Ellie Vayo's Guide to Boudoir Photography

I use Photo One from Granite Bear to manage all of my studio opera-

tions. This program tracks our workflow, sales, appointment scheduling,

employee time sheets, customer data, and more. As a studio owner, this

program is one I couldn’t do without.

Labs, Printers, and Scanners.

It’s tough to beat the quality produced by a professional color lab. I send

almost all of my images to a professional lab. Occasionally, a print will come

back with unacceptable color. Whenever this happens we have to deter-

mine if this was a lab error or a processing error on our part. Make sure you

keep your monitors calibrated to your lab’s specifications. My lab knows

that I like very rich, vibrant color, so they print my images accordingly. I

do have a printer at the studio that I use for odd jobs, certain promotional

pieces, and anything that needs to be done right away. I use the Epson

Stylus Pro 4000 for any in-house printing. The color of the prints looks

great, and the software is easy to use. The printer can print on a roll, but

I normally use precut luster paper for my images.

My studio doesn’t scan many images since we’ve been working digitally

for several years now. Occasionally, clients want us to scan in old images or

we’ll need to scan some of our old prints. We use an Epson Perfection

1200 Pro for scanning prints. We use a Nikon Super Coolscan 8000 for

scanning film. These scanners work fine for our purposes. If you are doing

a lot of photo restoration, you’ll want to get an updated model.

I’m often asked if I use a Macintosh or PC. My studio’s first computer

was a PC, and we’ve stuck with that system for our network over the years.

I do have employees who work on Macintosh computers, but I use a PC

for business purposes. I haven’t noticed any difference between images

that were processed using a Macintosh and those that were processed using

a Windows operating system. Use the computer that works most efficiently

for you.

POSTPRODUCTION 85

It is tough to beat the

quality produced by a

professional color lab.