The following video is pure commentary on the situation. Though we do serve a lot of wedding photographers, this applies to photographers from all genres.

And for those of you who prefer the Cliff Notes, here you go…

Why SHOULD we keep the Raw files? Common responses are:

“In case I lose my files!”

 

“In case my client loses their files!”

But at this point, the files you delivered to the client are your first generation JPEGs. You’ve poured hours of work in to applying your actions, presets and retouching. Seems like they are much more valuable than the Raw files which become some kind of “last resort” in these cases.

Another common response is:

“But I may want them to update my portfolio, send to a stock agency, or use for an ad.”

 

Which does sound honorable, of course… but again, we’ve already invested lots of work into that clean and pristine, print-ready JPEG file. Sure, if you want to ditch all of your Raws except for the VERY BEST of the best, I’m okay with that. But I still wager that if the time ever comes for you to need that file, you’ll opt for the JPEG.

But that also begs the question… will you really want to show off your older work? Every image has a shelf life. Pitch an image of a bride from 5 years ago to a prospective client today? She’ll see the dated style of the dress, flowers, decor at the wedding, etc. She is more in tune with the wedding style of today than anyone. Let’s show off your freshest, most innovative work from recent months. NOT from 5 years ago.

So let’s switch our focus on a good backup strategy, making sure we’ve got more than one safety net.  Peter Krogh is kind of a big deal when it comes to Digital Asset Management. He created an easy mnemonic called the “3-2-1 Backup Plan” which I think is brilliant. It says:

Have your files backed up in

3 places, on 2 types of media, with 1 offsite.

When it comes to two types of media, I’m not a fan of DVDs. There’s a ton of hassle involved in indexing them and archiving them so you can actually find the files you’re looking for. Not to mention, the GOBS of time it takes to babysit and burn these DVDs. Personally, I opt for two hard drives that are always synched. You can use a good app like Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper! to make this happen automatically.

It’s worth mentioning here that having two hard drives on your desk that are always synched is better than nothing. However, this only protects you against a hard drive failure and leaves you vulnerable to theft, fire, flood or other unexpected damage that may come to your physical location.

In this scenario, some people opt to have one external drive on their desk and one in a separate location. Once a week, synch the drives and swap them out. (Affectionately dubbed a “Sneakernet.”)

Lastly, having files offsite has been made possible by amazing cloud services like Backblaze, Google Drive, Carbonite, etc… Install these little helpers and watch your files fly up to a safe place in the cloud where you can access them anywhere in the world. Of course, it does assume you have the Internet connection to support that kind of traffic, but they seem to do a good job of throttling usage when you are idle so as not to slow down your normal activity.

It’s bound to be heavy in the beginning while you “catch up” with your first cloud backup. But once the big load has uploaded, adding new jobs will happen silently in the background with no noticeable overhead.

So there you have it! This is just one perspective on the conversation. Hopefully it helps you as you create a solid backup plan for your business!

If you have a method, tips, tools, or questions, please leave a comment below!

What is the most creative proposal you have ever heard of?

Via eHarmony UK

Design by Neomam Infographic Studios

Recently a client asked us a FABULOUS question and we thought it was worth sharing…

Is there a benefit to turning the Lens Corrections settings off?  Is there any reason to not leave it on?

In short, we say “YES!” there’s a huge advantage to turning it off… at least while doing your baseline editing.

Here’s the breakdown…

Turning Lens Corrections on sounds (and looks) like a great idea, but that’s asking a lot of Lightroom or Adobe Camera Raw. Think about it… it’s warping, transforming and vignetting every single image, which is a lot for any software or computer to think about.

You’ve probably noticed that the 2012 Process is a SLUGGISH BEAST compared to the old 2010 Process. Turning on Lens Corrections just adds to the pain.

However, it *is* a fabulous feature that can improve image quality! So here’s what we recommend if you want to use Lens Corrections: Simply add them as the last step in your workflow. We might propose the following:

• Send images to Colorati
• Receive XMPs
• Apply any last minute fixes like cropping or creative effects
• Apply a preset to all images that enables Lens Corrections
• Output JPEGs for online proofing

Of course, this is indiscriminately applying the corrections, but we think it’s a safe bet that you’ll still end up with great looking images.

And there’s always the brash idea that leaving Lens Corrections off completely is still a fine idea.

The decision is yours as to what makes the most sense when it comes to time invested for a quality product. As with every step of your workflow, you have to ask yourself:

“Is the amount of time I invest in this step pushing my quality to a level that my clients will notice, appreciate and pay me more money for?”

If you’re having trouble with our web-based uploader, here’s an easy fix:

1) Open Safari preferences, go to the Privacy tab and set “Block cookies” to “Never.”

2) Or you can simply try another browser like Chrome or Firefox.

Also, see that little “Enable Java” option at the bottom? Best to leave that at the default of OFF. (It’s just simpler that way!)

You can literally drag your and drop your files to the outlined box in the web browser. Once you do, you will see your files appear in a list:

Click the “Send Files” button and you will soon see a status bar inside each file and a progress indicator.

We do hope that helps, but if you are still having trouble, do let us know! Just hit the “Contact” button above!

Colorati how to upload.

Back in January, we posted a cool “workflow hack” that allows you to export Small DNGs of your Raw files, upload to our service and receive tiny XMPs that applies our edits to your files in Lightroom or Bridge.

In short, it makes upload times so lightning fast you will not believe it. (Seriously!) The best part is there is no loss in quality of your images.

It’s become such a breakthrough in practice and we’ve had nothing but THE BEST response from clients using this method.

This means that many of you used to shipping hard drives will no longer have to, if you use this method.

And for those of you in remote areas of the world with a slow Internet connection, there is now hope!

Check out the video for full details. (Blog post from January includes written instructions.)

Colorati FAQ: An archive of all FAQ posts to answer your questions.

Don’t see your question? Please leave a comment below so we can help!

Hey everyone! We are so excited about serving you well this year!

Check out our new video that talks about the technological advancements of our industry and how we are embracing the tools within our reach.

We can hear the hum of the world rising and expect your season is just about too take off. Now is the best time to get started with our service and set up your preferences so that you can enjoy this summer.

Links mentioned in the video:

Getting Started with FREE Samples

Let me send my first order!

*****UPDATE****

Here’s a quick video to illustrate the process from start to finish:

Using our service has always required transferring those bulky Raw files one way or another:

1) Shipping a hard drive -which is *super* reliable, but you have to package and ship.

-or-

2) FTP -which is convenient, but slow and sometimes unreliable due to the massive file sizes and limited upload speeds.

There’s been a recent update to Lightroom 4 that invokes some high level wizardry and we think it will blow your mind! It’s this little feature here called Lossy Compression when you select “DNG” in the Export menu.

*****SUPER IMPORTANT!!!*****

—–> DO NOT RENAME YOUR FILES <—–

Here’s the deal… when you choose this option to output your files, Lightroom crunches down the pixel dimensions and applies some other kind of deep magic that makes the files TINY yet retain near full flexibility of a Raw image.

Upload those files to us, we edit them as normal.

From everything we’ve read in the Adobe resources, yes it is using a form of JPEG compression, but amazingly retains the flexibility of a normal Raw file.

In our testing, we had great editing success and found these files to be more than sufficient for our Standard and even our Custom services. Once we’re done editing, we work some magic of our own to extract a new batch of XMPs for you to match up with your original Raw files.

The best part is, once the new XMP file is matched up, the full potential of the Raw file is restored.

The geeky details:

We found that a Raw file of 30 MB becomes a Small DNG of about 745 KB. AMAZING! That means for an average order of 700 files for a wedding, you go from 20 Gigs to 521 MB! Sounds way too good to be true, but we want you to try it!

If you happen to be a Bridge user, don’t worry! All you’ve got to do is run your images through the latest DNG converter which is a free download from Adobe. (Windows | Mac)

The same process applies, just use these settings below and you’re golden!

We think this is a really slick workflow hack and in our testing have seen amazing results both for the quality of editing and the speed of uploads.

If you are interested in trying this method on your next order, output your files and upload here:

http://www.colorati.com/order-portal

Just don’t forget to fill out an order form!

http://colorati.com/order/

_________________

PS: If matching up XMPs in Lightroom or Bridge is not on your radar yet, please see the following blog posts:

Lightroom Tutorial: How to prep and send to Colorati

Lightroom User? Want faster delivery? Choose XMPs! 

Using XMPs with Bridge and Adobe Camera Raw