Lessons

Lesson Info

Post Shoot Workflow - Building Proof Forms

So now what we basically have if you look since we only have one image associated with all the images or all the people that we photographed and then the people we didn't photograph they have nothing associate it with him and since there's on ly that one image there's on ly one picture pick column because you're gonna have a column here for have or many poses you're going tohave so how many images you're gonna have a folder so if you have one folder that has five images innit one folder that has five images you're actually gonna have five of these picture pick columns one two, three, four, five because that's going to how you order the images which we're gonna get to sew again as I showed you earlier with the j or whatever I want in order to this picture package a this person ordered a and this port maybe in order to naff I do in a day and a half they ordered that that one post since there's only one image they're only going to order that one that's the only one that can order but if t...

here's more than one pose you're going to have a column for each so the second image would be your second pose the third image will be your third pose and so forth when they order if you have multiple poses and you're in a very confined or controlled volume job meaning like our seniors where all the post number one is the same all pose number two's the same post three and post for all the same or you can least make them the same. I highly suggest doing that because now when people call us up and say, you know what, I really want a water, these photos I don'thave appreciate with me on and you say, well, which one was it? It was the one holding a diploma that's our post number two, no problem whatsoever. We already know what that poses in that job, and it makes your workflow but he's, just so you don't have to go to the folders opening up which one supposed to which one's post to so in order to do that, the way that we actually remember when we renamed everything, so you're already kind of putting that person's files already in numerical order. Suppose one would be the first pose post two will be the second etcetera, and when we rename them so they're already in america order. So photo velocity actually looks at how and each individual folder, how each the file names are now given. We only have the one image in our sordid folder, and so if we had more than one image we would actually put the second post is two thousand two, the file name, the third will be two thousand three, the force will be two thousand for or whatever it could be anything as long as it's after the first pose numerically does that make sense, so that way each pose is always the same, and so by us, renaming that at the beginning, not only does it help us sort everything which we talked about, it also helps keeping your poses all in the same order. So going back to that group photo that we talked about if I wanted to sort by group photo there's one option that I didn't show you when we sort that it says group name, you can actually rename your group photo when it paste into each folder. I person like having my group the very last image in the folder, because my individuals are more important, the group is kind of standard, so I usually just put like an x and put a dash or something, and that x comes after all my file name, so I know it's going to be the last image in my folder. Does that make sense? So if I have one pose, this automatically becomes post to no matter what that first pose file name is for the most part, or you could put a z if I have five post, is it's going to be the six pose automatically no matter what those five are it's going to go into the last? Does that make sense? That helps for workflow scenario? So you always know where your post your images are. All right, so now let's kind of get into what I think a lot of people were interested in in the template builder and I think it's really neat, so you're basically what I would do it, and I'm going to show you hit the temple of builder, and I have this basic form that pops open and you have a browse button and I'm gonna kill him hit brows and I'm gonna find my template, which I actually have one sign I mean saved here, and I'm in a nice little creative live one. So this is one of our senior forms, it's just simple, it shows up, you don't have to be real accurate, it has all the information on it, and basically what I could do is it's going to take all my files that I've sorted was a member and photo velocity when we went when we went to the sort feature they close out of this real quick cracking show you well into the sort feature, and we hit sort, this is our sordid folder. So now this is the folder that everything else that you're working off of is going to draw the data from because it has the individual folders it has matches it to the data, so it knows that I did two zero, zero, three the photo that's in that it goes back to the data I d two zero zero three is this person's name and it puts it all together. So all the renaming, all the template building, everything comes from this one folder. Now, let's, go back the template builder gonna open up that filing in. All right, so we have the file and so basically, in this case, we only have one image, and I'm going to show you with one image first, and then we're going to do multiple images, so I'm going to start off by just removing my photos and I can add photos, so if I have six proofs, I can had six I have one in this case, I'm going to go down the one, and you highlight that little bucks and I want to say, I want my first pose to come up here and you click on the upper left corner where you want the image to start, and if you notice when I click, it actually gave me coordinates down here. So I'm gonna come up here and I want to see my max we'll just leave it at six hundred fifty pixels is my max picks pixel wit of that image we don't know at this point and I'm going to say my barcode I wanna put my barcode down here just in case I want to read it we're going to make it nice and small I'm gonna come back and say like just five size you can change the colors if you want just black red, blue whatever you can also put all the font that you all the funds that you have in you computer will show up here so if you put a lot of fonts and you see one of our classmates she must love thoughts because you said fonts and her face got really, really big and then lots of times when we create ideas remember I talked about earlier on those cards that they're tootie bar codes and we put out the q r codes but lots of times on ideas that need the old school one de barco the classic line because they use it for their cafeteria system it literally can rent books with it library everything runs off that and those scanners only read the one d so if you need a one day you would simply just click here and it'll convert that standard tootie bar code back to the one day for that situation and then for ieds if you need any your text justified center left right you could do that if you need to rotate just the barcode maybe you have the little id card and you want the barcode sideways on the side you can rotate it the ninety degrees and then you can actually stretch it a percentage if you just want put into percentage it'll actually stretch that barcode so if you have it on the side it's rotated nine degrees and it's only feeling up this much of this much base you can stretch it till it fills up the entire edge of that that idea that makes sense so you can kind of play with all that each we might not need it for every job but you'll have it and so you can go there all right? So we have that this is actually cut off and I'll just say we're going to fix it but this is first name last name this is last name first name this is just first name just last night so let's say we want the first name last name up here the top or under name where I left it because this little template I designed this photo I designed in photos leaving room for all the unique data, the photos, the names, the barcode and just designing all the standard stuff it's going to be on all the order forms so I designed it as a psd can design it an illustrator and no creative life has some amazing classes on that that I was traveling and I missed because I want to learn more about illustrator and I didn't get a chance to so I'll be buying that one. But you can do it in in a photo shop illustrator, whatever you design in design and you could design stuff to make suit your business, I highly suggest you would make it very pretty, but don't go over like we talked about you still want the images to show in the data, but also make it very personal. We all have been talking about that. I even last joke up that's. Why I put the creative live logo that would be something we would do with our schools. Put their school logo there named that kind of stuff. All right. So now want last name, first name. I checked that and I'm gonna put the last name first name way down here. Because this part right here it's hard to see that little arrow right here is a preparation envelope. This part down here is the envelope that will come back to me the part of top will stay with the parents, so the park coming back, I need to know their name I need another I d number because that's what's coming back to my office for aiken keep everything in order so that's the name that I can easily put the I d number here and I'll put that over here beside where the barcodes going to go and let's say I want the teacher in this cases where they work we're going to put that way down here and you don't know what this is going to look like this point you're just kind of guesstimating and we're gonna put it all together here in a minute so we're just going to kind of step put some stuff there and now that I'm happy I'll hit preview and there's all that information dropped on for that first person so now what I do is and I did some things on purpose which showed up but I want to point out now what I do is I don't look at everything I look at one thing at a time and try to fix it so obviously that photo's too small so I want to come back over here and I'm gonna make will do eight hundred making that photo bigger and I'll get preview and so it's going to make the image bigger that's a little too big so then you could just fine tune it if you want and you go through each and every item until you're happy with what you have and so it's kind of like when we taught our teo class you want to make one change of the time I highly suggest you make one change of the time here too and so you have that now matt queen the first name says he has a small name you can say I want to make it bigger and you can make it bigger but you gotta remember well, this is matt queen the next person could have five names and it's going to run off the order form so you don't want to make just because someone has a short name but where it fits you want to have to think about the entire work full you have entire process, so you need to be careful that so I generally try to just kind of center it up and leave it at that I might even if you need to change it, you go back and highlight the box it goes from grey to blue and I can actually move matt's name over a little bit if I want to get preview and there's his name that moves over. So I'm gonna go through each of these steps if you notice I check the I d but I didn't do anything in the box so by default pops away up here and so that's something you need to be aware of two and I just kind of go down the list I'm gonna hit id and I'll put the I d number right below the barcode we're gonna change it from a one de tua tootie and you just kind of keep rearranging things until you're happy with your location if you're not happy, you just keep doing it until you are and everything slowly but surely so it takes a little time but this is actually really important because this is what it's going to come back to you this is important party your workflow it's important part of everything you have in your office. So basically now I have the first name last name up here it goes to them I have his barcode so if I have a scanner I can always scan it in here's the last name first name here's the I d number so this barcode here represents that number and then I have the office that he works in and everything else that makes sense. So now let's say I just I'm done I'm happy I can actually hit render and now I can choose several options. I can choose to export the image into a folder I will specify so if you want a folder just full of order forms that's what we would do, which is normally what we do, however I could export that also to every individual photo there into their individual folder so if I wanted to use online hosting an, upload those images to an online hosting company or something and just had that digital proof sheet, you get uploaded directly to a folder, and I'll have that pascoe protection everything when they enter the pass code protection, they just see a proof sheet. You could do that as well, too, because lots of tie or you can enter the individual images or appreciate the proof she could be there for them to download the order if you don't want it. If you want to turn off your shopping cart from online and just want to use it for viewing there's multiple things, you could do it this way generally, for us, we leave it the folder we will specify and put them all in one folder, then if we want proof that were proof putting over the images because I promise you people will take a photo with their iphone or the droid and it's happy they're good enough they don't need to buy will take if you don't put proof across and they still do it with proof to, but if they don't put anything on there, they'll take a photo of it and it'll look great, so I always suggest putting click clicking and putting proof across the image. And then finally you can actually a pin up in the files with any of the eye day that you collect remember I said earlier the more data you collect them or you could use in the post work now that's starting to take hold now it's starting to take effect you can actually click on any of this information if you wanted to but what I like doing it just creating the sub folder so now we're going to do is create a sub folder by grade since I great and this job is the seattle san francisco new york so theoretically we should have we didn't I don't think we capture the one gentleman from new york but we would have a folder of seattle and then all the proof sheets in there in a folder of san francisco and all their proof sheets in there and then you would just hit run when you hit run it's going to show ask you where do you want the safe since that's the option we chose up here and then we'll literally just put it in the folder again what I do is create another another a folder I don't try to hide over anything so I'm actually going to create I think we're in the san francisco so I'm gonna put a folder and call it order forms and that's where I'll save it and boom they're off to the races and now my order forms are being created when they come, if they don't have one of the information like this gentleman was a handwritten card, and I did not put in seattle, they're going to show up, which I did on purpose his name is going to show up, but they don't know where he is. And then if you also notice, I typed in seattle wrong on some of them on that column of where they work so it's going to give me another city? So I did that on purpose that you would see some of the possible heirs remember how I said that data collection is the most important part of the entire process? This one little thing? Well, it's not a huge thing, it's still going calls issues it's going to cost you fifteen minutes to fix that's fifteen minutes you didn't need to spend if you would just enter the data correctly. So if you notice it's probably just one or two, I think, yeah, just this one person, and so you could take it out, and you could put it in the other one, and then you go back to the data and you put in the extra t that I left out and it'll sort find the next time and you can just copy and paste it over there, but now you have to also go back to this guy and find out what city he's from and paste it over into that folder if you wanted to, but once done here's all our order forms with all their all the proof sheets with all their images on done. So now you basically and you notice they're all saved by last name first name in seattle, so then I'll just sit control all and I can print in my house if I have a printer, I can zip these up and send them to miller's latinate thumbprint come back and they're already sorted, so then I'd come back to the school and say, here's, your seattle proceeds here's your here's, your period one proof sheets, here's your giants proof she's here's your daycare proof sheet for each individual class makes it very, very simple, and this is endless. This tool is an endless process. The only limit you have is the creativity you create in those order forms in those id cards because it wanted to do an id card it's the same thing I designed the id card in the resolution that I know it needs to be printed in the same ratio designing and photoshopping indesign illustrator whatever haven't designed and then just drop in that information hit render it makes all the id cards is ajay pack and you send those to an I d printer or you send him off to miller's you sent him off to some other lab to print you're done so again don't freak out by having toe offer I d cards we just did it if you wanted to its that simple question you know what your experience been with, like grade school kids when you give them the proof she do, they lose them often and if so, when the parent says they lost lots of proof she what's the next step from there, your kids are always weakest link if we could take kids as equation way because like so, we get him to come back to us. Two years later, they found the mom found back the kids were always weakest link if you could remove them and just give it to the teacher, are somehow give it to the parents or make sure the pants teachers give to the parents friday that but you're not gonna be able to, you're always gonna probably have to put in the kid's backpack and it's just it's luck of the draw and and what we do the knee thing about photo velocity, creating these these proof sheets instead of relying on your lab to create is winn little johnny loses I literally just have to ask for his I d number what class or whatever go directly to this proof sheet folder there they are now have the option of you know I can print it out again and tell him to come by the studio and pick it up which is what I like doing because then we get to meet him and that personal relationship begins but if they live in you know illinois and we're in texas I can always email it to him as well but either way I have it in house it's on my computer in my studio if my lab makes and they lose I have to either really quickly create one myself it's not going to look the same or have to wait on my lab to make another one lots of times I can cost money but either way it's more time no matter which way you go so having an in house really really helps so to me this has just been it's a huge advantage for us to do it this way and it's it's really sped up the entire process when you prick him in house do you have the forms that are, um perforated yes that's actually good quite mean to bring that up we use way get our forms from marathon press you can they have a lot of pre pre printed ones that have like flowers on backside for school and that works for some people I don't like that I don't like that it's kind of cheesy it's kind of old school it's not what we like so we buy blank on both sides and either I'll print this on one side and nothing on the back or I print this and marketing on the backside or in this case since if you notice in these order forms there's absolutely zero pricing on this this is just a big word with proof across that the image I'll actually have another form which we have and I'll show you in our inner forms which we kind of showed you earlier so then I hope sorry well actually create another form again it's more personal toe what we do well if I could get to where I want to go sorry that has all the pricing on it so this would be the front and this would be the back so now we have our packages we have a lot prettier design a lot prettier but still simple we got a little bit of marketing and we have the due date that's really big and bold and they just rip off that bottom part and that bottom part comes back to me and what we do is like I said we go to home depot lowe's any home improvement store and we buy a mailbox a locking mailbox it's about yea big and they could just drop it off put that in the office and then they just drop those orders in there you can go out and spend a lot of money on like plastic lock boxes and all this other stuff, but they cost a lot you could goto any of those places and for like fifteen, twenty dollars getting nice lockbox that's a mailbox and you can use it to drop these orders in have a few questions from the internet is this a good time? Absolutely any time's a good time, but they have a question I want to answer it all right? Uh cm three eighty three asked, will the suffer give us a paper trail for filing taxes? It's a great thing at this point? No, but that is one of our next steps to do, it's one of those things that we we're trying to figure out the best way it's actually tied in, but we really want to keep everything in house, so we're probably going to create everything ourselves because I really think it gets confusing perfect example for ourself printing, which we haven't really got into which I know probably a lot of people getting into volume is not going to self prints, so I don't know if we're going to go over in detail today but like for the self print it'll all be in house you could actually use, like, photo shop or something with actions to create the package definitions that you wanted, but then you would have to have photo shop on your computer to do that and everything else. And so we really want to keep everything in house within photo velocity, so we are worried we are working on that. We are getting at least the basic forms just basically, how many packages were spent, what packages were the best or the highest? And what percentage did you make? So, basically, how much did you spend? How much did you make? So we released gonna have that here in some release is coming up, and I forgot to mention the neat thing about photo velocity is it is a yearly description, but you get all the updates for free, so literally, if you look at the top of this, we're in, I think release one forty three this time, so we're fixing to release one forty four. And so just in the last five, six years released one hundred forty four versions of this programme and so and that's just official verse, we're probably more around the five hundred versions in the back, and and then we combined a bunch of them, so you get constant updates, so as we include these items that people need next time you open a photo velocity it's gonna have a little window that says there's a new version would you like to download you just click yes you install it on top of the old one all your jobs will be there everything else but now you have all the new functions so that'll be coming but not yet so a clarification question from the internet ninety seven is asking or she's saying I'm confused about the order forms do they send the blanks from marathon to miller's? Ok, we were still answering that miller's in the reason why what we do is we use model nine sixty one if you want to write that down if you go to marathon press and you look at their school functions the school paperwork it's going to be model nine sixty one I think is the final number and it's basically it's an eight and a half by fourteen form and it's got a five inch money envelope at the bottom that preparation is five inches and you can get him from two and a half three and a half for you getting different sizes we found the five inches the best for several reasons one it comes back a little bit bigger so that data with their name and everything on is a little easier to read. It gives me more room to put their information that I just did on the bottom what's also nice on the back side of all of them when they seal that there's actually a pull tab so you can pull tab it open to get all the information if it's money if it's check if it's whatever it's a pool taps you don't have to constantly like take scissors and cut them all open it's just a matter of pulling and you know, and sometimes we're seeing there after big jobs were like, man, this is getting old, I'm tired of this and then you stop and go, wait a minute, I'm pulling a tab, pulling out twenty dollars put them here pulling a tad, taking out forty dollars put in here, I want to do this all day long, I will get tired, so reality hits of just how much money you're making and so but it makes it really easy getting into those envelopes and in to answer the question online miller's has the exact same forms pretty much I don't know where they get them from, but they have the same layout. So if I design them and have miller's print um or I print on my stock that I get from marathon, they all of the same, so again, it gives me that versatility because generally if it's one hundred kids two hundred kids, I'm gonna put him out of house you know when I look at the same a lot of money but it's not much time but if I have like underclass one I need twenty five hundred three thousand the millers is doing that I don't have time to buy my I don't have time to baby sit my printer I don't have time for all that that's what my labs for my lab is there yes they're going to make money but you know what they're going to make me money and so we use it together so that's where I would use my lab so no they don't go to miller's miller's has their own own supply so basically when you up a little but you're not gonna do any in house printing you don't have to worry about bynum from marathon and keep him yourself and if you're going to the lab but I do suggest having and they're actually pretty inexpensive you get like a thousand for one hundred dollars I think what it is I buy a box and have him around so when we do need to print out an order form I just grab the stock and I can print uh jen asking asked do you allow parents to cancel orders and if so how long do they have to do that generally speaking when we're doing it depends on the type when we do our sports leagues and we do our schools were photographing every child no matter what. On beach, and it works different in different parts of the country, obviously with appointments, but for the yearbook, the school wants every kid if they pay for it or not, they want to photograph of that child, so we're gonna photograph them now in our regular business and for a quick takes, I highly suggest getting money upfront. We actually have our clients when we set the appointment, the retainer fee actually kind of seem it's them in our calendar so they don't disappear if they don't show up that money can be rolled over to another appointment time or something else, but we're gonna have the money, but for our volume, I know it's it's just where we are, and I know what she's asking, we don't really have that issue down in the south because we photograph everybody, even our little league teams, we photograph everybody, and then if they don't want to order, they just don't want the session. If they don't show up, they have to come back and retake day, and if they don't show and retake day, they don't get a photo, but but if it's something that they've already paid for and maybe even ordered that's, just something you have to decide in your business how you're going to treat, because is it really worth not given somebody there? Twelve dollars, back for the package. If they come up with some excuse, they don't want it anymore, can't have it in you. Sure, you can be a jerk and say, hey, I know you paid for it. I ordered it here's your thing. I mean, you really only out three, four dollars with the print order, or you can be the big person and say, hey, whatever, here's here's, your money back, it's just gonna side on an individual basis. What, how you're gonna handle that?