Actions... wedding albums

So a good friend of mine gave me this idea and have incorporated it into my workflow.

I design my own albums and don't want to create a template everytime. Last week I created a file using the dimensions but I can also add guides to the template and now I have a template that has trim and cut lines. I will add metadata to these files as well and can incorporate that into the action. Sometimes I want to be able to find the album quickly in lightroom as well as make sure that I have my copyright on these images because I upload this to my wedding album company and want to make sure no files get confused. I will show some examples of how I do it.

Last week I created a file with all the info, color space, size, resolution, bit depth. So I will do that again but this time adding the the guides and the metadata (you can also add the metadata qucikly in Lightroom and Bridge after all the files are created for the purpose of getting comfortable with actions why not do it this way and if I can do it all in one step...)

So as the image shows I have now created an action with guides.

Lets add some Metadata to the File. file>file info...

Pretty simple. I have found that all actions are like this. I just need to pay attention to what I do so that I can realize I can create an action to make my life easier. Sometimes I will add another step in the above action and make it specific to that wedding album. Don't forget you can copy that action and change or take out specific steps in any action. For instance I will create a duplicate of the above action, run it, and then delete the "Set file info" in that action and then click the record button and add in additional info or change it for a specific wedding(don't forget to stop recording after that step). After completion of that album I will delete the copied action.

There is a million ways of doing this, so find out what way is comfortable for you.

I have created an album. I have 20 files @ 16 bit and all tiff images. Most album companies don't want huge files so we have to create an action so it will take all those files and flatten it and change it to the format they want. But that will be next week, that one can be a bit trickier.