Batch Processing

How to Build Lightroom Presets That Actually Hold Up Across a Full Shoot
Video Tutorials

How to Build Lightroom Presets That Actually Hold Up Across a Full Shoot

I have a spreadsheet. It tracks every hour I’ve saved through automation across fifteen years of post-production work. The number is sitting above 2,400 hours right now, and a significant chunk of that comes from one deceptively simple habit: building reusable Lightroom presets before I start any serious editing session. When a client sends me 300 product shots from the same studio setup, I don’t want to be dialing in the same warm tone and compressed contrast curve by hand 300 times.

Stop Exporting Images One at a Time: A Practical Guide to Lightroom Export Presets
Video Tutorials

Stop Exporting Images One at a Time: A Practical Guide to Lightroom Export Presets

There is a certain kind of pain that only photographers know. You finish editing a set of images, they look great, and then you spend the next forty-five minutes manually exporting the same files at different sizes for Instagram, your client’s website, and the print lab. Same dialog box, slightly different numbers, over and over. I spent an embarrassing amount of time doing exactly this before I finally sat down and built a proper export preset system in Lightroom.

From One Edit to Thousands: How to Build Photoshop Actions and Droplets That Actually Save Time
Video Tutorials

From One Edit to Thousands: How to Build Photoshop Actions and Droplets That Actually Save Time

I built my first Photoshop action at 26 and I have not manually repeated a task since. That is not an exaggeration - I keep a spreadsheet. Right now it sits at over 2,400 hours saved across fifteen years of studio and consultancy work. So when I came across Vicki Taufer’s segment on actions and droplets in her CreativeLive tutorial on pets and people photography, I watched it twice. Not because the concepts were new to me, but because Vicki explains the mental model behind actions in a way that finally makes the whole system click for photographers who have been avoiding it.

The Workflow Tools Actually Worth Installing (And the Ones I Quietly Uninstalled)
Workflow & Productivity

The Workflow Tools Actually Worth Installing (And the Ones I Quietly Uninstalled)

There’s a spreadsheet on my second monitor right now. It has columns for action name, date built, task type, average time saved per use, and total cumulative hours saved. I update it obsessively. The current total sits at just over 2,400 hours. That number is the reason I still evangelize automation to every photographer and retoucher I consult with, even when their eyes glaze over the moment I say the word “scripting.

Beyond Actions: How Photoshop Automation Scripts Actually Save You Hours (Not Minutes)
Workflow Automation

Beyond Actions: How Photoshop Automation Scripts Actually Save You Hours (Not Minutes)

The task that finally broke me was a crop-and-resize job. Two hundred product images, each one needing a 2000x2000px square crop, a white background fill, and an export at three different sizes for three different platforms. I did the first forty by hand before I stopped, stared at the screen, and did the math. At my current pace, this was going to eat my entire Thursday. That afternoon I learned enough JavaScript to write my first Photoshop automation script.

How I Built a Batch System That Processed 500 Product Shots in One Afternoon
Workflow Automation

How I Built a Batch System That Processed 500 Product Shots in One Afternoon

The Day I Realized Manual Processing Was Costing Me Real Money Last spring, a mid-size e-commerce client sent me 500 product images that needed the same treatment: background normalization to pure white (255/255/255), a specific shadow style, resizing to 2000x2000px at 72 DPI for web and 3000x3000px at 300 DPI for print, and export to both JPEG at 85 quality and PNG-24. Same thing. Every single file. I’ve been doing this kind of work for fifteen years, and I can tell you exactly what happens when you try to run that volume manually.

Perfectly Clear's Beautify Presets Are Doing the Portrait Work I Used to Spend Hours On
Video Tutorials

Perfectly Clear's Beautify Presets Are Doing the Portrait Work I Used to Spend Hours On

Portrait retouching is where studio time goes to die. I know this from experience. Early in my commercial work, I’d clock a solid hour on a single headshot: adjusting brush for teeth, healing tool for under-eye circles, manual skin smoothing pass, back and forth until the art director finally signed off. Multiply that by a hundred frames from a branding shoot and you understand why I’ve spent a significant portion of my career building systems to avoid repeating myself.

Why Your Photoshop Presets Are Probably Undermining Your Own Workflow
Workflow Optimization

Why Your Photoshop Presets Are Probably Undermining Your Own Workflow

The first time I built a Photoshop action, I was 26, working a late shift at a studio in the West Loop, and I had just spent four hours manually resizing and sharpening 80 product images for a catalog client. Same crop. Same output size. Same sharpening radius. Eighty times. By image 60, I wasn’t even seeing the photos anymore, just clicking through the motions like a machine pretending to be a person.

How to Record Photoshop Actions from Scratch (And Finally Stop Forgetting Your Own Techniques)
Video Tutorials

How to Record Photoshop Actions from Scratch (And Finally Stop Forgetting Your Own Techniques)

There’s a specific kind of frustration that hits when you’ve developed a technique you genuinely love, used it a dozen times, and then six weeks later you’re staring at a blank canvas trying to reconstruct it from memory. That used to happen to me constantly in my early studio years. I’d nail a color treatment on a campaign, close the file, and by the next job, half the steps were gone.

The Workflow Stack I Actually Use: Honest Notes from 15 Years of Studio Post-Production
Workflow & Productivity

The Workflow Stack I Actually Use: Honest Notes from 15 Years of Studio Post-Production

The first time I spent an entire day cropping and resizing the same image 200 times, I wasn’t frustrated. I was embarrassed. I had been working in commercial photography studios for years at that point, surrounded by people who talked about efficiency constantly, and there I was, manually typing pixel dimensions into the Image Size dialog like it was 1997. That afternoon I went home and learned just enough Photoshop scripting to make sure it never happened again.

The Workflow Stack I Actually Use After 15 Years in Commercial Post-Production
Workflow & Productivity

The Workflow Stack I Actually Use After 15 Years in Commercial Post-Production

There’s a specific kind of misery that comes from doing the same Photoshop task 200 times in a row. I know this because I lived it, about nine years ago, when a client handed me a folder of 200 product images that all needed the same crop, resize, and export sequence. I did the first thirty by hand before something in my brain snapped. I spent the rest of that day learning how to script the whole thing.

How to Record a Photoshop Action and Batch Process an Entire Folder of Images
Video Tutorials

How to Record a Photoshop Action and Batch Process an Entire Folder of Images

I built my first Photoshop Action at 26 and I have not manually repeated a multi-step edit since. That sounds like an exaggeration but I track this stuff obsessively, and the number currently sits at over 2,400 hours saved across my career. So when someone asks me why Actions are worth learning, I don’t give them a philosophical answer. I give them a number. The specific workflow I want to walk you through today comes from a tutorial by Aaron Nace over at PHLEARN.