Posts

Why Your Photoshop Presets Are Probably Working Against You (And How to Fix That)
Workflow Optimization

Why Your Photoshop Presets Are Probably Working Against You (And How to Fix That)

The first Photoshop action I ever built was embarrassingly simple. I was 26, working in a commercial studio in Chicago, and I had just spent 45 minutes manually running the same three-step sharpening sequence on a set of product images. Same settings, same order, same result, every single time. When a senior retoucher walked past and asked why I wasn’t using an action, I didn’t have a good answer. I built my first one that afternoon.

AI Integration Is Coming to Your Creative Workflow—Here's What It Means for Designers
News

AI Integration Is Coming to Your Creative Workflow—Here's What It Means for Designers

AI Assistants Are Moving Beyond the Chat Window I’ve been watching the evolution of ChatGPT with genuine interest lately, and something significant just happened: OpenAI rolled out plugin support that connects the AI assistant to real productivity applications. While this might seem tangential to photography and design, I think there’s a crucial signal here for anyone serious about optimizing their creative workflows. The new plugins let users leverage ChatGPT to manage their iCloud Mail and Calendar—pulling event details, updating schedules, searching through messages—all through natural language commands.

Why the Sigma FP2 and Leica M12 Matter for Your Post-Processing Workflow
News

Why the Sigma FP2 and Leica M12 Matter for Your Post-Processing Workflow

The Camera Landscape Has Fundamentally Changed I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what cameras actually matter in 2024. We’re living in a strange era where dedicated photography devices have become almost niche products. Your smartphone probably takes better pictures in low light than a DSLR from five years ago. Drones dominate aerial work. Action cameras handle adventure sports. And yes, I recently discovered that even a humble spotting scope now ships with imaging capabilities.

Beyond Record and Play: How Photoshop Automation Scripts Actually Save Professional Time
Workflow Automation

Beyond Record and Play: How Photoshop Automation Scripts Actually Save Professional Time

The task was 200 product images. All of them needed the same crop, the same resize, the same output path. I sat down at 9am and started working through them manually because I hadn’t yet learned to build the solution I needed. By 2pm I had finished maybe 60, my wrist hurt, and I had made three cropping errors I’d have to go back and fix. That afternoon, I opened Google and searched “Photoshop batch processing.

How I Taught Photoshop to Do My Job (And What Happened When I Let It)
Workflow & Automation

How I Taught Photoshop to Do My Job (And What Happened When I Let It)

There’s a specific kind of misery that comes from doing the same crop 200 times in a single afternoon. I know this because I lived it, about fifteen years ago, sitting in a commercial studio in Chicago resizing product images one by one because nobody had set up a proper batch system. By image 140-something I started doing the mental math: at roughly 90 seconds per image, I was burning through time that could have been spent on literally anything else.

Stop Paying Monthly for Photo Editing: A Pro's Walkthrough of Luminar's AI Workflow
Video Tutorials

Stop Paying Monthly for Photo Editing: A Pro's Walkthrough of Luminar's AI Workflow

I run post-production for ad agencies and e-commerce brands, which means I spend a lot of time inside Adobe’s ecosystem. I also spend a lot of time justifying that cost to clients who see a line item for “software subscriptions” and ask why it never goes away. For years, my answer was basically: there is no serious alternative. Then I watched this tutorial and had to update my answer. Watch the full tutorial on YouTube

Lightroom vs. Photoshop: Building Your Ideal Editing Workflow
News

Lightroom vs. Photoshop: Building Your Ideal Editing Workflow

Lightroom vs. Photoshop: Building Your Ideal Editing Workflow I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the fundamental question that trips up so many photographers: which tool should I actually use for this edit? It’s a deceptively simple question with profound workflow implications. The Real Distinction Here’s what I’ve come to understand after years of bouncing between these two powerhouses: Lightroom excels at global, non-destructive adjustments, while Photoshop dominates when you need precision control and advanced manipulation.

How to Fake Wet Streets, Stack Weather Overlays, and Actually Understand Blend Modes in ON1 Photo RAW
Video Tutorials

How to Fake Wet Streets, Stack Weather Overlays, and Actually Understand Blend Modes in ON1 Photo RAW

Last month I was retouching a series of architectural shots for a hospitality client. Beautiful cobblestone courtyard, golden-hour light, the whole thing. Problem was, the stones looked completely flat and dusty on camera. The client’s reference images all had that slick, rain-kissed texture that makes stone surfaces look rich and dimensional. I ended up doing a passable job with a luminosity mask and some manual dodging, but it took longer than it should have, and I knew there was a cleaner path.

Lightroom's Open Eyes Feature: What It Actually Does, What It Costs, and Whether to Trust It
Video Tutorials

Lightroom's Open Eyes Feature: What It Actually Does, What It Costs, and Whether to Trust It

There is a specific kind of frustration that comes with delivering a final gallery and realizing, two days after the client has approved everything, that the hero shot has a blink in it. Not a soft blink, not a partial squint you can handwave away, but a full closed-eye moment from the subject right at the peak expression. In commercial work, that shot is often unusable, and you either reshoot or lose it.

Single-Button Shortcuts: How Apple Watch Ultra 4's Action Button Mirrors Our Workflow Philosophy
News

Single-Button Shortcuts: How Apple Watch Ultra 4's Action Button Mirrors Our Workflow Philosophy

One Button, Infinite Possibilities I’ve been thinking a lot about Apple’s latest move with the Watch Ultra 4—specifically that programmable action button that lets you trigger virtually anything with a single press. And honestly? It’s a brilliant reminder of why I’m so passionate about streamlined workflows. Here’s the thing: we live in an era of feature bloat. Every device, every application tries to pack in more capabilities than we’ll ever use.

GoPro's Starman Optical Merger: What It Means for Content Creators and Their Workflows
News

GoPro's Starman Optical Merger: What It Means for Content Creators and Their Workflows

GoPro and Starman Optical: A Match That Could Transform Your Creative Arsenal I’ve been watching the GoPro and Starman Optical merger saga unfold, and I’m genuinely intrigued by what this partnership could mean for creators like us. Just recently, GoPro filed their preliminary proxy statement with the SEC, signaling that this acquisition is moving from announcement stage into serious execution mode. Why This Matters Beyond the Headlines At first glance, this might seem like just another corporate consolidation.

The Workflow Tools That Actually Survived My Commercial Studio (And the Ones I Quietly Abandoned)
Workflow & Automation

The Workflow Tools That Actually Survived My Commercial Studio (And the Ones I Quietly Abandoned)

There’s a specific kind of misery that comes from doing the same thing 200 times in a row. I know this because early in my career I spent an entire day cropping and resizing product images by hand, one file at a time, clicking the same four spots in the same sequence for eight hours straight. By hour six I had developed a genuine, personal grudge against the rectangular marquee tool.