Automated Editing with QuickStep

October 1, 2014 Dave Allen

Save Time Editing with QuickStep Automation

PhotoPrep has a feature called QuickStep that can customize and run a set of editing steps with one mouse click. This gives you the speed and consistency of automation plus the ability to review and adjust the photo in the editor. 

 

Editing Product Photos is a Lot of Work 🙁

We’re not talking about editing photos for sharing with family and friends, or as a hobby. That can be fun! Editing photos for your business is work. You want to do it right but not spend too much time on each photo.

  1. Editing photos is a very repetitive, labor-intensive, time-consuming process!
  2. Every photo needs at least some editing. Unless you are lucky enough to have a photographer who gives you perfectly exposed and composed photos, you will have some ‘post-processing’ work to do.
  3. Every photo must be reviewed carefully to make sure it reflects well on your business.

 

QuickStep Can Help!

 

Before and After example of QuickStep command.

Before and After example of QuickStep in action. The Before photo is right from the camera. The After photo shows Crop plus QuickStep doing: Auto Color Balance, Auto Contrast, Boost Contrast, Resize, Sharpen and Add Text. Click to enlarge

 

Here is an example of running QuickStep. The After image shows the result of running six commands with one click.

 

Editing Manually vs Editing With QuickStep

Editing Manually

 

To edit this photo manually I did the following steps:

  1. Crop
  2. Auto Contrast
  3. Boost Contrast Manually – a bit
  4. Auto Color Balance
  5. Resize – to eBay recommended size
  6. Sharpen – a bit
  7. Add Text – my watermark
Total: 18 mouse clicks and about 60 seconds per image (give or take)

 

Editing with QuickStep

Using QuickStep I only need to do these steps:

  1. Crop
  2. QuickStep (QuickStep does steps 2 through 7 above)
Total :  3 mouse clicks and about 10 seconds per image

Conclusion:  you save almost one minute per photo. Multiply that by the number of photos you need to edit and the savings add up…

 

Setting Up Quickstep – A Step-By-Step Guide

Now lets see how to set it up. It takes few minutes to set up but once that’s done you won’t need to change it very often.  

QuickStep panel

The QuickStep Panel  Click to enlarge

 1) Open the QuickStep Panel

  1. In the PhotoPrep Editor click on Advanced, then Quickstep.
  2. Note the ? icon in the upper right of the panel – that opens a Help screen.

 

QuickStep Setup Dialog

The QuickStep Setup Dialog Click to Enlarge

 2) Set up Your QuickStep ‘Script’

  1. Click Setup in the panel. That opens the QuickStep Setup dialog.
  2. Click on each command that you want to use. If the command needs setting up, do so and Save the settings.
  3. Two of the commands have no settings, they are just on/off ( Auto Contrast and Auto Color).
  4. Lets see an example of setting up one command: Resize
    1. Click on Resize in the settings dialog. Its just like Resize in the Editor.
    2. Pick the desired size, for example eBay Recommended.
    3. Now Save the settings for Resize
  5. Repeat that process for the rest of the commands you want to run.
  6. Make sure the commands that you want are checked off. The checked commands will be included in the script.
  7. Then Save the QuickStep script. This will close the Setup dialog.

 

3) Run Your Script to Try It Out

  1. We are back at the QuickStep panel.
  2. Click Run to see what happens when your run all the commands.
  3. If you like the results, you are done! Click Apply to save the edits.
  4. If not, click Reset and go back to Setup to adjust your script.

 

A Few Notes About QuickStep
  • QuickStep is just a command like any other. What you are doing is stacking as set of commands to run with one click.
  • The commands run in the order you see in Setup.
  • You can always Cancel if you want or Undo after running it.
  • There is only one Script saved, IE in the current product you cannot have more than one script for different uses.
  • It helps if you have tried the commands in the editor before setting it up so you know what they do.

 

The QuickStep button on the editor toolbar

The QuickStep button on the editor toolbar. Clicking this button runs the current QuickStep command. Click to Enlarge

4) Running QuickStep 

Once it’s set up you can run QuickStep from two places:

  • The QuickStep panel as you just did OR
  • From the editor toolbar (see screenshot).