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Photoshop & Efficient File Structure

My wife was very generous. And trust me when it comes to photo shop, an average session that I do again, we're delivering 40 to 60 images. She'll take a complete session that I do a senior session. I give her the card. She downloads it. She edits every single image. First she calls through the images, throws out the ones we don't want. She edits every single image. And when I say added, I don't mean just like you. No. One little thing I mean, she hopes the images up makes them look spectacular. And they're ready. They're done 25 minutes or so. She's got a whole session edited, Finished, done, gone. So I asked her. I said, You know, since you're so good at what you do, would you mind putting together a video or a sequence of videos on how you handle files, how you do something of your general editing? And she said, Oh gosh, Blair, I don't know if I could do that. I don't know if I want to be. I don't know if I want my voice on camera. So everyone had to leave work and she went back up t...

o where She went back to work that night and she said, All right, I'm gonna do this and she wouldn't let anybody in the room while she was doing it. But she is so cute how she was doing everything and she picks on me for saying the same words over and over. Like I say, when I'm going into something else, I'll say So it's so funny because she does the same thing, right? Right back, right back at you. So let's talk a little about Photoshopped and let's talk about how to maximize our profits through photo shop. And the good thing about it is I see someone behind. Have your note pads, but you're not even gonna need your note pads because you have the class available to you right afterwards as well on. And that's the good thing about creative live is you don't have to cram with notes because you can go back and watch it over and over and over again. Um, and let's talk about organizing your files again. You have to be in a certain system that every time you go into Photoshopped, you do the same sequence of events leading up to the point where you're actually going to start photo shopping images. Right, So this next one, I'm gonna show you a video. And this is her talking about how to structure your files. How do once you import your card, how do you set up all your files? What do you What do you do? So this next video is going to show you exactly that it's about 3 to 4 minutes long. So I think it will add ah, lot of profit to your organization if you follow these steps. So let's check out this video first thing I do when Blair gives me and Media Car, it's opened up to windows that you see here. Then I have a file structure, Just this voter right here that I've organized all of our images and all of our files. Exactly. We need Teoh on the server. I'm gonna explain to you have got this file set up on my computer. It keeps on my desktop. The tilde son right in front of Clinton ate. All that does is the tilde sign keeps is a very top. So alphabetically is the first thing you see. So beer Easy climb. Name a sub folder inside that is session a self folder inside that is Master One master too. Order product, room view, social media vendors and video. I mean, explain to you exactly how I got these set up, Master One and master, two folders What that is. And those are the images that Blair shot on his car. So here the event is right here. We'll take all of, um, select all, drive them over to master one and drive them over to master tape. Now, what that does is master one. I don't touch again. I don't delete anything from there. I don't do any sort of editing any sort of color. Anything in Master one stays exactly from what was shot over here on the card master to master to folder is what? I'm going to it. That's what I'm going to delete the ones I don't like. I'm gonna mess with the color of the ones I like. Master To will be renamed Master Tube will be what the client ces They will never see Master one files. As you know, players. Ajay, pay shooter. So when I say raw files, I mean straight from camera, Just as they are, my clients will never see master one photos. They will Onley see Master two folders the or photo er, the product folder, ruby, social media vendors and video folders. All these are extras that air in this client folder, and basically, this is to help us organize things. The order folder is simply what it is when Adam gets out of the Sails room and they order from master to, let's just say they order 10 items. 10 pictures. Those 10 pictures will be coughing into the order folder. That way, when I order, it's an easy sweet. All I have to do is upload that whole folder. Those images are retouched, but just for a tad bit. I'm looking for stray hairs, bombs, anything like that. I'm a spin 30 minutes of 30 seconds on the images they actually order as a final touch up. I order a grab a folder, upload it to because it easy, sweet and order right from there. That saves me from picking through the entire master to folder of the ones they actually ordered. The product folder is exactly what it is, is any sort of product. It could be a graduation announcement. It could be a folio, typically, PSD. That's where I keep our in the product folder. So if I wanted to get back and change something on a graduation, that's when I misspelled a name that yesterday is gonna reside right in this product. Voter room view is exactly one of the s. When clients Indust images of their home using that sticker that you say Blair talk about in the pricing section, that's where those images will go. So when they email us or text up, that's where those images will land. In the room. You voter all their client folder that Landler Server Social Media. There's a couple of different sub categories in social media. You've got blogged images, Facebook images and four images. It's just what he is. As I'm editing these images, if I see one that's worthy for a block, I throw it in the block vote in the block folder of Social Media. If I see once that, like for Facebook, same thing for there, forum on it, some people, our own forums. If you ever have an image that you love from a session thrown in there, it just saying she from having to go back to the master to folder and hand pick out things. So as ago as I'm editing the images of the broader them into the sub categories of social media vendors, vendors is typically Onley used for weddings. So, as I said again, if I'm editing a wedding and I come across a fantastic image of the flowers, I throw it in there and send it to the florist or a cake or the dresses for a venue, anything like that that would have to eggs enders category I throw in there is editing, so I don't have to go back again to that massive voter and hand pick out the ones I want to email Facebook, whatever to the vendors. The video, which is a huge part of our business. They got several sub categories as well. Inamoto, compressed and roll footage is exactly what it is again. The animal will land in there, the compress and raw. That's typically when we're shooting with a bigger camera, things that you seem Blair do video marking with the thing that we must use in this subcategory will be. That's where the Ana Motor Lines so Hopefully that helps with a little bit of file structure on, just generally, how to set up folders. And that way you can go back and access everything. There's no guessing there's no guesswork. And, you know it helps with metadata the way that she does everything so she can just go right back, find everything is super, super easy. So again, if you don't have everything organized from the conception of when you first begin and how in the world are you gonna keep up with it on the back end? Right? Any questions about any of that that she that she did there, See if I can help you? I get what she's time. I suppose like getting everything organized before you start doing it. But do you where you said she was? The urine images also. But I guess that kind of flows in the way she said it Also, Have you guys talked about what type of right you may do? Yeah, you know, a lot of people have a really tough time with that, and they say, Well, if I shoot him, I want to make sure it's edited the way that I want edited you know, with me, Her brand is my brand. My brand is her brand. You know, we're both very much a similar style. And, you know, when we first started, we started this thing together, and we've built it all the way through together. So, you know, we both have similar characteristics of what we like, and, you know, occasionally I may go in and say, you know what? That one action that you're using ready? I'm not not really crazy about down and just say no problem. We'll find something else. But for the most part, she has 100% control to do whatever she wants. I mean, she's a woman. She's gonna do pretty much what she wants to. Anyways, I'm just kidding. I'm kidding. But no, you know, she has 100% control, and I'm not emotionally attached to my images. Like a lot of people, maybe on guy know that may sound kind of kind of bad, but, you know, I'm not emotionally attached to those images. I'm a photographer. That has to work. And I have to make money. So I don't get concerned if she erases an image that I really, really like, why did you believe that? That was one of my favorites. The best thing for me to do is to give it to her because she's way better at it than I am. So I leave it up to her, and then I go and do something that I know that I'm good at. So, yeah, let let others let other people being control. And it's not the end of the world. Another thing. The reason she stays so efficient and so quick is she sets up hot keys. That means if you want to run a certain action, you can set it up so that all you have to do is press F one or F two F three or four and then you can you can hit shift F one and that will run in action so you can assign all of your actions to ah, hot keys. They don't have to scroll through down through it, find it and hit play. We'll show you how to do a little bit of that here. We're gonna talk about choosing your files. So how do you choose your files when they're all loaded up? What are you gonna do to choose all of them. How are you gonna cold through the images? What you gonna do from there? So she was nice enough to put another video together for us. That will watch next. And this is gonna be own how to choose your files. What are you doing? But going back to hot keys? Do you can do a Google search? I'm telling you, there are nine year old kids on YouTube that know how to do way more than we do way more. So said, Just do a Google search, how to set up hot keys and Photoshopped. There'll be some nine year old kid showing you how to do it. But this next video is how to choose your images. How to get rid of ones you won't. What do you do with the ones that you do? Okay, so let's name this folder. Do exactly what ISS clowning. That being Lauren, the next one says really put in a session. Okay. It's a senior underscore year, Ma. Dead The master one images air their master two images air there. Now, here's what we would do next in their folder that we've got here, Master one master to their exactly a light. At this point, I'm merely copying the images from the car to master woollen and to master too. The next step would be to get a bridge. Enbridge. I'm going to purge call under a lot of people, call it different things. Basically, I'm getting rid of the images. I don't won't. So in this up kind of guy, wearing the stuff voter master to again. Right now, these images look just like master one. I'm gonna delete the ones adult well out of the master to folder, which is like hitting on my desktop. A lot of people will say, How did you choose you? How did you get rid of some of the ones you like? How long do you spend on it? For me? It is a very gut instinct. Another ones I like another ones that don't is very simple. It's very easy. I'll show you how quickly is to go through and get rid of the ones you don't like. In this particular session. Blair shot 229 images. I will show you how quick it iss to get rid off. Okay? Separate. Since I like that one better because I like simply because I like his exposure better now, Mr Dar, I don't like her mouth. I've been there. I like her was a little bit of a smile. Like you're serious. Were you under expires at one on this kid? All right. I like math. Closed again? All I'm doing is I'm going back and forth on these images under expires. Like that exposure like that. Look, with your math life on adult the year, like the arm up something. Get rid of this one. I don't necessarily like that position, so we're gonna go ahead and get rid of theirs. Images all like your smile on there. Like that. Exposure better. Like that angle better, Like full length. There are really like this one? No. And basically all I'm doing is I'm going through my gut instinct on what I like. What? I don't like Blair. Definitely Trust me on this. You have to have mutual trust and mutual respect for who's sharing and who is editing your images. A lot of hair blowing all like the Harz a little better You don't like exposure will notice. I like it there so it get? Not like a smile on your hand. Moved chin down there. Your girl. My I didn't find it. So what you guys are saying is straight from Blair's camera, and this is what I get to work with, which is fantastic. And then here's where you shot green screens. I'm gonna go ahead and delete out these for the moment. He'll go over that lay your own, have to move forward twice to get to that one. But you see how quickly she's editing through those. She doesn't seem to have a big emotional attachment. It's just like if you were going to pick out a shirt at a clothing store, you're not gonna You're not gonna look for that. Look though that shirt forever and ever and ever and ever and ever. Maybe you will. Maybe you're indecisive, but if you were doing it as your job, you would pick a shirt and you would roll on, just like if you had just, you know, stop in a coffee shop in the morning. Get coffee. You wouldn't sit there and contemplate for 35 minutes or what type of coffee to get. Get your coffee. Your role on right and get you coffee and roll. Same thing with this. Don't put don't second guess yourself when you're editing through your files. If you like it, keep it. If you don't like it, get rid of it. We're gonna go into a an actual editing video and she's going to show you just how she throws some some actions on how she cleans a little bit up and just make things really, really easy. So we go back to another video. Take me just a second to find it. So bear with me just one second here. Let's go back forward here. Wait. I've heard the ones that I do not want. We're going to get back to my desktop folder and you will notice that my master one folder hasn't been untouched It still. Or maybe think that saying a master to there are 41 images in there. So now I do is I run a script over all of these through portraiture. Basically what portrait area is It is a plan yin to photo shop, and it's often skin the way you like it. You can do it a whole lot. You can do it just a little bit you can do in the middle. I prefer to run this portraiture ever. Every image that Blair shoots. So how we do it? Foul scripts, Cheese run a Skrill instead of a batch. I like the way that a script Mutua sub folders again, and I will show you how to do that. So first, you have to make an action for portraiture, which is a very simple task, And I can show you that disappeared. But I got to file script image processor. I'm going to choose my desktop. Lawrence Smith, Senior master to folder open. When you do this for the first time, you're gonna have to set it just a bit. Make sure the quality is on 12 run action. Blair Phillips Photography Sing your portraiture is my action. Then you hit Run. Okay, so I'm ran all of my images. Three portraiture. And this is what the file will look like. It gives me a script. It would give me a sub folder. Today's our fortune baser non portraiture Iran. And they had portraiture applied to him. So what I'm gonna do is select all the ones that I've had. Portraiture applied to it splatter over. And what all replaced didn't just trash is for so basically what I've got here in the master to folder I have deleted the ones I don't want. I have ran portraiture over the ones that I do won't, and now they're ready to go to the edit when I had their key things that you need to know. First of all, you need to know you need to be familiar with your actions. When I have a new set of actions overthrew him, I'll pick out the ones I like. Let's just say I find a branding action that I love. I will try to own an under exposed image and over exposed image, a studio portrait now door portrait out, kind of multiple widening that lead us because if I had one action that I love old studio portrait, it may look terrible on a ring light, or it may look terrible outdoors, but it may look fantastic under exposed. So over the years I've found that what you could do is my actions. Its final was like, didn't test those actions. No, you're actions. I probably have tea and favorite actions, and I go, Teoh, and that's it. A need for Blair. Talk about branding a lot of the past few days, and it's very true. I don't want my customer to be confused with with 30 or 40 different actions that have been applied to different images. That way they know what are you just look like They had the color treatment done. They know exactly what they're going to expect coming here and not some crazy looking action that they've never seen before. On the website are Facebook during the gallery. They know what to expect because Onley use their tent. And I know there's tan inside Mt. The quickest thing that you could ever do for yourself or set up hot keys. Hot keys are the function keys like the F one F two F nine. Those teams at the top of your keyboard have set up a function at hot heat would be something to the nature of this undo. If you double click on the side function key, you choose your function key. So F three and ship. Basically, what they mean is, this is saying when I hit F three it, saying, You've got action that's used for every but shit at three is available. So you set up your function key. So the next time I run this action, all I have to do is hit, shift and F three That actually will run. Then as you go along. And as you do this home you could do with your ass clothes, I could sit here and edit an entire session, talking with someone, all the phone, probably with my eyes closed and know all about shortcut keys with my function keys. What I'm doing. So here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna edit. There's 41 images I'm gonna fly through up. I'm gonna show you. I'm not never say anything. I'm gonna flat room. I'm gonna show you exactly how quick it can be if you know your actions. If you know your got your hockey set up, here's how open up images. I go through bridge and I will make it where I could give you five of the time over. Not 1234 rows of five time. That's just like his number. And I will open him up in federal shop. I'm gonna show you a quick how quick we can edit 41 images, but no one your actions and setting up your hot keys. Okay, we get it is 5 Can I hire her way? All need ounces? Pretty much. Okay, it's 61 So in just a few short minutes, that's what it is for me to add it to breeze through and edit 41 of players images to be done. Yes. So, yes, it's amazing to see. You know, I think a lot of times we put a little too much thought into him. Now let me say this to you know, if a client wears dirty about 40 we still still go back in whether maybe a couple little tweaks will do on the final order, but those we want him to see them in a Finnish state. We don't want to see them raw from camera or in a regular jape a form. But as you saw, it's really important. My even my image is straight from camera. They were not the best images in the world, but they were pretty dang good. You know, she didn't have to go back and do a Thanh of damage repair to get him to where she can add photo shop actions to them. So with that being said, that's why you got to clean up your shooting, you know, make it count, make it stick, make a stick and then find someone other than my wife. But just like my wife that can, that can really make it happen for you. You have a question? Yes, because the you said these are presets or actions that you put together in photo shop first and then from there, seeking just kind of go in. And, yeah, it's basically have a disc of actions and we load these in our computer. You need one. We know what it's your lucky day, because because coming to create alive, you get hooked up with all kinds of cool little goodies. So we've actually got. But yeah, we load our actions or we load these actions in the computer, and then that's what we go by. It's a simple is that their preset, their pre made their pre done. All you have to do is just click on it, and it will just do all the work to your picture. It's kind of it's really like cheating, really like cheating. I think now would be a great time as well. Really want to see what you have to say, and then we'll cue the Internet and we'll see what they have to say. I just want to know. How long do you keep your files? Yeah, that's a great question. How long do we keep our files? We don't express that we're going to keep the files for any certain number of time because I don't want the liability of having to make sure that I have them. But on the average, I mean, I've got files from seven years ago. Do I need to keep them that long? Absolutely not. I would say on average it would probably good toe to keep your files for a year, you know? I mean, I don't see any need to keep him longer than that, but I say a year to year and 1/2 because storage gets expensive, gets expensive. So let's see what Mr Randy has to say. I know photographers that will sell their files afterwards and look after the one year you call the kind of Hey, you already dumped us. Do you want to buy it right? Do you do that? Yeah. We dio way do that with our weddings, especially. We don't necessarily do it with, you know, with all the files. Because I think what happens is I do such a large volume word will get around town and I'll say, Well, hey, look, just wait until, like, a year and he'll call You can buy every file for 100 bucks, so be kind of be kind of cautious of how you do that, but I think that's a great idea. We do that with sample prints with sample prints in our studio will call those clients at the end of the year and say, Hey, we can offer this print because obviously we get it such a good deal from Asian Age color lab. We can pass it on to them and still actually make money on it. So great questions and let's see what our lovely Internet viewers have to say. All right, everyone is wondering if she'd come on and do a creative left class. First of all, you go. You have a big fan club happening right now. The next question up, our from quite a few people in the chat room right now asking How can I buy those actions? What actions are those? I'm glad that they said that the we use a lot of very simple life camera actions, life camera actions. And what I've done is let me scroll forward over here back to the screen because I've put together ah, little deal for everybody. If you want them, let me scroll forward, back toe over here and check this out 20% off the entire store. So you use use this code here 20% off of everything. There's different levels of actions. There's different sets of actions, and these were the easiest to that found the use. And what I like about these is they have textures built into them as a layer mask, and you can just go in and just brush off the texture off of the part of the image that you don't want. So this is very this fits my style to a team, but you brush off all the texture and it could be clean and pretty to match any brand. So definitely check these guys out there also right on. All right. A Royal College Park photos asking What if you can't afford another person or are married Teoh Another person, for example, to do your photo shop? You got it. You gotta You gotta hit the dating scene. I mean, you gotta get out there on make it work, man. I mean, you know, that's now, you know, if you can't hire anybody, that's when you know, picking that handful of actions like my wife said, you know, picked 10 of your favorite actions that you work with and make that you own that. So you just supplying those actions to those you know, those 10 actions? I think what happens is we try and get to many different looks when really, if we just hold it back in and keep it right here, people are gonna like that. You know, you don't have to appeal to everybody but having every single look, you know, so practicing, keeping your systems consistent and simplifying it and honestly, not thinking about it too much we overthink are editing way too much mean. Just saw she did 40 something images in eight minutes completely finished. Now she's been doing it for a long time, and I give her some pretty good images to work with, but she makes me look really, really good. So you don't spend a lot of time on it, own it, practice it, shoot it, added it repetitious. Lee and your times will start to go down. They will start to go down. Yeah, but also, we have one more. Maybe one more. A few questions, if you don't mind shutting him out to represent the global audience. All right, So just to confirm and this from to nitty versus is Blair's wife deleting as she goes or just marking them? Can you re explain that there? Sure. Yeah, we are. When she loads them up and some people call it calling the images. Some people call it deleting or marking or whatever. She is actually physically deleting those images to never be seen again while she's editing. So instead of marking them, just think about it. If you're marking them, that means okay, I'm gonna sweep this pile over here, but I know I'm gonna have to come over here and do something with it later. So what we're doing is we're going ahead and sweeping them up, and we're throwing him out because I don't want to clog my mind and make me start to second guess myself. So delete it. It's done. Work with the good stuff. Okay, Cool. And then you have the others backed up just right. Exactly. If we ever need to go back to them that we can for sure. Okay. Cool. And then pro photographer and Kobe 12345 are wondering about. I mean, she was going through and calling so quickly. It was, like, completely pro of professional. But when she calls, we notice that she didn't check out 100% for focus or sharpness. And why is that? Um, it's because, uh, I'm always old kidding. Only kidding. Because I will shoot, you know, normally two or one or two of the same image, I may get a smile. I may get a a serious and honestly, though, I mean, I'm not rarely out. I'm really out of focus just because of doing it so much. And if you practice it and you're very subconscious about it, you know, I know that in my camera I set my focus selector constantly up and down, left and right, and I always set my focus selector So that falls right on the eyes And I press that button and goes, didn t it beeps and lets me know Hey, Nikon, I got night cons got your back. It's in focus. So you know, it's just by practice by lots of practice and making sure before you push that button, don't just get crazy. If you push that button, try to make it count trying to make it count.