Image Management, Retouching, and Exporting
Khara Plicanic
Lesson Info
13. Image Management, Retouching, and Exporting
Lessons
Workflow Philosophy
13:18 2Four Main Goals for Workflow Management
1:14:40 3Pricing and Packages
1:02:19 4Set for Success - Gear
27:19 5Software Workflow
41:43 6Slideshow Prep
28:09 7Fast Book Production
58:10What is InDesign?
09:40 9Setting InDesign Preferences
21:26 10InDesign Basics
48:04 11InDesign Basics Q&A
11:56 12More InDesign Basics
11:14 13Image Management, Retouching, and Exporting
24:00 14InDesign for Flip Books and Blogging
24:16 15Creating a Marketing Piece
32:50 16Design Principles
27:17 17Typography
29:13 18Thanks + Credits
07:12 19Start to Finish Album Design
35:59 20Workshop Recap
10:30Lesson Info
Image Management, Retouching, and Exporting
But let's say I'm ready to retouch. What I like to do is I will select all of the images on a spread in this case. It is there going to be duplicated, so I'll just select these ones that are not duplicated. And there's a really great Another great thing about the links panel and in design is how well it works with Photoshopped. As I mentioned there, like BFF's in the links panel, the fly out menu over here has all of these options one including edit with original right, and now there's not normally a keyboard shortcut here. This is one that I have custom created because I use this constantly and the way that you create your custom keyboard shortcuts is from the edit menu under edit keyboard shortcuts. This one's kind of it's kind of a goofy thing, so I'll show you really quick. But under edit keyboard shortcuts, you're gonna want to go to product area, and we're going to choose panel menus, then scroll down. Teoh links, right? So it's alphabetical. So links. And then here's edit origin...
al, So edit keyboard shortcuts panel menus for the product area and then scroll down toe links and find the command for edit original. And then you would just come down here and type in whatever keyboard shortcut you want it to be. I happen to use command, period, which worked forever. And now in CS six. That's actually, I think, after override a default in design Keeper's shortcut for that, but it's kind of obscure, So I was cool with that. You make up your own keyboard shortcuts, but I use command, period. And what that means is that once I have these highlighted, I just hit command, period, and it's gonna open them. And Photoshopped Happy dance, right? Oh, no, it didn't because it opened them in PRI vo. Okay, you have to set your preferences of what you're gonna open it with, um, open edit with, and we would choose photo shop. So I guess you have to have your preferences set. That's Ah, um, local thing. And that's the one thing I forgot to check. But on your system, I'm assuming you already have your J peg set to always open with voter shop. Right, So that'll work for you, then. I, of course, just didn't have this right, but it would open, then in photo shop. And then all you have to do is do your retouching. So just to illustrate how quickly that will happen, I'm just going to do, like, kind of an ugly quick retouch. Okay, so part of me, just a quick and dirty on then I'm gonna close it, save close. I'm gonna just I'm just quickly converting these to a quick and dirty black and white simply to show you the update process. There we go quick and dirty. Black and white save and clothes and quick and dirty black and white saved. And you'll notice that as I'm doing this, I'm saving over my proof. So imagine now that I, you know, I've gone in ivory touch skin and blemishes. I am doing whatever processing. I really want to really make this beautiful andan. I'm saving straight over my proof file. That's my personal preference. If you are operating in such a way that you want your retouched images completely separate, it's very simple. The only key is to make sure you still use the same file name. So in that case, retouch your images, keep the same filing, but save them in your dedicated retouched folder of beautiful nous. Right? Just keep the same file name. And here's why. Because now that we're back in in design is going to be updating. See what it did It updated my files. I do not have to read. Drag them. I don't have to replace anything. I don't need to click update it automatically did it because it's reading the data from that file that is linked on our hard drive. If you re touched your files and save them in a different folder no sweat, you will not see the automatic update here because you re touched a different file, right? You with me to fix it so simple in design, they've thought of everything all you would dio. You still got it highlighted in your links panel simply because it's selected over here. All you do in your links panel has come to the panel menu and choose re link to folder. Then you would navigate to that folder. It will match the same file name. That's why it that's key. If you rename your files when you re touch them, if you call it 057 retouched, it's not gonna work so keep the same file name, then you would just come here. Go to that folder, you click, click choose, and it will re link to that folder. Everything will update here in your book will snap into beautiful nous. Did everyone follow? I hope we'll check in for questions on that later if we have them. But that's how that works. For those of you who want to manage it that way, so good. Another point I want to bring up to is when you save your in design files just like anything you would come up to file and you would click, Save, save it wherever you want to. But keep in mind that because the actual images are linked, they are not embedded right. We understand the difference embedded would be like in photo shop There, in the file and in design. What's really happening is either empty shells with just instructions to show the image on your hard drive. So when you save the file, it's saving the in design document. Your images are still on your hard drive wherever they may be, so that's great. And that's usually no big deal unless you're thinking, Oh, I want to take this file and put it on my laptop so I can edit it. Or like when I'm teaching, I need to grab the file and bring it with me. And I need the images to come with me because I'm not even on my own computer. So my images air on my hard drive. So what you can do it is called packaging, and in that case you would choose file package, and it's going to tell you a summary of things, and it's gonna warn you of anything here. It's telling me my images are in RGB color space. We expect that were photographers. I would ignore that, and I would click Package. It's going to say it has to save this document first, so I'll just I hope it's OK. I'll say it to my passport. Kiss could create new problems. Crazy album. That's what we'll call it. So now it's saved. It's gonna pop up and say, printing instructions. We don't have to worry about this. This is more. If you're packaging it to send to like a local print shop, you could type your contact information here, so continue it's gonna ask me. Where do I want to say of this? It's going to make a folder, and I'm just going to go back to the root of my hard drive here. Crazy album folder on. I want to make sure that it says copy fonts copy linked graphics. Okay, then I would hit package loops without this being active all hit package. It's gonna warn me if I am violating, it's gonna like, basically, say, make sure you have the correct license for any fonts that you are using. We'll talk about Fonso later, and it's gonna package it. So what it's doing now is it's reaching out to my hard drive. It's grabbing all of those photos that are linked. It's copying them into a folder. So now I've got all the images from my album together in this folder, along with any fonts that might be in the document. And now the document is portable. If I just take that folder, it's got the document. So it made a copy of the document in the folder with all of the graphics with all of the fonts, and now if I need to take it anywhere, I just copy that whole folder on the hard drive and I'm good and it updated the links and everything, so I don't have to worry about it. Does that make sense? If you forget that, Or if you somehow move something or delete something or whatever you might sometimes see and a warning here in your links panel, you'll see a yellow warning. Or when you open the document, it'll say, Hey, you've got missing links, just like in light room. If you delete an image off your hard drive, it's going to say where that photo go. So it's the same thing, and it's really easy to fix, Just like in light room. You can select and re link here. You would select whatever file might be missing, come up to the panel menu and just re link it and go find that file question really quick. If you're working off an external hard drive, saying your laptop and you move Teoh your computer, your computer doesn't have the same bonds. You would have to download them again, like on the yes, unless you're packaging unless you're packaging the file. If you package the fonts that you won't like on your laptop, you don't need to have them. Also another computer. Not if you if you package the document. Right. And then you take that whole folder to your laptop and you open it on your laptop. It will read the fonts that have been packaged with them. Yeah, but they wouldn't necessarily be available for a different document. So just if you're gonna move computers or work on it on a different computer, just package it and you'll be fine. Simple enough. Yep. Okay, that's a good question. But that's what makes it portable. Is the packaging a thing? I will also share with you that this is why this is why use bridge and not Mini Bridge is. Let's say that I'm working with my client on their revisions. And let's say that they're like, Oh, this one photo right here, That's you know, I like my expression in the similar photo number. Whatever. Whatever. What's great is instead of me having to go, Okay. Let me go to bridge. Let me navigate to that folder. Let me scroll through 100 images. Let me find that file. If I know the file number, I can type it in. Do you guys know this, I could type in, like 0010 or whatever and bridge will jump to that number. But what I also find really helpful is if I'm doing a layout. Or maybe I'm in the middle of the design and I've got an image here and later I come back to it and I'm like, What else was around this? What other images air around this one? That maybe I can play with a really great keyboard shortcut? This is another custom, one that I have developed from the links panel. It's the same thing as link reveal in Finder, Bridge or mini bridge. Those are the choices, and I like to use reveal in bridge, and the keyboard shortcut will set it up here for you. So we make review how to do that under edit keyboard shortcuts again panel menu, scroll down to links and reveal in bridge. And if I click on that, its command What? I like to use this command slash and again, I think in CS six I may have had to override a default for that, but I'm cool with it. It was kind of an obscure one, so I went for. It s so that's what I use. And what that means is if I click here and I hit that keyboard shortcut, Look what it does with bridge. It goes straight to that file and now I can look. Oh, yeah, there's another image, you know, right before that that I might want to use if I am, you know, designing a ceremony. Maybe I've got the bride walking down the aisle, and now I want something else near to that. I can just jump straight to it and throw it in here. And it's really pretty easy. And strangely enough, even though in in design you can make a keyboard shortcut to reveal in Mini Bridge, it doesn't actually select the image. It will just go to the folder, but it selects a different image. I don't know why I thought it was a CS five thing. They haven't done anything about it and see a six. So that's why I don't use Mini bridge because it's, I think that keyboard circuit is that handy that I I'll just still work with bridge. That makes sense. So it's really great for editing. If you've got something you realize was a blink shot, you can just jump. Look how fast that is. Jump right here and then drag and drop something else. Okay, so that's huge. I think when it comes toe editing. All right, let's Oh, I will say to, strangely enough, those keyboard shortcuts for the links to reveal in bridge or pop over into photo shop. They only work when your links panel is on top. Weird. Right. So if you have your let's say you've got your line panel on top because you've been aligning things and now you're like, Oh, I want to quickly edit this and you hit your keyboard shortcut. It will do nothing. Totally nothing. So Thio Thio prevent you from pulling your hair out and thinking that I made the whole thing up. I'll tell you right now, you have to have your links panel on top, so just click your link panel, then do the keyboard shortcut and it will work. Weird, right? Funny little things, but those are the things that make you want to pull your hair out so hopefully we can avoid that. Let's talk about covers and how that how that works a couple of different options. If you've got CS five or newer, I would recommend what I showed earlier, which is just to select that page. Come over here. I've got a preset for my female. 10. Might an armor cover size so you can define that in custom, So I would just click on that. It snaps to the right size. I would just make sure that I've got this said, If that's gonna be my cover and done, I'm ready to go. Simple, right. If you don't have at CS five or newer what I have done in the past and I'll just show you an example Samples. Here's one. What I have done in the past is I would do like this for my clients. When IM was proofing it, I would design a full spread like this. I would show them like this will be your cover. And then I would I would even put funny little text like this is your front cover. This is the back cover. It will be blank. Um, and so this is what I would design. And this is what I would send to them. And when I was ready to actually do the exporting. I would just literally copy this. And I would open up a separate document that sized for the cover, and I would paste it in. And then I would just have the cover as a separate document. So that was pre CS five. Ever since CS five and newer, you could just change a custom page size and you don't have to do that anymore. Came so that that would be that we'll come back. He needs air giggling over there. Oh, chat room. Must be fun. Overall. Just come back to our crazy album that we've got going on. And let's say we're ready to export this award winning design that we've just created. Yeah, sorry. Let's say we're gonna export it. We have a couple of things we might want to check what's called the preflight panel. Sometimes people ask me about this. So if those of you at home are going Oh, my goodness, how do I know what the resolution is for these graphics at this size? That might be something that is of concern to you, of course, if you also were shooting with today's crazy high rez, enormous cameras are image resolution is so high that I know I can put an image across a 10 by 20 spread. And I don't have to worry about resolution, but maybe you're not sure or you just want to check under the window menu. There is output, and there is something called pre flight. And I honestly just don't I don't worry about this because I know I'm OK. But if it concerns you window output preflight. And this is just sort of a little checker. And what you can do is actually come into the menu up, fly out and you can come in here to define profiles and you can create a profile. And if we come, Teoh? Yes. Okay. Links. We can come in here and we can manage our images. Excuse me. Not links images and objects. And if we click on image resolution, where is it? In here? Open. We can come down here and we can actually set a minimum resolution that we want to make sure we always stay above. And whatever this, maybe you can set it how you want. But whatever the case, if you set this, let's say you set it at 200 or 1 50 or something like that. Obviously we would love 300. But I We also know that the world doesn't fall apart if you print under that. So you can set this however you want If you click OK, then what would happen is in design will constantly be checking your document. And if if you ever enlarge and image to a certain point where the resolution drops below that threshold, you will see a notification and it will say error and it will tell you exactly what image it is, where it is in your book, and then you can decide what you want to do with it. Eso the preflight panel that's found again under window output preflight and define that pre file are that profile and then, actually, if you look down, I don't know if everyone can see this, but at the bottom of the screen. Um, if I put my months and zoom in on it, I don't know if that's gonna help the folks at home, but there's a little green dot down here, and it's telling me no errors. That's the preflight panel sort of running in the background and just constantly alerting me. If there's a problem, so and you can set up that problem to be anything, I mean, you can have it alert you. If you've got a different color profile in an image or anything like that, and it can warn you if you've got missing links or anything, your link panel will warn you. But your pre flight will check all of those all kinds of things as well. So that's a really nice thing to know. For those people who who are really concerned about that, The other thing we want to do here is talk about exporting. How do we export this? Once we've got it designed, we've proved it. We've retouched it. We've got all of our links. Everything's happy. I'm going to save it quick. The next thing would be export, so that's under the file menu export. And we would just choose the location and we would choose the format. So all kinds of things you can export. Pdf's. Of course, we've got a pub formats you can export to flash and HTML and oh my gosh, many things most of us for albums anyway, are going to be looking at probably either J Peg exporting or PdF. So in this case, we'll look at a PdF later. I'm gonna choose J. Peg and we'll just put it here. I'll just make a folder called Crazy album J Pegs, so I'll create that folder were in there and I'll go ahead and hit this. I'm going to get my J peg options. Here's where we can choose if I just need to export a certain page. Maybe I've redesigned one thing and I just need to export one page. I can specify one page debt to export or I can do all and down here. This is where if we had designed our book as facing pages, So we've got you know, the page and the page together as a spread, we would have 1/2 spread and half spread if our album vendor requires the individual pages. This is where I would make sure I export as individual pages, so it will then basically cut each spread in half and export just the page. In this case, a page is a spread, so it's irrelevant. But with facing pages, you would have the choice to export those individual facing pages or export as a spread. You've got choices, which is great here. Like I said, it won't matter under the image quality. Obviously, if these air print exports we would go with maximum and then we can choose the desired actual resolution so that it's going to output all of this at a certain resolution. So obviously for press, we want toe hit 300 we can choose a color space. We're going to be working most likely for photographers. We're gonna be working with RGB. But when we would want to make sure to embed that color profile as well so that that gets attached, I think in earlier versions of in design it didn't always embed the color profile on DSO. That was something that I would just batch in photo shop real quick. I wrote an action for that. No sweat, but here I've got embedded, so enough to worry, and I would click exports, and it's just gonna run those really quick and we can see if I can find him on my crazy album. J pegs. It looks like it's still working on it. I could see my wheel spinning dr going, going and still going. But we can see them here as they're exporting their loading here. I've got them in bridge, and that's what I would then send to the album company and I'm done. That's a quick questions about the spinning wheel and exporting the PF. I'm only cause I don't know where to change it. When I upgraded to see a six, I wouldn't get the spinning wheel and it was somewhere else. So I didn't know when the pdf was done. You know, a PM Oh, yeah, well, you have a couple options like where do you change that preference that you can see? Because I like to see the spinning Well, because then I know that it's done, because sometimes it takes longer. I know I don't always see the spinning wheel, either. It kind of just depends what it what it's doing, but what you can do specifically when you're exporting a Pdf and I'll show you this shortly, but you have the option to open the pdf when it's finished. There's a check box for that, so I'll show you that, and then it'll pop up when it's done. Otherwise, I usually just, you know, I move on. I know when it's done it will be finished. But so that's kind of it. If I'm exporting my J pegs here for proofing like When I upload to Banteay album proofing, I choose just a medium quality and I choose a resolution of, like, 96 or 72 or something, and it doesn't matter cause Banti will resize it for me before I upload. But just so I'm not exporting huge files, I'll just make it smaller. So you have some choices when you generate those J peds.
Class Materials
Ratings and Reviews
1106 Imagery
This class is so good! I learnt so much about albums, and selling them the right way. Having never really used Indesign before, I was nervous about using it as my main platform to design albums. I'm shocked, but I really enjoy using the program! It's so simple and easy using Khara's methods of designing. I also never used bridge before too (Lightroom faithful here), and it's fantastic for sourcing images for the albums. I'm learning a few upsell methods too, so it's very exciting for my business! Thank you for such a great course :)
a Creativelive Student
Yep, love your work Khara! I am now using Indesign to make my first wedding album thanks to you. So clearly explained and nicely presented. Such a powerful program that makes a complicated task seem easy, with as many variables in layout and design as I can imagine. I am just so excited! I would recommend this course to anyone who is running any size photography business. It will help simplify your workflow and increase your output.
Adrian Farr
Khara's advice is so simple yet makes absolute perfect sense! She really knows how to get the best out of her albums and packages. If you want to learn things that will help you improve your business/workflow, then seriously buy this course!
Student Work
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