digital workflow: final files, final installment
This is it, the final chapter of the digital workflow series. Today we finalize our files and talk about how we deliver them to our client.
When we left off last week, our files had been completed in the working stage, saved as layered psd files. All the retouching and color-correcting had been done to the files at full resolution and they were saved with all psd layers intact. If we ever have to make minor tweaks or output the files for a different purpose, we can return to these working files and quickly access the various layers in order to make these changes. The multiple layers provide a “road map” for the changes we made so we’re able to jump in at any point and make tweaks.
This is a great opportunity to show you a pretty extreme example of why we save these layered files (photos below). We photograph bathrooms for one of our clients and sometimes the bathrooms are tiny. In the old days we’d figure out how to hide lights and create as much drama as possible in the camera. Now, because of time and space, that is largely done in Photoshop.
With the art director sitting in a chair next to Bob, my business partner, they go over the image, every detail, making changes to localized regions. This can result in dozens of masks and adjustment layers (a total of 38 layers were used in the example below) to get the desired effect. By saving the layers we can easily fine tune any of the tweaks made if the art director changes their mind. Yes, I’m sure it looks extreme (it does to me), but keeping up with art directors and the approval process means being able to go forward and backward at the same time on occasion. Bob had to scramble on this one with the art director here in the studio, then they phoned in later with additional changes (excuse the color cast - screen capture and many generations, hopefully you get the idea).
When everything is finally through the approval process our client is ready for their final files. If the final images are going to an ad agency who fully understands how to handle the digital files, we usually flatten the psd files, apply sharpening and save them as Adobe 1998 RGB TIFF files. The agency then has a “master RGB TIFF” file and they will know what to do with it as far as resizing and converting for their particular purpose.
If we’re working for an in-house corporate design agency or client direct, we like to control the quality and output as far along into the process as we can. Our goal is to provide them with files corrected for distortion, sized perfectly for their needs, with the appropriate color space, final sharpening and the correct color profile applied for their particular printer or end use. If we do all of these things then the files should reproduce perfectly for them. This kind of attention to detail is why clients appreciate us and see the quality and care we put into our photo services.
Many times I’ve mentioned our color-managed workflow. That’s what allows us to control the color of our images for final reproduction. It’s a subject we’ll explore later but it’s not an easy one to explain. Don’t worry, though, we’ll get to it. For now, though, I’d like to describe one of the benefits of being able to control our color in this way. Once we have a final file ready for delivery we print it on our Epson inkjet printer using our custom printer profile created for the particular paper it’s printed on (we use a variety of papers for different purposes). We provide this to the client as a guide print that they can give to their commercial printer, showing them the quality of the image and the way it should reproduce.
One of the biggest obstacles we face is providing a carefully crafted file, ready for reproduction, and then someone after us views it on their uncalibrated monitor and starts yanking the curves “so it looks good”. Because their setup is less than ideal they may throw out our attention to detail, effectively undoing much of the careful work we’ve done.The furnishing of a guide print protects us in this instance and also helps the commercial printer get things back where they belong, if necessary.
As for how our clients receive these final digital files, most often we post them online for them to download via FTP. A single image may be 100 MB so they’re too large to email (though every day someone requests this). We used to always burn a CD or DVD and and deliver the disk of images by courier. We still do that for large numbers of files but usually FTP is used. Our normal delivery procedure is as follows:
- We put the image files in a folder that is then compressed using the zip capability in Mac OS X. On the Windows platform, Winzip would be used. Stuffit used to be the standard compression method for Mac but Windows users seemed to encounter problems so zip is pretty much standard for us.
- We then upload the zipped file to our server into a password protected client folder. Each client has their own folder and unique username and password that we send to them by email. I know a few commercial photographers and agencies that
really like yousendit.com for ease of use and security when transferring files up to 2 GB.
Then our clients download the file and, hey, the job is delivered!
It’s time to put the final files into the folder we created on the desktop and back up both the working and final files on both DVD and on a hard drive dedicated to backup. We back both versions up so that if a client loses something (and they do) we can easily pull the final and send it to them. Or, if they need tweaks done beforehand, we have the working file available for that. Yes, it’s a lot of files and a lot of backing up. But time is money and this saves us so much time on the back end that, if something is needed, it’s worth the extra investment on the front end.
Speaking of calibrated monitors, what’s your choice of hardware in Daylight Photo?
Do you exclusively use S-IPS LCD panels? Have some oldie but goldie LaCie ElectronBlue CRTs?
What are your calibration parameters? (white, gamma, etc)
At the moment we’re still using a trio of the LaCie ElectronBlue CRTs for color critical work. My business partner, Bob, really controls our post-production department and tells me that the lower end LCDs aren’t quite up to snuff with the LaCies. With quality LCDs running around $1800 and some life left in the LaCies, we’ll keep ‘em around for awhile. If we can go another year with them I’ll be happy.
We’ve settled on 6500k for white balance, it seems to be the general recommendation from many experts. It falls in the middle of the spectrum and provides a good compromise for the various outputs we need. Gamma is set to 2.2, again, based on the recommendations of many experts. Since we’re Mac-based we used the native 1.8 gamma until a couple years ago, when it was pointed out that banding may occur on the monitor that isn’t actually in the file. No complaints with 2.2.
I want to get Bob to do a sit-down chat with me on this subject and we’ll tape it and post it sometime in the future. He’s a wealth of information and color management seems to be a hard concept to grasp for many.
So the shot above was lit with only over head light and a flash unit attached to the shower head? I hope there will be a video in the future about lighting bathrooms, kitchens, rooms.
Oh, and another question. When you zip up the files for delivery, do they loose quality due to compression? I’ve always been wary of zipping my image files for the fear of image corruption.
It’s interesting how the lack of widespread digital calibration means that a hardcopy print is still the standard reference.
I’d definitely like to hear about color management in a future post; particularly how it can improve final print, digital, and web products.
You know, I had to remind myself of how we lit the above bathroom, Mike. 70% of it was probably existing light with just a little strobe fill (with CTO gel) bounced into the ceiling in the extreme corner to camera left. The biggest obstacle here is the glass door and shiny metal door frame. We do additional shots with available lights off and the strobe moved around so that every element appears clean in a capture. I’m sure we used a white card to reflect into the metal frame for a smooth highlight. Then the clean elements are assembled into the overall exposure in Photoshop. It’s really the easiest, most cost-effective way to handle a tiny area like this.
As for zip files, we’ve never had a problem with corruption during delivery (knock on wood). The really interesting thing is that we have had corruption problems with TIFF and PSD files when sending via FTP , but no reported problems with the zips. Go figure but that’s our experience. The zip files are also convenient, the images can all be downloaded as one file when zipped inside a folder. Sending individual files necessitates individual (multiple) downloads.
It’s pretty sad, Matthew, that our clients aren’t all on board with color management. We work with designers whose monitors face large picture windows and they change the image on-screen to match what the weather is doing outside. There are stories.
In the old days we at least had a transparency that traveled with the job and the printer could see the photographer’s intent. The guide print pretty much serves that purpose.
Interesting. How often do you have a client sitting over your shoulder while you do the editting? I would have thought most of that would be handled via email or telephone.
I imagine having the client there can be good or terrible: instant feedback and being plugged directly into the change process really would deliver what they want, and give them a sense of ownership in the result… also I imagine you do a lot of silly pixel-by-pixel “corrections” that would otherwise be unnecessary.
Thanks for the great review of workflow. I can see real benefits to your process I have often had to go back after losing an edited image and remember all the tweaks I did to create perfect it. (it was much worse before I learned about layers too!)
About having clients present while editing (especially if they are the ones paying the bills!) I HATE IT. They NEVER seem to value your skills and the better you are at your work the simpler you make it seem and the less they value you. So I end up arguing and nitpicking over bills and in in one case I ended up giving them the files, copy, line art and photos (prints) and saying “You do it on your machine with your software and your knowledge…. Goodbye!”.
Maybe Bob should teach us how to maintain our cool and how to deal with clients backseat driving. That would be useful!
Kind regards
It’s not often we have the client in while working on files. In this case, though, they were searching for a new style and wanted to be “hands on”. Once we find the style they’re looking for they generally leave us to do our job on later images.
Mark, you really hit on something there about the client thinking things are easy because you’re good at what you do. I handed my camera to a really difficult art director once and walked away to talk to the end-client. I told him I wasn’t sure what he wanted so would he please show me. After five minutes I was back in control. Believe me, that’s not in my nature but I was provoked.
As for maintaining cool, Bob is the essence of cool in front of the client. But we’ve certainly shared some rants with each other.
Well, since I de-lurked, may as well continue, even though this may be an obvious question to most - I am assuming when you speak of TIFF’s, that you are using lossless TIFF files, right?
As to client back-seat driving, I’ve often heard of some pros that spell out who is allowed in post production and who isn’t under the verbiage of the contract. Anyone here do that?
I’ve definitely always saved TIFFs without any compression. I honestly don’t think I’ve ever even tried the LZW compression, always ignoring the little check box that kindly asks.
Jason, that’s an interesting idea about keeping the client out of post production as part of the contract. I’m sure that photographers selling a very distinctive, individual style probably do build that terminology in, it makes perfect sense. We used to have that situation more but now the art directors seem so darn busy they do most everything by email, too busy to spend time “pushing pixels”. We’re not complaining.
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