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Workflow is yours costing cash???? - part 6 of 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Published 01/11/2004

TIP 5 Think about data security if you use a large (e.g. 4GB) card. Lose that card and you lose the whole wedding. In engineering terms you build in more redundancy to your workflow by using 500-640MB cards each representing about a film in old money, less if you shot with a larger chip camera.

TIP 6 If you have to use Auto Levels (or any of its variants) make an Action to create an Adjustment Layer. The review a bunch of images tiled on screen together and any goofy ones will stand out. All you need do then is open the Layers Palette double click the Adjustment layer and correct that file. This disobeys the rule of getting it bang on first time but is an efficient way of getting most of your files close with a fall back position.

TIP 7 If Auto levelling produces barren highlights without any ink on them, double click the eyedropper for the highlight and set the value to 250RGB points. This is force the ink jet to put a very small amount of ink down removing the barren patches. You can do the same thing with your shadows to set your maximum black at a level that will differentiate detail.

TIP 8 Try always to make a Source and Destination Folder on your desktop and COPY files into the source when using actions. Also make the action send the processed file to the Destination Folder. Following this protocol means that if you goof on your making up the Action and it writes back the file you do not lose your original. Also all actions will by default use these two folders, it's an extra simplification to your workflow.

TIP 9 As soon as you have the data secured and archived, format all your Compact Flash cards. At your next wedding you then KNOW that a card with images on is one you have shot that day. Number each card and have a slot in your storage wallet, identically numbered; at the shoot, turn the used cards over when you put them back so you can see where you are up to

After recent attempts to speed up the workflow indicated in the last article, I have recently purchased a firewire card reader, albeit a bit more expensive than Mikes measly £7, but extremely effective.

You may recall my download times being in the region of 13mins for a 512MB card. This has significantly been reduced to just under 3mins chopping a whopping 50 minutes off waiting to transfer them to the computer. Equate the time saving to money any I'm £50 better off!!

You may also recall that album design takes up a fair old chunk of time. Even with some cute action and batch processes it still took me the best part of 4hours to produce a typical album without interruption. How often does that happen? Two products have become available to me, which the manufacturers claim provide easy access to quick album design. The first programme is an Epson product, which was provided for review purposes. The second program was a product recommended to me by Bambi Cantrell during her recent visit. The proof of the pudding...as they say.

Epson Album Maker

This program requires Epson Page Proofer or EPPlayout to be installed prior to running Album Maker .These products were not provided on our demonstration copy and therefore we have had to defer the testing.

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1st Published 01/11/2004
last update 09/12/2022 15:00:27

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