Your Computer: A low paid, yet highly productive assistant
[by Jay Kinghorn]
What if you could pay your best assistant $1.87 per hour to process your images for you? Consider this: A fully loaded, new MacPro with a stunning Eizo monitor, pro-rated over the three-year life of the equipment costs you less than two bucks an hour.
It is tempting to save money by delaying the purchase of a new computer, monitor or software upgrade. However, in the long run, the productivity costs of waiting for files to process or making an extra round of prints because the color isn’t right, far exceeds the cost of having the right equipment.
Once you have the right equipment, the next step is putting it to work for you. What steps in your workflow can be automated using Photoshop Actions or presets in Lightroom or Aperture? I’ll bet there are more than you think. Automating even small steps makes you more efficient, minimizes errors and allows you to focus on the creative areas of your image processing. Do the skin tones look right? Does the light need to be warmer? These are the questions you should be asking.
The repetitive, mind-numbing tasks like resizing images for a client; that’s work for your electronic assistant.
