Image Editing & Creative Studio Solutions
Editing & Studio Workflows
We specialise in building workflows systems for photographers and designers; working with studios, creative agencies, and in-house teams to equip them with all the tools they need to manage their project deliver efficiently.
Running in tandem with the hardware side is process development; end-to-end colour and data management, production workflows and operational processes to ensure projects are delivered on time and as expected.
Our experience spans photographic and creative studios, working with hybrid and freelance team models, and large in-house teams working across digital, print and packaging design delivery.
Achieve perfect colour from Capture to Print
Colour Accurate Monitors
So often overlooked when setting up a studio, colour management is a critical component of any creative workflow. Whether you are a photographer editing your RAW files, retoucher, or a print designer working on new packaging or point of sale, without a calibrated system and correct colour profiles, you cannot be sure that what you are looking at is accurate.
We work with clients to ensure they have the optimal system for their needs. With so much choice in an always evolving market, we help you cut through the noise to specify the right equipment within your budget, whether your creative team is working with spot colour and commercial print, or handling image files wide-gamut colour spaces, workflows can build a system to suit.
We can build single user editing stations or work with you to build out your studio from scratch, based around the two market leading brands in this space, BenQ and Eizo. Eizo has long been the reference monitor of choice for studios and BenQ has built an enviable reputation for their professional SW and PD ranges.
Colour Management
As a photographer, calibrating your editing workflow from camera, to monitor to printer gives you full control over your colour from capture through to the point a file or print leaves your studio. Image editors, retouchers and designers will certainly need to maintain their screen performance and accuracy through monitor profiling, whilst those who print in-house will benefit from building custom colour profiles for their printers.
We have a range of solutions for hardware based screen, scanner and projector calibration and spectrophotometers for building print profiles; from beginner level through to professional production studios by the leading manufacturers.
Camera Profiling
Capturing accurate colour in camera saves post production time for photographers on unnecessary colour correction. For commercial photographers and designers, where brand colours and palettes are critical, profiling is a critical first step in proper colour management. Both Calibrite and Datacolor have a range of consumer and professional grade solutions available, and we'll help guide you towards the best solution for your particular use case.
Monitor Calibration
Professional grade monitors use profiles to determine how colour is displayed.These profiles, when implemented correctly, ensure that the colours you are editing are correct. Without them, you have no idea how your image will look when viewed on a different screen to your own. Luckily, it's now easier than ever to keep your colours accurate and regular profiling of your monitor keeps it performing at its best. With a range of solutions available, we'll help you select the best for you and your budget.
Printer Profiling
Print profiling is an important consideration for photographers who do their own printing, and for creative studios who want to proof their work and present printed designs to clients. It also helps packaging designers to see how spot colour designs may print in RGB and CMYK print workflows before releasing artwork for approval. We work with studios not just to profile their own paper stock but also to integrate commercial profiles into soft-proof workflows.
Image Editing Tools
Everyone is familiar with the mouse and touchpad but graphics tablets and pens provide users with a completely different user experience, a tactile creative process more akin to traditional pen and paper.
For designers, photographers, retouchers and illustrators, these tools open up a whole new way of working and the past few years has seen a huge leap forward in technology, moving from basic pen and tablet to large high resolution touch screen formats, with high colour accuracy and tactile controllers.
We’re delighted to offer two leading brands in Wacom and Xencelabs to the Irish market.
Data Management Solutions
In an era of hybrid working and multi-device workflows, data management is becoming a significant issue for individual creatives, agencies and brands. We have a wealth of experience, working on projects with creative teams dispersed across global studios where real-time collaboration, centralised asset management, archiving and backup were significant issues, and have put together a range of robust solutions for photographers, studios, creative agencies and in-house brand teams.
This goes beyond the standard 3-2-1 backup strategy (important as that is!), it’s a deep dive into your current way of working and then building a solution that works for you from a portfolio of industry leading brands.
Strategy
A standard strategy for all creatives, the 3-2-1 backup rule provides a basic starting point for your data management strategy. But what about real time redundancy and how can it work for you in a hybrid working world. Redundancy prevents failure on the job, while back-ups prevent data loss now and into the future. We build both redundancy and backup strategies and the infrastructure to support a robust data management plan for individuals and teams.
Process
Hybrid working and hot-desking in a world where a combination of tether stations, desktops, laptops, tablets and phones are part of a creative's daily toolkit, creates the potential for data loss and accessibility issues for collaboration. Workflows helps teams to remove and mitigate these risks, using both process design and selecting appropriate tools to suit your working scenario.
Redundancy
Working on set or on location, and moving between a tether station and monitor with a client, maintaining uptime on a shoot and managing your data in realtime is a critical consideration. We work with photographers and creative teams to build systems that provide seamless real time sharing and collaboration, whilst ensuring no preventable loss of data or productivity on the job.
Backup
Offloading data from devices to avoid performance bottlenecks and realtime backups demand a different solution to project level backup pre final delivery. Then there's the consideration of long term archiving of work, with each step requiring a different approach. With so many options available, workflows will work with you to select the best methods and hardware solutions, from working drive SSDs, NAS and Cloud through to archival grade tape storage as part of a total data backup strategy.
Commercial Print Colour Management
In addition to the hardware based solutions we build to set you up for in-house colour management, we also offer Pantone’s and RAL’s physical range of colour libraries. Despite technologies evolving and shifting, these remain indispensable reference tools. Pantone is still the industry standard for designers working in packaging print design where colour accuracy and repeatability is key, whilst RAL is a go to for paints, coatings and plastics.
Just Normlicht manufacture Digital Light Systems (DLS) which provide optimal lighting conditions to assess colour accuracy in a standards-compliant physical viewing solution.
We’ll also show you how and when to integrate these tools as part of your workflow, to get the best results for your project.
Tried & Tested
Workflows is a consultancy first and foremost, working with clients to find the best solution for their particular requirements. Where product recommendations are made, these are always based on that initial assessment, and take account of factors from working environment through to budget, whilst also ensuring there are alternatives to consider.
