When I found out that Trey Ratcliff (of Stuck in Customs) was releasing a book about workflow, I was excited for a couple reasons. First, I’m kind of a workflow geek. I love reading about others’ workflows in hopes of improving my own. Secondly, Trey has a proven record in producing a large volume of high-quality work. He has, as they say, chops.
Trey’s new Digital Workflow for Photographers eBook is a good walkthrough of a modern digital photography workflow. My favorite part of the book is the beginning, where instead of diving right into technical details, the author explores a bit of the philosophy, mindset, and attitudes that will lead to a successful workflow experience. As he notes, if you go into your workflow looking at it as a tedious, complicated chore, you’re going to be a lot less effective than someone who looks at it in a more positive light.
After getting past the mental issues of an effective workflow, the book starts by talking about storage; one needs to have the files physically in order before looking at processing. Trey is an Adobe Photoshop Lightroom and Bridge user; these are the programs in the screenshots in the book. His detailed workflow steps take care of filtering images based on quality, keeping track of the images’ status with regards to what has or hasn’t been done, processing the photos, and how and where to save the final output of your work.
The book is visually stunning. It’s obvious that a lot of effort went into the design, and if this is a “how to” or set of instructions, I think it might be the prettiest set of instructions I’ve ever seen.
There are two versions of his book. The basic version (currently $15.99) contains all of the material described thus far. For only $4 more, the reader can get a version with Trey’s bonus section, which increases the book by several pages and goes into the specifics of Trey’s workflow for managing his HDR photography including interactions between the various applications and how he manages the numerous files involved throughout the HDR process.
Overall I can recommend the book for someone looking for a good walkthrough of a solid digital photo workflow. The one downside would be that some of the steps are very tailored to Adobe Photoshop Lightroom; I’m sure the concepts would apply to any file management system but some of his power tips make use of Lightroom features. The book is reasonably priced, an easy read, and full of tips and tricks to better manage digital photos from the time they arrive on your computer through publication.
Buy Trey Ratcliff’s Digital Workflow for Photographers book.
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