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Segment 19 - Workflow & Post-Production Overview

we are going to start with workflow. I think we covered this a little bit yesterday, but I just thought it was such an important topic on most people think editing is the only workflow they have to do. But really, there's a whole lot more than just taking the photo and editing the photos. So so that's what we're gonna talk about. Eso First. You have the initial phone call, which we talked about, right? Make that initial connection that starts that relationship. Talk to them instead of the email them. It's a personal touch. It will make them feel comfortable already and start that relationship with you. The next step is to send them You're welcome guide, which I do online, which is what that picture is. Plus, you're available dates so that they can, you know, then see the information that you gave them in the phone call in print. I guess, if you will on DSI their their choices for dates and go ahead and get that in their heads that they can email you back with that after you get that em...

ail back from them saying Yes, I want a book or or however they contact you back and say I want this date Then that's at the point where Abbottston that senior questionnaire, which is a great way to start to get to know them even more on Ben. After you get that, we send out the welcome packet, which we talked about yesterday as well. But it has the what to wear guide appointment reminder card, maybe the discount card to a local boutique. A checklist of things that can do. Friar Teoh, you know, their session. Anything you can think that's a personal touch and there may be a gift. Chapstick. I think you can get chapstick with your logo on it. Or, you know something fun like that. Anything you can do like that to put in that welcome packet will be awesome. I also feel that envelope with some confetti or glitter or something like that, which would be fun to open up and see. So that's a good idea. Then you have your wardrobe consultation, which is your chance to further get to know them, help them with what they're gonna wear, plan out the session and then the email icon there is for you to remind them or send them a quick note saying I can't wait to your session. It's, you know, tomorrow or next week or whenever really get them excited about it. Let them know you're thinking about them and remind them of the time where to meet you and all that good stuff. Maybe you can put in their reminder with what you talked about the wardrobe consultation. So that's great. Then obviously, you have your shoot, Andi. Then you're gonna also come home and coal and edit images, which is what we are going to talk about here. Next on, then, obviously, after that, you're gonna have your order session and then you're going to deliver their products or send them a thank you note on then continue that relationship by keeping up with them through social media. May be telling him Happy birthday on their birthday, you know, telling him good luck in college when they go off to college, go to their graduation. I went to all mine clients graduation, so it was important for me to be there for them. Eso little things like that can really keep you in their minds and really make them want Teoh share with their friends because you know, I'm their friend now because I've done all this and they know I care about them. And so they a little more inclined to say, Oh, my God, you have to use my photographer because I mean, are you kidding? She came to my graduation, you know, of any night. So that is important. Anything you could do after the fact. So that's just a quick, you know, visual for the entire process of start to finish inquiry, Teoh, Order session and beyond. So I thought that was important just because that is part of your workflow as well as editing. Okay, so let's get into editing. What is the purpose of editing to me? The purpose is to enhance, not fix. I know. When I first started, I was certainly using Photoshopped to cover up a whole bunch of stuff that was not right. It's funny because actually knew how to use photo shop before I ever picked a camera. Because I used to do invitations and I used photo shop for that, which is weird because it's not what better shop is designed for her. But that's what I used it for. I'm sure illustrator or something like that would been a better choice, but but actually was using fighter shop elements because I had it. So I kind of knew that stuff. Also, when I 1st 1st started, thought that the only way to it it was an action just hit play in. That's a beautiful image right on. But I know I know, right? Terrible. But I don't know any better. I mean, I was learning. I was teaching myself I was reading all about these actions. Have action to get this action. You kind of that Action ID like eight million actions. And now I'm like, Oh, I used to That's it. That's all used. But I also like to think of it as you know, what you think of makeup just in daily use is as a woman, makeup is supposed to enhance your beauty and not cover up your beauty or not make you look completely different. So I think of editing the same way it is supposed to enhance your photos and pull out the style that you're trying to create but not make them look different. You know, too much skin softening can look odd or too much stuff on the eyes can look less like they really look. So it is just for enhancement and not fixing per se. Make sure you get it right in camera so that there's very little editing. I think you guys might even be surprised at how little oven editing process actually have because I want to keep it as quick as possible. Time is money. I don't want to spend a lot of time behind my camera behind my computer as much as possible. And so getting it right in camera helps me do that. I don't have to, you know, fix this, That and the other taking your time when you're setting up a shot. I think I mentioned that on the roof earlier. Pulling that hair out of there face making sure, you know, if it doesn't look right, don't take the shot because you're never gonna photoshopped out that poll coming out of her head. So move. You move. It's better to do that until, you know, tell your years senior that Hey, you know what? Let me move or you move or whatever, because you're not gonna want to do that in, um, photo shop. If you can help it next, it should be a reflection of you. Bring enough said this all day yet today and yesterday. Everything you do should be a reflection of who you are and what kind of client you're trying to attract. So you're editing should be no different. You know, we mentioned this a little bit yesterday with, like, if you're a black and white imagery type person or if you're a vintage type person, you're editing style. Should fit your style, period. Um, your photographic style. So you don't feel like you have to do the trendy thing. Do what's right for you and your style. I simply edit minding color. And that's what I showed my clients and I don't ever change it in black and white. I never put a matte finish on there. I never do a vintage. I never do any of that stuff on the rare occasion that something just strikes me is vintage. Then, yeah, maybe I will. But for the most part, my editing is very consistent and cohesive in the same on almost every single image. So that's important on the news action. Sparingly, I think actions air great if you know why you're using them and really, you know how to use it without the action. To me, that's, you know, it's supposed to only speed up your process, not necessarily change your image. Eso pick actions that help you maybe speed up the process but don't like cover up your image. Change your image drastically or, if you do use an action, know how you can maybe take the capacity down or things like that. So just don't fill it up with tons and tons of actions, just like I used to do when I was first starting and thought that was only week at it. Okay, so again, let's go back to determining your style, because this really takes effect in editing. Are you brightened? Colorful Ari Vintage your moody? Are you, you know, light an area. I think Angela said something about maybe, like in the light and airy style. So she needs to stick to Annette editing process that will give her that light and airy style. Maybe you don't have a lot of blacks in your image, because, right, because the light and airy style would not have a lot of contrast really probably doesn't have a lot of blacks. And there you're not probably using a soft light layer or multiply layer things like that that would give it more contrast. You want it to be light and airy and really play up that look so determined that so that you can get your editing workflow down to a science and you can do get it done. You know, main and don't get me wrong. We all look at stuff. We see stuff we think that's cool, but don't like crazy change what you're doing. Stick to the general workflow and steps and then you know, if the rare occasion comes where you have a nim ege that really warrants a certain look, do it. And don't be afraid to do that. Just make sure for the majority of it, your clients know what they're gonna get and what they can expect for me. So all of your portfolio should be very consistent. As far editing, you shouldn't really be all over the board. You shouldn't have a you know, a selective colored image in a does that anymore. You know, like you don't want one of those in the black and why? And then a bright and colorful and then the light and airy and then a vintage. Because then they're going to start to think they have to get all of those in their packaging. And then that's a whole lot more editing for you. So determined your style. Yeah. And then are you fashion inspired? Because maybe you're editing Takes on little more of an edge. Just anything you can do to determine that style. Okay, so editing steps The first step is adjustments. I shoot and raw So my images open up in camera, roll on dso I'm gonna make some slight adjustments in there. Things like exposure. You know, maybe I might pull that day on if I ever exposed to much temperature white balance those things you can use your sliders and just tweak again. You getting it right in camera. You're not sliding those things too much, But there still could be some tweaks you can do here and there. If you want to add more contrast, you could slide the contrast slide over again. It depends on your style. But that is the first step. I open mine in camera roll. I'm going through and making a a few tiny adjustments. And then I'm going to open in photo shop. So then the next up, once it's a photo shop, is the cleanup on. By that, I mean, you know, if for some reason I didn't notice the poll going through her head, and I have to take that out or if for some reason there was an immovable object and I just had to have that shot but that kind of thing blemishes. This is the point where I take those out under eye circles. Sometimes that happens, and you want to take those out stray hairs. You know, as much as you try to set up the shot, you want to move that hair every now and then. There's a little one that creeps in there, and you can't see it from where you are shooting to make sure that you take that out in this this part of the process, um, you can smooth their skin. Be wary of that because you want to see that they have really skin. You don't want it to be completely covered up on fake looking, so just, you know, start to look at your editing process and you'll get a feel for what's right. What's wrong? Don't be too heavy handed on that on Ben. I do use a sharpened de fog action, so that's what that is. Of course, you can goto filter on sharpened mask and do it that way, but that that particular action, where is what I wanted to do? And it's quick and easy, So that's why I use that one case. And then the third step is to add your style. So you've got a clean image. Now you've got all the things you wanted out of it. You've got, you know, blemishes gone. You've got all that stuff. So now is where you add your player of your style of your color prop person. You would add color at this point. If you are, you know, wanting a lot more contrast or stuff like that. You would add that at the style. If you are black and white, you know, imagery person, then you would turn it to black and white. At this point vintage, you might add your vintage effects to it. You might add a mat layer to it because that's what helps make you make your image vintage or whatever. That's when you add that. So anything you want to add to your imagery is after you've done the cleanup and the adjustments and all that. Okay, just a little slide here that talks about the camera roll adjustments. Aziz. You can see this is a Nim ege in camera roll, and there's all the sliders right there so you can see that I can pull down the exposure. I can pull up the temperature. You know, maybe I want to pull up the brightness or pulled down the brightness clarity. I usually pull that up just a little bit. Make sure it's, you know, a clear picture, vibrance and saturation I don't typically touch. That's obviously something you can slide to adjust to taste Thea. Other thing about editing is there are a 1,000,000 different ways to edit. There are so many different ways. I'm sure that the way I do it, there's probably 500 other ways to achieve that same look different ways so, you know, pick out what way works best for you. I know one time I was teaching, editing, and I don't tend to use the shortcuts I'm pretty fast with my mouth, and somebody was like, Oh, you know, there's a shortcut like, yeah, I know that I know what they are. I just to me it's quicker to do it this way. So it's what you get used to, and it's your taste is your style. So you know, just like you would season salt on food, you have your own amount. That's how much photo shop you should do. So anyway, So watch your history, Graham, in this part, because you can see if you've clipped you know, too many whites or too many blacks. You want a nice bell curve if you if that's your your weight, it it s so I don't mind some clipping over here as long as it's not on her face. If it is, I'm gonna pull it down because I don't want any skin really clipped a whole lot. I look at that, Andi, just make my Justin adjustments accordingly. A lot of times it takes time. You know, the more you edit, the more you get comfortable, the more you know how to do it, the more you get in your groove and you can. You really get that consistent workflow. There's a lot of experimentation in the beginning and trying new things, and I'd highly recommend that until you figure out okay, this is the one I like, where this is the process I like, Um, so there's favorite actions. Like I say, I usually only use about two actions. Flora Bella has some beautiful actions, but only really use their sharpened de fog action. So that is one action I use. And then, if you're looking for a skin softening action or way to do some retouching of the skin, coffee shop Powder room is a free action that you can download, and it does a great job of skin softening, and it actually has a layer for I touch up. It actually has a whiten teeth touch up player. I don't really use that portion, but it has that on. And then it actually has another layer for the whites of your eyes. If you wanted to mess with that, I try not to mess with eyes too much, but it's there. It was one of the very first actions I found back years and years ago when I was at my mother in law's house Googling photo photography and trying to figure it out. And I've had it ever since then. So because it's free, I think it's a great action for what it is. You can make a donation. She has tons of other actions on her website. So it's always nice to do that because she's providing this for for anybody and everybody. So But I do. I do like that one. OK, here's shortcuts and again, I don't always use them. I do use the brackets to make my brush smaller and larger. That is one shortcut I use, but for the most part I use my mouth. So it's just what you get used to command Z is undo Command J is duplicate layer Command D is de select command. B is brush, so all of those things will help you speed up the process if it comes easy for you. But do whatever is comfortable for you because that's that's, you know, it's your editing. Okay, so let's end it, woo. Okay, so I need to switch over to the computer so we can show some editing here. Um, you know, just a sec. Do all your own editing. Do you ever send out for a batch processing or what do you recommend for people? Yeah, I do my own always. I do think if you aren't as much of a control, because I am that you can let that process go. I think that's also I know there's a great number of places that do editing and actually get emails all the time from those type places. You know, we have editing services. Are you interested or whatever it is, you know, I feel like for for business purposes, anything you can outsource is a great idea. Make sure you have, you know that in your budget to do. But for me, it's just, I think it's a control thing more than anything else on Ben, of course, there's light room, which I know is probably faster, and you can batch edit and I get it. But it's just not what I learned on, and it's just easier for me than I don't have time to take the time to actually learn it. I'm sure if I ever could take a day to learn light room, I might actually switch over. But like I say, I'm just dizzy. And I know I can do this, really, You know, somewhat fast, and I'm done. But I do know like I own like, room. I just don't necessarily ever use it. Well, we have a few classes way could hook you up with a guy Need one, because I'm sure I'm quite certain it would make my life easier. But again, when you don't have time to make your life easier way, do what we do. If it works, don't. Exactly. Exactly so. But yeah. I mean, like, I say, if you can do light room or if you can If you can do an outsourcing of the editing, um, go for it. Anything that you may not be great at, you can totally outsource. I mean, I hate accounting, so I definitely outsource that. Who wants to do numbers? Me