MCLA Snow Day, and Building Your Own Recipe for Success

Students, I hope you've enjoyed the snow day and had a chance for some r&r or maybe catching up on things. Did anyone make a snowman? It's the perfect snow for it! I shovelled a lot. And went skiing, a lot. And then shovelled much, much more. Here's a collaborative photo: pics taken by my wife Laura, and then processed by me into the double-exposure that you see here... yup, that's me skiing the trees early this morning in the middle of the storm.

It was some seriously fantastic skiing this morning. 18" of fresh powder will do that!

I said if we had a snow day I'd post something here for you. It's about building your own recipe for success.

You'll need to check your gmail documents. You'll find a new shared pdf document there, which is really just a chart. The top lists the five or six software processes that I find myself doing with almost every photo, in order. Then there's a bunch of blank spots -- here you'd record what you've done to a photo, as you work on it. The idea is to be able to keep track of what you do as you process a picture. In other words, write out your own recipe for processing each photo.

As you've seen, once we start using Layers and altering colors and so on, it gets difficult to remember what you've just done to an image, or even why. So it's a great idea to write down what you do as you do it. Seriously, it helps immensely. You don't have to be absolutely detailed (don't record every click of the mouse -- just the important major steps along the way).

And if you really mess up an image, with a good recipe list you can track where you messed it up. Then you can go back to the original image file, redo the steps that worked, and edit out the ones that didn't (because you do have the original image file, right? You did save a copy of the file right away as the "working" file, the one you process, didn't you?)

Another benefit is that if you find a series of steps that typically works for you, by keeping track of them, you can apply them to a different image, or even automate the editing process across a batch of images all at once. For example if you need to reduce any noise, it's important to do so BEFORE sharpening anything in the image -- otherwise you're just sharpening a bunch of the noise. You'll recognize these kinds of tricks if you keep track of what you do. And anyway, if you have to create a series of thirty or more images all at the same proportion and file size, say for a final book project for a photo class taught by a skier, then you're prepared by keeping organized as you work. (hint!)


Reminder: have you backed up your images this week?