I recently had the opportunity to take an amazing one day workshop on digital photography workflow from Mac Holbert, co-founder of Nash Editions, widely known as the world’s first digital printmaking studio focusing solely on photography. Prior to Nash Editions, Mac Holbert was the Tour Manager for the music group Crosby, Stills & Nash. He co-founded Nash Editions with Graham Nash in 1987. If you aren’t familiar with Nash Editions or Mac Holbert I recommend reading this interview by John Paul Caponigro. John and Mac are both instructors with the Epson Print Academy.

Mac Holberts’s workshop revolutionized how I approach my workflow in Photoshop. While Mac knows and willingly shares a wide range of Photoshop actions, adjustments and techniques, it is his suggestions for how to organize and approach the digital photography workflow that I found most enlightening. As the saying goes, “give a man a fish and he eats for a day, teach a man to fish and he eats for life”. Mac refers to specific Photoshop techniques as the fish, but a well organized and purposeful work flow as knowing how to fish. He also points out that with a program as powerful as Photoshop, there are many ways to get to any single photoshop destination, but having a well organized workflow ensures that you don’t end up at the wrong destination, such as with damaged pixels or with workflow steps that can’t be reversed.

Mac emphasizes that the digital workflow should begin with adjustments that directly affect pixels (those not made on adjustment layers) and more global adjustments and then proceed toward more and more localized adjustments. He also suggests that your Photoshop layer stack be organized to reflect this progression.

A workflow following this type of progression might go something like this: start with adjustments that affect pixels, such as cloning, noise reduction and perspective adjustments. Then proceed to global tonal and color adjustments (made with curves adjustment layers) such as setting the black point, gray point, global contrast and global brightness. After those adjustments are made it is time to start targeting smaller regions of the image that need adjusting such as regional dodging and burning and targeted tone, saturation and contrast adjustments. Finally, the workflow is finished up with specific “spot” adjustments such as manual dodging and burning, tonal adjustments, midtone enhancement, local sharpening and so on.

Keeping the layer stack organized to reflect this progression is paramount. The following graphic is the one the Mac uses to give a basic illustration of what a well organized layer stack might look like.

My old workflow, largely self-taught, generally allowed me to achieve what I wanted with an image, but it was highly haphazard and disorganized, and I often worked myself into corners or created hard to resolve issues. I knew that there was a better, more efficient and less damaging approach. Mac’s suggetions were just what I was looking for. If you ever get the chance to attend one of Mac’s workshops, through the Epson Print Academy or elsewhere, I highly recommend it.