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V Gallery Workflow

Now this is something interesting and I'm going to go ahead and say it last two weeks ago, for the first time in six and a half years our server went down it crashed and I still don't even know what's wrong with it but without redundancy that we had set up in our grobo drives I don't I don't know if woodrow but has anything to do with any of this but I love girls their drives wait I just picked up the external raid brought it over to a different computer hooked it up it's just running on one of our machines one of our workstation but the way that we have set things set up is a folder sub folder system and I always said all you know we have this big server, you know, huge apple thing that I bought in two thousand for it cost me a billion dollars and it was awesome for two thousand six for six and a half years never gave me ahead so it was worth every penny was just kind of a cost of doing business for us, but nowadays there's so many different solutions you know there's so much cheaper ...

and so much more economical like the draw a bow is a great one we protect sells great little raids um but we have redundancy now in this external raid that I can not have to worry about her files, you know? And you can back things up on the cloud if you want to, but I don't know, I haven't gotten there yet. I mean, that's what? That yet because we have an awful lot of stuff, and I don't really want to pay monthly right now. Um, but space and space over all this cheap, you know, you don't have toe I have sixteen terabytes, you know, and that's going to be good for me for a really long time, um, and it's all backed up in a rage. Um but the way that we have things set up is that we upload a card into the show. You in our server, we have workflow, and we have a new session folder, so we have a folder, some folder system, we do this for a couple reasons, number one, just overall organization, and you just go through the steps, right? Number two I don't have to baby sit anybody. If I haven't employed or an intern doing this, they can look at the folder sub folder system and see where everything is or even myself say, I'm working till two in the morning or eleven o'clock at night, and I want to be done. We'll have to worry about exactly where I am and what I'm doing I can't leave my computer I could come back and okay I was editing that I need to do the hardest suggestion next okay, I need burn these next and it's all just in order. Fuller sub folder system okay, so employee comes in and the first thing they see these two sessions in our new session folder they know that these two new sessions need to go through first edit so the polish pull one of these sessions they'll go through first at it, drop it into this folder that edit and prep a folder. Okay? And so if they come in the next day or if somebody else even starts working on it they opened this up oh, this still needs to be edited, you know, there's more there's more in here that needs to be edited or their work there's more in here that needs to be prepped. Ok, then they drop it into this folder somebody else maybe comes in the next day or after lunch and they see oh it's in the artist suggestion folder. You know we're even yourself like okay that's all edited now it's in the artist suggest one folder maybe you just haven't intern whatever it doesn't matter now I can make the artist suggestion for pop open my template pop open my action boom done now I moved in this folder needs to be burned and this could just accumulate you know you could get you know over the course of a week you can get maybe ten folders in here that you can then burn on the weekends or have somebody do for you on the weekend or even at night whatever doesn't matter but everything's organized and it goes through the process then after that it's ready for the sale so it goes through the sale then the client orders and it goes into two thousand twelve where we have every month okay march is the only money that I have populated right here because this isn't my actual server this is kind of a mock up but in two thousand twelve I have every month now so we would be obviously in this month right here these months wouldn't have anything in it but then you can see in march for my example that I have this is everyday that vicky shot on and march okay and for the example I have a session in here and the session has the client's name and the date in the final so it's searchable by name searchable by date you know if you need to that's kind of like their serial number and that also is on their physical paper that they get they have their name in their date on there so everything kind of corresponds everything matches okay then after that they come in, they order and then in the client's actual file you'll see that we have these folders here's, their artist suggestion here's their captures these air, all the raw files, here's their j picks this is what they saw these air their proofs okay here's, their order and apparently they haven't ordered yet for my example. But if they had ordered there would be an eight by ten folder in here with however many eight by tens and they had all the level ten j picks cropped, and yet it everything's finished in this folder, and then here's their psd, these air, all the images that we either worked on beforehand, like if we wanted to apply a treatment or something to it, or or an image of the clients ordered, but it's full resin on cropped ok, so if you've done the work, if I've spent any time of any type of time on an image more than just something that's automated, I'm saving it as a four ez psd okay, because typically if I do work on an image and spruce it up a little bit and it's something that I that I like that I've picked and made something that the client's gonna be more prone to gravitate towards because it looks better be, I picked it, and that's what they want okay, not always, but if I'm gonna do that extra work to it, I'm keeping out higher as one crop file that's what? That's what these are and they're lost us there. Psd. Okay, then the legroom catalog is in here so I can open this light room catalog and everything will come up and all the adjustments are made because the databases in there the catalog is in there and everything's ready to go if I want to make any adjustments in light room still too. All right, then let's see? Oh, we have a w c c folder which is everything we have ever sent to the lab all in one place. Now I understand this is all backed up have a raid system it's actually arranged six so it's pretty redundant to extra drives of eight drives in the enclosure. Two of them are for backup so two drives have to fail at the same time, which is pretty darn good. Not really where we never even had one dr fail in that eight years that we've had a raid, it will happen. Not when you think it's not on something that's made out of what it will happen. It's, not like a dr failing is never a question of if it's always a question of when it's like you know are we going to die? Yes, we're going to dock in it's not a question of if it's a question of when sorry to get more of it but the analogy drives are going to die it's equipment it's not going to survive so be ready like have some sort of redundancy you know, somebody just called me last week and said they lost everything and and you know it's gonna cost maybe three or four thousand dollars to maybe recover some of it and I'm like, oh, you know spaces so cheap you guys, it doesn't cost anything in a relative since and it's the cost of doing business for what we're doing so back it up from the cloud backing up in a raid back it up you know, merit do something you know what we do with this is this is like this is our really important folder this is everything we have need sent needs czech needs redone uh this is like everything that we've ever done two thousand to two thousand three starting with white house in two thousand to their tenth two thousand ten, two thousand seven two thousand twelve are also there now again, this is just one example of that is the most important folder we have because we also have that off site because they get backed up off site what we tell clients is that we guarantee everything they order always leave multiple times had to reprint complete client orders because their house burnt down tragedy and insurance, and those cases typically even pays for it. So we get a minute and voice we're able to reprint everything. We're not gonna go back and find files and load him and just from a disk and re very touch and does it with the same is it looked before and also people asked, like you guys have all private asset question is, well, can I just come back in order these later? The truth is, we burn a disc of all their rods and final that so technically, those if those disks work, you know and read crackly, we can go back to anything any time, we don't know, but I don't guarantee that so that's, why we just say I guarantee only way order, even if it's justified by seven so it encourages people to at least order something of them just they like because we all know the reality, it's very rare that someone would actually really comeback in order something from the last thing that they didn't order once in a while maybe, but that's, not common, hardly ever happened fourteen years of doing so. Uh I've been here in the white house again we have all the years and then we have all the months and then we have all the days with the date and the name of the person okay, so this is how everything's archive and I convey this up really easily think the whole thing is these are all level ten j p so they're not very big maybe the whole thing is I don't know seventy or eighty gigs which I pride could put on the cloud that's not too big of a deal but we just have a little external drive that we take somebody else's house and it sits in a drawer we back it up manually every weaker every month there however long it is but and then it's also redundant so the only thing in the studio so the only thing that's going to stop us as if like a tornado comes through and wipes out our whole town which could happen but at that point I'm gonna have other things to worry about you know if I have the apocalypse gets here I'm not gonna be like oh where those images like what am I gonna eat tomorrow so that's kind of the basics of the way things are set up at the studio again our whole our whole philosophy is really the kiss you keep it simple keep it stupid simple keep it simple stupid philosophy you know um way want to keep things simple and that makes sense so that not only is it good for ourselves but if we do have something and now we're down to like an intern and two part time employees that come in sort of every once in a while which is great on a lot of ways but it's our system is set up in a way that a new person could come in tomorrow and they could no like what what we're doing with in a couple days even if things get hectic it's like the organization is there the systems are in place the automation is there from a production standpoint that we can just say oh yeah and at this step you just dragged these hair they'll come up over here you put him in this folder that's not you know and then it's ready for the client to see you know all right, well uh I don't know I can't stop right now we have a couple of minutes before a break but if anybody has any specific questions I can answer them or baker's got no, no, no, I just found out that after break that like we'll be able, we'll be able to take technical questions as part of our q and a and program after break to wei don't have to be rushed, but I'm not you're not completely in the doghouse with you know, I just wanted that you know, it wasn't like quick get your couple questions and now or you won't be able to like wave time after the break that we'll be able to see what it has anything right now that's fine yes okay, so when you utilized light room and photoshopped together because I have both um but I find sometimes because I prefer photo shop for all of you the retouch worker in anything I like light room because of the cataloging but then I feel like it's eating a lot more time for me to go back and forth so they put him in the light room only once, okay, for the most part so you just put him in there and then export him out as the j pigs from there or the tips from there? Yes, the j pegs from there now I lied I guess because I didn't go back when the client orders I go backto light room and export a bigger for as file obviously because that's what I'm gonna do my final work on if it wasn't something that I was doing beforehand. In other words, if I see an image like a couple of the images that I've seen that I know I'm gonna do a special treatment on something that's not automated, I'm going to export that out as a high res file from like right at the beginning okay if it's gonna go into the artist suggestion and I should've clarified that that's actually a really good question the only other time I'm gonna go back to lot light room for the most part is after the order if they've ordered anything that I hadn't already done I hadn't already exported that and done some extra work on which happens you know sometimes they do so I might initially export six high rez files and do some extra work on there and that's like the ten to fifteen minutes of extra work that I'm talking about it's like this is on spec put an extra fifteen minutes in on this I'm gonna do something so these images I'm gonna run some actions I'm gonna maybe created nine opening which in case I would need nine images I'm going to do this that and the other thing just whatever I'm gonna do that on spec ops my high res images that I am exporting initially along with all the j peg proofs okay, so I have both at that point but then the only other time when that idea they want to go back to light room is it? Well no, I actually want to order this and I want to order this I'll go back, we export them the ones that they ordered so again it never really bothers me to do that work because I'm getting paid for what I know they ordered it all right if you're in order an image, I'll just I'll do whatever I could go back to the light room, export that out and go into photo shop and do my thing takes two or three minutes um but I don't like to go back and forth like maybe that's what you're talking about going back and forth I'll see an image and I'll take it into photoshopping work on it it'll say that back in the light room then oh no, I don't say we're backing because it it was a psd in that folder because when I do do the psd, then it doesn't go backto light room, but then if I pull something up in light room, I don't see the one that's yeah, but I don't work, I don't know you just don't worry about it no, I don't worry about mean you khun, you can enter it into your catalog again if you want to but it's in the client's folder for me catalogue is so okay. I know that the catalogs there and I know that there's a folder with all the stuff that I've worked on so it's still organized that makes that makes a lot more sense because I heap feeling like, okay, well, now it's not light room yeah, I know you know I just don't worry too much about that part of it I get what you're saying but like room, I use it just for like editing and calling it in that color correction I don't really worry about using it as an archive for us it doesn't make sense for what we do now for some people it does and those people even maybe you do want to have one catalog for everything we have, like one minute left uh one catalog for everything like that's, where it might make sense to have one catalog for everything if you're really using it for that. But we don't not in our system not just that our portrait studio for what we do on a regular basis. Thank you. Yeah. Is that it's like ten, forty five ring? I'm supposed to be no way we're gonna get a break soon. Go ahead and ask your question that we have one more question. What color space to use from the camera toe light room to photoshopped print house used to be us rgb and then we switch to adobe ninety eight so there was some it went back and forth on here don't we know needs a bigger color space um, you want to use that started to be for anything you're gonna put on the web so before you put on the web change it back to us, rgb way, have that building actions, or if you save it for the web in photo shop, it'll change that backto srg, b, but adobe ninety eight, you know, and it, you know, I don't want to get into that debate either. That's like the mac pc there's, a lot of debates that I don't like to get into publicly anyway, neither one of them's either. One of them is fine. I think I I get support either one of them, but we used adobe ninety eight, predominately are older stuff, stillness, rgb, but it's, not that big of a deal for what we knew. No, everyone could slam me for what I just said, but I'll stand by it. It's worked for fourteen years. I hope it'll work for the next fourteen.