him back on a good time, it's four weeks maybe you could get back faster than but it's four weeks and if there's any problems, if you delay a week or two, you're a the end of the season the time everything's done so you have to get after this very quickly and so the faster you can do this party you're processing the better off you are so you don't have to do really fancy you can do real fancy but it just pins on but my suggestion is just make sure you have some form of automatic processing when it comes to this show something on their face absolutely what you can do is multiple things if it's little kids and I don't offer any touch up options you can fix it if you want to but I only fix it if they order it I'm not going to fix it best if we do proofs I don't do any of that stuff improves if it's a priest sound they order the photo and it's off and it's really obvious sure you can touch it up it just takes a second if you offer eh skin skin correction option like for touching up which is really big in high school but they don't buy it I mean there's that point that that's that's what it's for that combined if we definitely offered I'm definitely going probably fix it up and make it look nice but again it goes back to what you want now it brings up a good point most labs like miller's they'll charge you two dollars per head to touch up so if you have some kids got really bad acne I would rather let millers for two dollars extra fix that up for me sit behind a computer and have to touch up all that acne again that's a control issue when we have so hard of a time releasing that control but on my order form if I charge eight dollars or ten dollars for advance retouching and I'm paying miller's two dollars I made eight dollars profit just by checking a checkmark that's pretty good business and so that's the little things that you want to do because if they have huge acne me personally as a client I'll pay ten dollars you'd remove at me because this is going to be my big portrait this is going to be you know my nice my nice photograph but I just don't want to have to do it for everyone goes back to the eyeglass thing I don't have to do it for everyone I want to fix it on location because I don't have to do it imposed with the retouch I let my lab take care that brings me back also to the photo shoot itself do you make sure that the kids have a clean face and you know do you fix their hair? Is there enough time for that all depends on the age and that brings up a great that's a great question and I'm not saying that cause cody says I say that on everyone but it really is a good question on our little kids, we set up a little more time in the schedule because the little kids we are their parents as well. We're gonna have combs, and we only use the column one time we comb their hair and throw it away because you have lice that runs around in a little schools. If they have a snotty nose, I'm going to wipe their nose. I'm gonna take care of that kind of stuff in high school, the kid probably a snotty nose because he wanted to have a snotty nose when he came to school. And if his hair is all messed up that's the style I don't, I don't touch it, they should know how to wipe their nose. They should know how to comb their hair. However they show up to me is how much a photograph? Because I don't know I mean that's, you don't know any better. Now we'll try to say even their hairs in their eyes to pull their hair out of their eyes, some for you can see at least one eye, and when we put the cap on for you, those that do capping graduation, we pull their hair up and they get mad but that's that's part of the look I mean, the hat is ugly anyway, it's a weird hat but it means graduations, so but that's the only time we try to make sure there's atleast one eye we turn their head just a little bit towards the light to get that that I lit up. So again, little guys, absolutely. Where their parents we try to make him look a good as we can. But the big guys, however they come to us that's how they get shot. So when you do all your pre sets, everything for batch processing, do you still have to take the time and go in and crop everything just so or is there a faster way to do that? Great question. Yes, it's a really great you can do it two ways you can crop in here if you don't need a yearbook, and I go back to my yearbook here if you're not shooting the yearbook and these is a year. But but it's, not a formal yearbook, is this so here's underclassmen photos you can see all their head sizes are almost identical. This is done by design, and it takes time. So and you're seniors, which I think at the beginning of this year, but the seniors, which are a little bigger so it'll be easier to see, maybe on screen, all the heads of the same as well. This is done within photo velocity now because we're going to show you with crop lines now you can also purchase multiple companies offer crop lines that you put inside your camera that'll have and cody kind of talked about it earlier it'll have like a little chin line in the top of the headline and so then you would have your camera actually on a tripod on wheels and so instead of me cropping in post, I would well that camera up to where the head and the chin line match shoot it and then we have a big meathead kid come up so have the backup some and we'd shoot it and we go from there so you can absolutely and honestly that's probably the best option it's more money because you have the crop lines and each camera everything else but that's the best option because it will save you time in the long run however, we don't do that we use photo velocity for all our cropping I think it's fast and we're going we're going to show you and basically I can look at four, eight, sixteen, thirty two images at a time and I can make my own crop lines, which is what I like so for each of my jobs again on my customer service and we're gonna explain how to do this, I literally will take one image a sample image and I will crop it farther out or closer in three different like three four different examples I'll bring that photo tour set which crop do you like for your yearbook which everyone she's she picks I know which croft line that is and that's the one that I will use for that job again. It's just a little more customer service because she might want a tighter shot for the seniors or a wider shot for the seniors so they can see there may be honor society throw their cap or whatever in a tighter shot for the underclassmen and so we go back and forth and you get all that taken care of before photo day a handful of people are asking if you put your logo on your prince we do not. I know a lot of people do and that's personally fine if we do that's another thing that the lat we could easily do it with a checkmark because miller's has our logo and the way photo velocity works on dimension it before. But the whole concept is when you have a relationship with a lab with anything with any company you use it's usually because there's someone there that you like and you can relate to when you go to like imaging yusa and you go to all these tables and you meet people you like and I like that person that just that she seems so sweet, he seems so great, and so that's, my customer service rep for whatever else. So I know it's very difficult for photographers to leave the cos they already love, which is why photo velocity. We wanted to tie into the main lab, so you don't have to change anything. So for me to put my logo on my images, miller's already has my logo. So once I use photo velocity, upload everything, the millers, then you open up digital undergrad from miller's again and there's. This little check mark, if I want my my logo on them, and I can usually do it, but generally we don't do that, it's, just something that we've done. I know some people live and breathe by, and so it's completely up to you. What you guys want.