via John Nack

The pixel is the celeb’s ticket to fame these days. Retouched by myself in 2005. View the full size here.

I plan on posting one of these every few weeks, till I run out.

Background

The other day, I promised you my aritcle on GTD and Photoshop - so here it is.

I started RYNO Digital, with friend and (really amazing) photographer Ryan Michael Kelly. I have since sold the company to Ryan and moved back to Detroit, to be near my friends and family and work towards my MBA.

While I was running RYNO I created a system to handle our incoming images, based on David Allen’s GTD method.

GTD (for those that don’t know) stands for Getting Things Done.

Application

An image is just like anything else that you might use the GTD method with. It has tasks to be accomplished and it has contexts, or areas, that those tasks need to be applied to. David calls these actions and contexts.

I created this chart (available in PDF) to aid in workflow.

So, let me explain. On the left, are a list of actions and on the right are all the contexts of an image to apply these to. On the top is a spot to write in the image name.

Using the chart is easy, apply the actions to any applicable contexts:

• Open the image
• Adjust the contrast with Levels (set white and black points)
• Adjust the color with Curves
• Add on a layer of Grain
• Liquify (reshape the image)
• Heal and Clone
• Dodge & Burn
• Sharpen
• Done

Some screencasts are coming soon.

I recently spent close to two years in the New York city. During this time I dove into the world of fashion photography and subsequently retouching.

I spent a large amount of time assisting other photographers. It was this connection that allowed me to start a retouching house with a fellow photographer (Ryno Digital, LLC). After opening up shop, it took but a few months for us to call Condé Nast and Emap Publications clients.

The amount of work coming in was pretty hefty. Working aside someone else really made life easy and at the same time extremely tough. How do you know who did what to an image? How do you know if all the necessary steps have been completed on an image?

It was at the same time I was pondering these questions, that I was reading Getting Things Done by David Allen.

Lucky me.

And. Lucky you.

This week I’m going to divulge my process for working with large amounts of photos and how I used the GTD paradigm to help me, no pun intended, get things done. Keep an eye out for a few articles on the subject (and my top-secret PDF).

A great article about how much RAM Photoshop can really use.