In the fast-paced, high-demand world of post-production, there is a general formula every operations manager and team member should be aware of when it comes to optimizing retouching workflows. The complexity of studio operations demands a set of parameters to ensure any post-production team’s success. This may seem like an idealistic approach, yet in a digital production world of high expectations—built around creating dynamic, consistent, and accurate content, meeting deadlines, and maximizing budgets—ideals are where our goals should begin.

It starts with the visual content’s supply chain centered around planning and information—ideally at the source, merchants, then their strategic partners in marketing. Once this connection is established, other key elements like standardization, processes, software and equipment, training, and teamwork should fall into place. Let’s delve into each step that leads toward optimal post production productivity:

Planning & Information: 

• This is vital as the retouching team has upstream and downstream dependencies. If your team’s efforts aren’t communicated and interconnected with your partners, the work becomes siloed and reactive instead of proactive, efficient, and scalable. Without this standard and a model based around interdependent departments, budget expectations are often not met, quality suffers, and team burnout becomes the byproduct.

• The information obtained should be based around your retouching team’s bandwidth – how many projects, estimated annual retouched assets, timelines, and expectations. This helps the team plan and expand and contract when necessary, reducing bottlenecks and ensuring on-time delivery.

Standardization:

• Standardizing retouching processes helps with resources, timelines, and deliverables immensely. From compatible technologies to naming conventions, ensuring all procedures are followed helps create uniformity, streamline processes, and increase quality, consistency, and specifications in final assets. While leading post-production for two major brands, we often struggled with Digital Techs incorrectly naming files, which created difficult image searches for multiple departments who utilized our DAM. I suggested an automated process to link product names, provided by merchants using a dropdown menu, to our studio shot lists, thus eliminating misnamed files moving forward.

Process:

• Developing process documentation illustrating specific iterative processes based on the needs of the company is a critical onboarding and training tool shared with new hires, freelancers, and vendors.

• Creating a retouch document addressing asset specifications and requirements, helpful tips from senior internal retouchers, and color references helps drive consistency and quality. It also reduces redundant internal or external tasks, increasing productivity.

Software & Equipment: 

• Possessing more robust systems and software that involve automation reduces manual efforts and streamlines digital workflows while being time-saving and cost-cutting.

• Project management systems for workflow optimizations can provide organization as well as data, however if you implement a system that’s not automated with your workflow, it becomes redundant, hindering efficiency.

• Being up-to-date with all post production equipment including computers (for processing speed), monitors (for product color, print, and publishing accuracy), light booths (for color accuracy), and product references (for accuracy) is crucial for successful digital workflows. Many retouchers, like me, love their tools, and having the latest and greatest boosts morale and efforts.

Training and Teamwork:

• Assembling the right team through proper management ensures you have retouchers invested in all processes affecting their quality and output.

• Providing team meetings and training to review processes, partner needs, and new software features helps creative teams stay on top of current processes, updated technology, and marketing efforts. Often overlooked in day-to-day operations, this is a necessary piece of the productivity puzzle. I’ve always believed the more your team knows, the more invested they are in each person’s responsibilities, including their own.

Validation of this overall strategy is seen through higher quality and maximized efficiency, measured through metrics from collected data (I’ll expand on metrics in my next article, Managing Retouching in High-Volume Content Production). This is how you optimize retouching workflows, bringing each team member into a flow- a state of optimal performance and a condition where everything clicks so each person can perform at their best.