Digital photography has given us many advantages over the days of film but one less desirable attribute in my opinion is that we now have to do the job that our printing lab would have taken care of back then. Gone are the days of shooting a shed load of film and handing it over to our friendly lab for them to process and then print complete with colour corrections, dodging and burning etc. That job is now firmly back in the hands of the photographer.
Whether you’re a busy studio photographer, a weekend wedding shooter or a keen hobbyist, the chances are you’re getting to spend a heap load of time stuck in front of your monitor editing images, colour grading, removing blemishes, softening skin and a whole heap of other stuff. Don’t get me wrong, in my early days of digital I loved nothing more than sitting down to a good editing session and getting creative with my images. However, the busier I got the more of a chore it became so I started to look at how I could save time on the more tedious repetitive parts of the editing process. I created an action that would semi-automate parts of the process for me and boy did it begin to save me some time! It still allows me to have all the manual input I need but it takes a lot of the drudgery out of the process. Without realising it I had created a workflow. Even though I now edit less and less as I employ an image editor for most of my studio client shoots, I still use the same workflow years after I first created it.
I’m not going to preach about how this workflow is the be all and end all of all workflows as every photographer shoots in a different style and edits in a different way. But what I will say is that the workflow I’m showing you here works for me and if you want to go ahead and try it yourself I’ve made the action available to download for members. The action will take you through the process of creating a master file with all the blemishes removed, colour corrected, skin softened. Once done you can go ahead and use this master file to create any number of versions with added filters, Lightroom presets or any other weird and wonderful effects you may desire.
Hopefully you’ll agree that once you get used to using this workflow you’ll have even more time on your hands…to do even more editing 🙂 Here’s where you can download it: My Downloadable Workflow Action .
Photoshop Workflow – A Faster Way To Edit
