Batch Processing

Five Photoshop Plugins I've Actually Used on Deadline (And Two I Quietly Uninstalled)
Plugin Reviews

Five Photoshop Plugins I've Actually Used on Deadline (And Two I Quietly Uninstalled)

Last October I was three hours into a 200-image product delivery for a Chicago ad agency when their art director called to say the background color needed to shift across the entire batch. Not a huge ask, except I’d already masked and composited every single shot onto a warm gray that was now the wrong warm gray. Without the adjustment layer structure I’d baked into my action set, that call would have ended my afternoon.

Beyond Record and Play: How Automation Scripts Actually Transform Photoshop Workflows
Workflow Automation

Beyond Record and Play: How Automation Scripts Actually Transform Photoshop Workflows

The job that broke me was a Tuesday in February, maybe eight years into my career. I had 200 product images that all needed the same crop, the same canvas resize, and a filename with a specific SKU prefix. Eight hours later, I had finished them. Eight hours of clicking the same five buttons, in the same order, 200 times. I went home, opened my laptop, and spent the next four hours learning JavaScript for Photoshop.

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

A few years back, a mid-size e-commerce client called me on a Thursday afternoon with a problem. They had 500 product images, a Monday deadline, and a retoucher who’d just quit. The files needed background removal, color correction to match their brand standard (a very specific warm neutral, roughly 245/238/228 in RGB), resizing to four different output dimensions, and sharpening optimized for web. Four distinct operations, 500 images, 72 hours.

Beyond Actions: How Automation Scripts Actually Work in Photoshop (And Why the Difference Matters)
Workflow Automation

Beyond Actions: How Automation Scripts Actually Work in Photoshop (And Why the Difference Matters)

The job that broke me was 200 product images, all needing the same crop-and-resize sequence for a client’s e-commerce catalog. I sat there for six hours clicking the same four menu items in the same order, watching my afternoon dissolve into a kind of professional purgatory. By image 140, I made myself a deal: I would spend whatever time it took that weekend to make sure this never happened again.

What CLUTs Actually Do to Your Pixels (And Why Your Color Grades Keep Falling Apart)
Color Grading

What CLUTs Actually Do to Your Pixels (And Why Your Color Grades Keep Falling Apart)

Last spring I was onboarding a new e-commerce client, a mid-size apparel brand, and their in-house retoucher handed me a folder of 300 product images that had already been “color graded.” Every single one looked different. Same white background, same product line, same photographer. Three hundred shots, and the whites ranged from warm cream to cool blue-grey depending on which mood the retoucher had been in that week. When I asked what process they were using, the answer was: adjustment layers, applied manually, by eye, one image at a time.

Why Your Photoshop Presets Are Probably Working Against You (And How to Fix That)
Workflow Optimization

Why Your Photoshop Presets Are Probably Working Against You (And How to Fix That)

There’s a file on my desktop called “DO NOT USE - OLD PRESETS GRAVEYARD.” It contains 47 presets I built between 2009 and 2016 that I eventually stopped trusting, each one a small monument to a lesson I learned the hard way. A sharpening preset that looked perfect on my old 27-inch iMac and then destroyed edge detail on every asset I sent to a client’s retoucher in New York. A batch-resize action that worked flawlessly on JPEGs and silently corrupted embedded ICC profiles in TIFFs.

The Plugin Tax: How to Audit What You're Actually Paying For in Your Photoshop Workflow
Plugin Reviews

The Plugin Tax: How to Audit What You're Actually Paying For in Your Photoshop Workflow

Last month I sat down to renew my software subscriptions and realized I was paying for eleven separate Photoshop plugins. Eleven. Some of them I hadn’t opened since the previous winter. I run a post-production consultancy serving ad agencies and e-commerce brands, and somewhere between client deadlines and chasing invoices, my plugin stack had turned into a subscription graveyard. So I did what I do with most problems: I built a spreadsheet, and I got honest.

Photoshop Droplets: The Batch Processing Tool You're Probably Ignoring
Workflow & Automation

Photoshop Droplets: The Batch Processing Tool You're Probably Ignoring

A few years back, I had a Monday morning that I still think about. An e-commerce client needed 500 product images resized, sharpened, and exported to three different specs before end of business. It was the kind of job that makes a less-organized person stare at the ceiling. I had a batch system I’d built the previous weekend, pointed a Droplet at a folder, walked away to get coffee, and came back to 1,500 finished files sitting neatly in color-coded output folders.

Why Your Photoshop Export Settings Are Quietly Killing Your Delivery Speed
Workflow Optimization

Why Your Photoshop Export Settings Are Quietly Killing Your Delivery Speed

There’s a particular kind of frustration that comes from finishing a retouching job and then spending forty minutes exporting it. The creative work is done. The client is waiting. And you’re sitting there clicking through Save for Web dialogs like it’s 2009, manually typing in filenames, second-guessing your JPEG quality slider every single time. I’ve been doing commercial post-production for fifteen years. I’ve processed product shots for e-commerce catalogues, delivered layered comps to ad agencies, and built batch systems for studios running thousands of files a month.

The Workflow Tools Actually Worth Installing (After 15 Years of Testing Everything)
Workflow & Productivity

The Workflow Tools Actually Worth Installing (After 15 Years of Testing Everything)

There’s a specific kind of frustration that hits around hour three of doing the same task manually. I know it well. Early in my career, I spent an entire day cropping and resizing 200 product images by hand, one file at a time, clicking through the same six steps over and over. By 4pm I was practically catatonic. By 4:30, I was learning how to write my first Photoshop action. I haven’t manually repeated a task like that since.

The Workflow Tools That Actually Earn Their Keep (And the Ones I Stopped Using)
Workflow & Automation

The Workflow Tools That Actually Earn Their Keep (And the Ones I Stopped Using)

I learned to script because I spent an entire day doing the same crop-and-resize operation 200 times. Not exaggerating. It was a Tuesday in 2009, I was working in a commercial studio, and by hour six I had developed a genuine personal grievance against the rectangular marquee tool. The next morning I sat down and learned enough JavaScript to build an action sequence that handled the whole job in about four minutes.

Plugin Fatigue Is Real: How I Test Every Photoshop Tool Before It Touches a Client File
Plugin Reviews

Plugin Fatigue Is Real: How I Test Every Photoshop Tool Before It Touches a Client File

Last spring I had a client send over 340 product shots that needed background replacement, color grading, and output to four different size specs. The job had a 48-hour turnaround. My existing stack handled it. But during the process I kept seeing ads for a new AI masking plugin that promised to cut selection time by “up to 70%.” I nearly bought it mid-job, which would have been catastrophic. Instead I wrote it down, finished the work, and tested the plugin properly over the following week.