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FreePreview: Tools We Use

this is probably the most technical part, and it's gonna be sort of an overview of what we have found. To be the best tools for our use on our workflow doesn't mean you have to use these tools. People ask us what we use. This is kind of our overview of it. If you have questions, feel free to raise your hand and we would be happy to answer them. We don't want to kind of belabor all of the technical points because we know that what people are really interested in is is getting speed. This is just kind of an overview for people's reference. Absolutely so we've broken down are our tools and what we use into just a couple of various simple categories. You'd be surprised. We don't make use of a whole lot of different things, and they're not very complicated. And that's by design. We like things simple. We like things easy to use, so our workstation is very simple. We use an I Mac, a czar primary workstation. This is the machine that basically does everything from the importing to the calling...

to the processing to the actual exporting. You could certainly make use of multi machines in different variations and configurations in your workflow. But for us we have one machine that does everything in that machine. We actually have a fast working drive, a backup drive and then external to that. We have a long term storage device, and that's I mean, literally. This is a simple as it gets, um, the biggest issue with the biggest reason we went with the I Mac. I should actually kind of clarify. This is not necessarily because we're Big Mac fans or we really think that this is like the greatest computer in the world. It's actually because of the screen. The consistency of the color of the quality of the color of the quality of the screen is actually one of the most important factors in the workstation. It's not a processor of the amount of memory or the speed. Necessarily, it's the screen because that's what you spend all day looking at, looking at your photos, trying to gauge color differences and trying determine whether your photo actually looks good. So the screen has to look good, and that really, for us was the primary motivating factor was how do we get a machine that could do all of those technical things, but still present us with a good screen that we like to look at that, you know, renders our photos accurately. And it had to be a reasonable value. It had to be attainable. You know, I'm sure that we could go out and buy a supercomputer that would be even better than all of this with a crazy monitor. But we wanted to consider things that would be reasonable for, you know, a typical wedding photographer to make an investment in, On top of which, we all use the same thing that was the other. The other issue that we have and this applies some multi shooter studios is whatever you set up for one person, you really should set up for another so that there's some continuity between what they're using and how they're using it. So we all use the exact same computer on its That's helped us a lot and consistency because we can hand off work if we have to between each other and we know it's gonna be the same because we're working in the same environment that helps a lot. The other thing we use, which is a very specific device, and you don't necessarily have to have this one. We like this one a lot for a number of reasons, but the key here is toe have one. So part of the issue with the IMac, like I mentioned, is the quality of the screen. But the screen is only as good as you calibrated if it's not calibrated. If it's just left at factory default settings, then there's really no control over how accurately it's. It's showing your colors in your photos, so we use a color calibrate er and basically what this device does. It sits on the screen, and it allows you to actually dial in the white point and luminous of your monitor, which is just the temperature and the brightness. And you said it. You said it consistently, and you know that every single time you're using your work station, it's the same. So you can't necessarily control what your clients were using on their screens or how their monitors air showing their photos. But if you have a baseline that you're working from, that's consistent, that's accurate and that you can actually measure and define than it helps. So someone may actually look at your photo and say, Hey, it looks too green or the color looks off. But, you know, you at least know that from your vantage point, you said it accurately and consistently. So this happens to be an X one or X, right? I one display. And the interesting thing about it that we like is that you actually can you can actually check the ambient light conditions in your studio. So this will actually adjust your monitors brightness to match the working environment you're in. So it's not too bright or too dark from where you're actually working. And I think with wedding photographers, a lot of us do work from home. So, you know, you may have a situation that is not an ideal, you know, some kind of like closed off lab toe work in. You could be working in a spare bedroom or you're finished basement on what we really love about this calibrate er is that it will actually let you take all of that into consideration. As long as you maintain a consistent work environment, it's gonna keep you on track with your color calibration it is not hard to run. Believe me, you just open up the software guys, you right through hopping on the screen. It does. It's thing. It's actually kind of fun to watch. See, I told you this would be fun. And once you're done, that's what you do to get a couple months later just to keep yourself on track. So you can also take the color test, which is fun If you once you calibrated your mama. Actually, I would recommend doing before you calibrate and after just to see what kind of difference it makes, Do we know where this is online? If anybody wants to, If you go to the X right website, there is actually a color test chart you can take. So you basically sort these colors in the correct Hughes and it actually grades. Whether you did it correctly, right? The lower your score, the better off you are, right. And just if you could distribute again, how often that you calibrate well, we do it a little more often, since we outsource way people outsource to us. So I probably Thea actual app will remind. So when you get this device, you get the app in the APP can actually remind you on a certain schedule every two weeks every month to do it to constantly keep up with. So it'll come up and say, like, it's time to profile your monomer, all right? And then everything. Just another clarification. Everything that going over in your operations manual is available in your store, right? It is is available. We have put up kind of our version one operating manual for people. We wrote it for ourselves, and then we realized that it might be useful, so we flushed it out. And we're going to be also releasing a version two, which is gonna be free for anybody that buys version one. Okay, let's get started and then get all the goodies. And although, like visual aids in in the next version, it's amazing. Great. So all of that is on your website on sale through August 23rd. Chris, right? Okay, that's right on south for creative life. Sidecar post dot com. Thank you. The other piece of equipment, which is again very simple. There's nothing fancy about it. We use a tablet. It's it's not something that we would say is an optional item For us, it's It's a necessity. We have been using these for years. We love them. You don't necessarily nothing else. This year leaves by a tablet. It will save you from carpal tunnel. It will make you move faster, and it's an awesome conversation piece if you can pronounce it. Yes, I can't pronounce it. I've called their number several times to hear the recording, and I keep forgetting these. I've called it such things as, well. Home blackham Wake, um, What else? It's It's welcome. According to them, we think we think it's walking on so you don't have the Internet can tell us you don't have to get the latest, greatest, largest, most expensive one. We actually have one that's a number of years old. It's a six by 11 so I wouldn't go any smaller than that. The only issue being that it's harder to get very fluid brushstrokes in light room with anything smaller. Anything larger is really up to your desk size. If you've got space for it, great, but don't feel like you have to get the largest, the largest, most expensive one. This six by 11 works really been very happy with it, but I definitely wouldn't go smaller. I don't think I will serve you as well, right? One key thing I can say about the town, especially in light room, is to make sure you make use of the pressure sensitivity because it does allow for a lot more control over your brush drugs and later, and that's it's a two part process. It's setting it in the tablet and setting it in light rooms. You want to make sure you do both of those things, and then you can actually take advantage of it. And there are a lot of online tutorials on how to do that for people that aren't quite sure. But I mean, the pressure sensitivity basically lets you use both your pressure and, of course, your brush strokes to make those changes, which I think is extremely helpful. So the big one for us and this is this is probably the single most important piece of gear. Arguably, that that we use is a shortcut keyboard. So what we're using is it's a combination of hardware and software. This is an ex Keys 58 key keyboard, this physical device that we have, and it's using a piece of software called RPG Keys. So when you buy this this physical keyboard keywords blank, there's literally nothing on on the face of it. And what you do is actually use the software to design a layout of what you want these keys to do and how you want them to interact with light room. And you tell the computer you tell the software actually what those configurations are, what those functions are. And then you create this this physical keyboard layout with these these sticker overlays and these keys literally pop off. You put stickers in so you can change this any you know any time you want. It's not a permanent type solution, so there's a little bit confusion. I know that people have seen this. They're not quite sure how to get it, how it works, what it iss. So just understand. It's a physical keyboard made by one company and its software made by another. So we highly highly recommend or PG keys. It's a great piece of software. It allows a huge amount of customization over how you create. You know this dysfunction in this keyboard, it basically takes you away from the court, A keyboard and the mouse puts you on something that's defined. You can kind of develop muscle memory here, and you use it the same every time. So once you have the keys set up the way you want them and there are, you don't necessarily have to program this yourself. You can absolutely, just by the solution and just have it in your keyboard. And then you can just use that left hand or right hand, depending on whether you're left or right handed. You can just just absolutely fly for these keys, and it really does speed things up. I know there are other systems available. I think that's great. If that's something that you want to use, we don't like the keyboard overlays on the court keyboard. I just have never found myself able to move as quickly on that as I can on this. This is more like a number keyboard type of situation that I can just back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. Well, there's something to be said for the fact it's a generic keyboard. This is unlike anything you've ever used versus a normal keyboard you already know intuitively what the keys do, so you're always constantly thinking Well, the cuchi is the cuchi, but it's also these other two keys. So there's a little bit that confusion that when you learn this from the first time, it it has no precedent like you just learned this keyboard. So that for us that was a huge part of the learning curve. Is just getting to that point where you learned this system and this is it. Um, Like I said, you use this off where you design. You know what you want, those keyboard functions to dio, and then you create the sticker layouts, and then you put the actual stickers on the keyboard. What's interesting about it is literally every function in that light room can perform every slider, every brush, stroke, every spot at it. Every single thing that it can do can be mapped to a key on this keyboard. So no more opening the menu, looking for the option, clicking, clicking, hovering over a slide or every couple of seconds you can pull off of every image that you're editing starts adding up over time, right? Ondas? Well, the other thing you could do, which we'll get into a little bit more detail later, is for each one of those adjustments. And as you can see in here, we have our core adjustments on this keyboard. The each key can actually have multipliers, so you could do a huge adjustment change. Or you could do a very fine tune adjustment change with the same key. It's just a shift. So we're used to this concept of a shift or a Taber, you know, like a control key with something same thing here. You can add these multipliers where you do, you know, a standard generic default adjustment of fine tune and then a huge sweeping adjustment. So all that stuff can be configured with this software. It's it's amazingly powerful. So that's the key word that that's what we use on again the other. The other thing to note about that particular system is that there are other keyboard options, so there are 16 and 22 keyboard um, options that they do sell. This is actually made and sold by RPG Keys directly, so they have the keyboard as well as the software, and it's all pre programmed onto this device. This to us is like a really great way to start If you're interested in trying it. You know, if you're not really sure if you want the whole keyboard shortcut system, Um, this is a good way to start checking out, see if you like it. So we spent a lot of time actually building this out. You know, we've created our layout, We've created the keys, we create the functions and how it works. So Veron's This is kind of like our system, and we do, by the way, share of this. You know, we have put this layout as well as the presets that go with it on our site of you that don't want to reinvent the wheel. And you just want to do what you're doing or go to our website. You can find our layout, and it can automatically link up to the keyboard. So the last piece of questioning me take a question. Let's do that's really what's the name of the company that makes that keep out again? RPG keys. The physical keyboard. Yeah, I just figured physical keyboard and conceived. Here's excuse, So that company makes the whole line of blank keyboards for their intended easy for everyone to use for. So their generic. So that's where you would get the keyboard, this particular one if you wanted the smaller one. And I believe you can get it through RPG keys as well. I think that he does. He also I believe if you check out their site, they do offer their own as a bundle bundled yet. But RPG key specifically has the smaller version. Um, okay, So the last component that we kind of introduces part of our tool said is just some sort of long term storage device. And I'm not gonna get into the boring details of how they work and what they are, how to configure them in all that basic. And we don't want to fight. Wouldn't want to fight about which is best want and why this one kind of sucks. And you had about experience, right? It doesn't matter what you use. You need something to back up your work, you need something. And there's really only two things that I would remember about long term storage devices. If you're looking for them, the brands are not necessarily as important these days. because these things have gotten much, much better, much more simple to use their easy to set up and configure we all know drove. Oh, they make great devices. They're very simple. But the two key components that I would look for is a device that holds more than one hard drive, and the reason being of one hard drive fails. You lose all of your data, you could exchange it for another hard drive. And if you think you can take out the filled hard drives and you can put in a new one and you don't have to write by a new device, so when you buy it on the first year, and the largest hard drive they have is a one terabyte hard drive in five years from now, the largest is a four terabyte hard drive. You can upgrade it so you don't have to constantly by new device every single time you fill it up. The second component that I would look for as part of our recommendation is something that plugs into your network. There are certain, as opposed to plugging just into your computer distinction. Certain of Isis plug in through USB or FireWire with thunderbolt. Maybe, but there's another class of devices that are meant to sit on your network. You plug into your router to your switch us. Those things have a little bit better, you know, longevity as faras how long you could use them, how easier they are to implement on. Plus, you can use them on more than one machine. So those kind of the two things that we would look for other than that, you know, I would do research on brands and other things. We have a recommendation or manual for what we use specifically what we've liked. Um, so you can check that out. So we should probably stop real quick for questions on the tools, just in case there are any beyond. Yeah, we do have a couple questions. One from Calais. How is it different than programming your own keyboard? If you could just review again, like the advantages of using the RPG keys. The difference between programming your own keyboard is that in light Room has its own set of keyboard shortcuts. So there are things that you can do in light room that they've already built that map to your keyboard so you could hit, you know, certain keys and it does certain things, but that there's not much you can do as faras customization to it. And there's not. It doesn't cover everything that light room can do. So The difference here is that when you get the physical keyboard and you get the software RPG keys, he's already programmed all of the functions that light room can do. And you're basically dragging and dropping onto the keys to say, Do this. There's just more of it. There's more stuff. There's more things you can do so and I don't doubt that there are people out there who could program their own keys without the help of that software, and I might have is off your. But for us, that wasn't something that we wanted to do, what we wanted to go with, a software that had kind of given us a little bit of a shortcut. They've taken a lot of the the hard work, I guess, out of figuring out How do you How do you move a slider in light room? Or how do you do a certain thing? Save yourself some more postproduction time, utilizing someone else's tools that have already and probably a good project for the off season. Some rainy day, Um, and Mary is wondering it Does your short board keyboard allow you to combine multiple keys until one, for example, Alta Que Yes, it does. It's It's the concept of same, but the way this one specifically works. If you guys want to cut in here, it has a has to shift keys. There's a single shift in a double shift. So for any individual key on the keyboard, you can hit the key once, and that's its default Click. The shift key is a separate function, and the double shift key is a separate function, so every single key can be three things. Eso to give an example. We have a key. That's for Vignette, and the Level one vignette is sort of ah, less dramatic than yet. The Level two vignette is a very heavy vignette, and then that you hit the Ault and third Level is taking the vignette off completely like a little cycle that you can cycle through. On that one key, we're going to give you three different levels of functionality. If that makes sense, yeah, and we just want to reiterate that you're not sponsored. You're just showing another work. This is what we use just to let everyone on the Internet. Now, this is an infomercial. Weird. If you ways we do not get any money. Yes, that is absolutely the case. And we just really like what he's done. And we feel that it's the best tool for us right now for the job. Great. And then the other thing that we wanted to mention is that with course enrollment, Jennifer and John are providing an incredibly detailed gear list of what their gear is, where you can get it and why? Um, why they use it. So that's another bonus of enrolling for the course, which you can do is you scroll down underneath the watch TV area? Yes, and enrolling is free right? It is. Yeah. Nothing is free on your list. Definitely can't beat it. I think Naomi had a question Question. I'm going back to calibrating your monitors, so I had it all times of the day. Now, should you calibrate at a certain time of day when you actually could you talked about Gambia light on guy, have two windows in the area that I work. So should I calibrate a certain time of day if I'm enemy or I don't know, do with it. There's a couple ways. Yeah, there's a couple things you can do. The first thing you could do is you can cover the windows so that you can keep the lighting in that room. You know, a little bit more consistent during the day you're in Florida, so probably a lot of light is coming in, but covering the windows would help you, and then that would sort of, I think, work for most of the day. If you have the windows covered, another option would be. If you know that you primarily added in a certain time of day, you could make sure you do the calibration. Then, for example, if you in your situation, it sounds like you have different times of the day. But if if you were ah, mom with kids and the only time you could add it was in the evening and it was dark, then you would sort of calibrate then and you could be pretty consistent if you really want to geek it out and This is where the fun comes in. You could do to calibrations because you can actually set up two profiles on your computer. Isn't that right? You can. You can, actually, if you let's say, you know, you edit it to pure points of time in the day afternoon and then again later in the evening. After dinner, you can create profiles for each one of those times a day and switch between. You can switch back before, but there's another. There's another geeky way to do it. So with this particular device, and I don't I don't know that all calibers have this, but this one has this little lens in here, and basically it's an ambient light monitor. It's also used to actually look at the screen while calories. If you have this plug in at all times, there is an option in the application to monitor your ambient light conditions, and it will actually dim and brighten your monitor accordingly. You have to experiment to see if it really works in your condition. I have it set up in an office that I use, and it seemed to keep up pretty well, so the only thing you have to kind of pay attention to is if it goes to extreme, you know, if it really, really, overly brightens it or it makes it way too dark. So ah, lot of these Cal Aerators, I think are having this ambient light monitor that will do before you automatically. If I wasn't editing in a dungeon, I probably go the to profile route. I've blocked out all sunlight in my editing area, so I have one pretty consistent white balance. But I think switching back and forth between profiles would also be a pretty valuable way. And it's not hard to set up the both profiles. It really is easy. I started this office, a software phone. Trust me, this stuff it gets very easy once you get into it.