Nathaniel Wildes Workflow Optimization Project Project focus: Using Technology Project Description: I will identify areas within

my routine workday that could benefit from the implementation of technology. Once identified, I will research tools available that could increase the efficiency of these common processes and optimize my daily workflow. I plan to target tasks that I perform regularly that are time consuming and repetitive in nature. I will then experiment with technology that could automate or streamline the process. I chose this project because it would be of great benefit to me in all aspects of my daily life. I currently work two former full-time positions with part-time hours for the college so the responsibilities and workload remain the same, however the time allotted to complete the tasks has been cut in half. On top of this, I have a self-owned production business (photo, audio/video & design) and am servicing more clients now than ever before, a family to provide and support including two children under the age of 4 and I have just returned to school to complete my masters degree. At the conclusion of this project, I expect that I will discover tools/resources that I would have wished I had utilized much sooner. As a Technical Support Coordinator and Web Master for the college, I use technology for nearly everything that I do. Even so, I feel that there are areas in my workflow that can be improved to increase my personal effectiveness. I will estimate the time saved per task as well as the effectiveness of each tool implemented. Project Artifacts: List of the tasks and or areas in which workflow could be improved Chart displaying the estimated amount of time savings per task with new technology implemented Documentation detailing the overall effectiveness of each technology utilized A list of links to further information on each of the tools used in the project

Project Timeline: Start Date- 10/4/11 Milestone 1- Identify tasks/areas within daily workflow that could use improvement Milestone 2- Identify potential tools that could save time and or increase the effectiveness of these tasks Milestone 3- Implement tools and record the estimated time saved and effectiveness Finish Date- 11/29/11

ARTIFACTS: LIST OF TASKS (Areas of workflow targeted for potential optimization) Overall computer speed/processing & rendering Copying and pasting between multiple windows Renaming and organizing files and folders Editing photos Font selection & management Audio & video conversion DETAILS (Documentation of actual implementation)
COMPUTER OPTIMIZATION The first step in this overall process to speed up my workflow was to make sure that my computer was running at an optimal speed. I was able to locate a number of online resources and freeware that clear out unnecessary files and processes. To name a few there was approximately 5 gigabytes of foreign language support/files within the system library that I would never use, a lot of the extra animations and stylistic effects that consume memory were removed and deactivating applications that were set to initialize upon startup. I didnt see any significant results in CPU performance, but it was a necessary step nonetheless. COPYPASTE PRO CopyPaste Pro is an application that enables you to copy multiple words, images, sounds, ect. to a clipboard where they are archived for quick reference and can then paste them into any application. This is especially useful for copying and pasting multiple pieces of information into several different locations. Before implementing this program into my work flow I would often times find myself jumping back and forth between multiple windows, copying and pasting one piece of information at a time. For example, if I needed to transfer information from an online source into a spreadsheet, I would copy one field at a time and paste it into Excel cell by cell. Now with CopyPaste Pro, I can copy all the information within one window [without having to leave the window to paste] and then simply click within the spreadsheet and select the items that I would like to paste by clicking on the list from within the clipboard, all the while still having control within the application that Im pasting to. This program is as straightforward as it gets and is extremely effective. It will even preserve multiple font styles and colors from the original copied text. I also tried a similar application called iCopy, but wasnt satisfied with the results. When I copied text to the clipboard it would sometimes react irregularly and make multiple copies and this just impeded my workflow. Upon searching for a comparable alternative I found CopyPaste Pro.

Tasks without CopyPastePro Depending on the size of the task, I would spend an average of 3 seconds per item when having to copy it from one window and then paste it into a separate window. That is 300 seconds per 100 items or 5 minutes if I were working non-stop. With CopyPastePro I can copy all of the necessary items from one window. Thats is 1 second an item for 100 items or a little over 1 and a half minutes. It then requires another second per item to paste them into the designated window, so this is equivalent to another minute and a half per 100 items totaling a little over 3 minutes for a total time savings of approximately 2 minutes per 100 items and preserving my sanity. AUTOMATOR Automator is a program, which automates tasks through a drag & drop workflow interface. It works with a variety of different applications and can even be implemented in conjunction with third party software. Some of the tasks that one might use Automate for include: renaming files, finding linked images, preset email responses, printing documents, playing a specific playlist of music, or launch multiple websites all in one click. Tasks without Automator I recently had to rename about 70 audio files for use on the Internet. In order to make them internet ready, all of the spaces needed to be removed and all capital letters needed to be changed to lower case. If I were to do this by hand it would take me around 5 seconds per file or approximately 6 minutes just to rename files. With Automator I was able to drag and drop this process from a pre-set menu and apply it to an entire folder in less than a minute. Now that I have this process saved I can use it in the future to rename files to make them web compatible in less than a couple seconds regardless of the amount of files. ADOBE BRIDGE Often times I have to edit or make adjustments to multiple photos after a photo shoot or when preparing images for integration into the web. When shooting in a studio environment, your settings usual remain the same throughout the shoot. Upon completion of the shoot and uploading the photos to the workstation, you need to make some subtle adjustments to your photographs, whether it be lighting, contrast, color, ect. When you have 100 plus photos that need the same adjustments it can become a tedious task. This is where batch processing with Adobe Bridge and Photoshop come into play. It works is by recording your steps as you make your adjustments and saving them as a default set of actions. Now you can take this action set and apply it to an entire folder of images within Bridge and Photoshop will process and save the changes for you. This saves you a substantial amount of time when completing tasks like resizing and compressing images for a web gallery

or increasing the exposure on hundreds of photos of underexposed images. Now that I have this tool at my disposal, I purposely shoot slightly underexposed photos just to be safe, because you can always add light to a photo, but once you overexpose an image you lose all of the detail and the highlights. Average Time Spent without Adobe Bridge On a simple edit such as adjusting the light levels and white balance it would take about 1 minute on average per photograph. Thats over 1.5 hours per 100 photos. On more complex edits, like resizing, cropping, and compressing images for a web gallery I would spend an average of 3 minutes per imagine. Thats 5 hours for 100 images. With Adobe Bridge 1 minute to record initial adjustment and 1 minute for the computer to process the remaining 99 photos, saving me over 1.5 hours. Three minutes for the initial photo and once automated about 2 minutes for the remaining 99 images to be prepared and saved for the web. This saves me almost 5 hours of repetitive editing time or close to $200 of design time on a single project. Implementing Adobe Bridge into my workflow will allow me to price jobs more competitively and increase my profit margins on future jobs. FONT EXPLORER X Font Explorer X is a font organization tool that allows you to group typefaces and create your own organizational structure for managing large font libraries. This is extremely advantageous for a graphic designer when searching for a typeface that suites a particular style or theme. i.e. I can enable or disable font groups that I have established based on keywords or labels that Ive created to categorize the fonts. This saves me the time and hassle of having to scroll through and preview hundreds of fonts when searching for a typeface that fits within a certain design theme. With Font Explorer X, I can toggle which fonts I would like to make active and deactivate those groups that dont match the criteria for a particular job, this way I am only viewing the font sets that have the highest potential of being utilized for the job. You can also save your font library as it is organized on one computer and transfer it to another workstation or place it on a server. This allows you to continue with your workflow on another computer without having to break stride to search, sort, or transfer fonts. This would be of great benefit to a design firm because all of the designers could work from the same organizational font structure insuring they are on the same page from project to project. I also tried another lesser expensive font management system called Font Book, but had mixed results. I liked some of the features like the font preview ability, but it seemed to have licensing conflicts with certain fonts and duplicate files within the font libraries, which in turn deactivated these fonts. I would then have to delete and re-introduce them into the application to reactivate them. I encountered no such issues with Font Explorer X.

Average Time Spent without Font Explorer X Averages 5-10 minutes depending on whether or not I have find a font suitable for the job within my local font library or have to search for one externally. With Font Explorer X Averages between 2-7 minutes. This really adds up when your working with 3-4 different fonts per project and 3-4 projects a day. Based on 1 week time span Without Font Explorer 7.5 minutes With 4.5 minutes Saves 3 minutes per font @3 fonts=9minutes per project @ 3 projects per day = 27 minutes a day x 5 day week = 135 minutes or 2 hours and 15 minutes a week. This is enough time to complete a whole additional project per week. SWITCH AUDIO CONVERTER This is an application that allows you to convert multiple sound files to a different format all at once. This became extremely useful for me because there are some applications that I use to process audio that dont support certain audio formats. I also use this application to compress audio to mp3 format for web use. Without Switch Audio Converter I would use iTunes to convert a song or instrumental and it would take about 10 seconds per song, which isnt bad, but the inconvenience of having to take these duplicate files back out of your library one at a time made this process less than desirable. With Switch Audio Converter I can identify a list of audio files in a matter of seconds (regardless of where they are located on my computer) and designate a new file format and output source/folder to apply to them all and with a click of a button my files are converted and ready for use. The beauty of it is when Im done with the files I can just dump the entire folder in the trash and I dont have to worry about erroneous files floating around in my music libraries. ANY VIDEO CONVERTER PRO Often times I have the need to convert or compress large video files for disc or the web. The main issues that I would encounter during this process would be incompatibility, depreciation in quality, and extensive rendering times. Any Video Converter Pro has eliminated all of these issues for me. It offers all of the video formats for conversion that I will need for now, resulting converted videos suffer from minimal loss of quality, and the processing times are relatively fast in comparison to applications that offer similar features. With AVCP I am also able to create a conversion query for multiple videos so that when one is completed the next conversion begins automatically. This is a great feature because I can designate

one computer for converting video files for the day and I can walk. With other applications I would have to come back and check to see if the conversion was complete for one video before cuing up the following video conversion. Some of the other video conversion applications that I used include Roxio Toast Titanium 11 and Handbrake. Roxio Toast works well as far as ease of use and quality, however the processing times are ridiculously long. There would be occasions where I would have to leave my computer on in excess of 24 hours just to convert one bluray video file. Handbrake is a great program because it is has great options and processing power for free software, however I experienced quality loss and artifacts in many of my converted videos. Without Any Video Converter Pro I would end up throwing discs out and having to reconvert files several times due to loss of quality or conversion errors. It would not be uncommon for large video conversions to last longer than an entire day. With Any Video Converter Pro I can designate several different videos to be converted to several different format independent of one another and batch process them with one click. A large conversion that would take 24 hours with a program like Roxio Toast would probably only take 4-5 hours with AVCP. That a savings of 20 hours! I dont have that kind of time to spare when Im working under tight deadlines on a regular basis.

CHART (Visual representation of estimated time savings)

LINKS
Links to processes Computer Optimization [Link] [Link] Batch Processing Photos in Adobe Bridge [Link] Photoshop Scratch Disk (Faster Rendering of Graphics) [Link] Cleaning up Mac (Freeing up Memory) [Link] [Link] Links to Software Automator [Link] Font Book [Link] Issues with font licensing conflicts and duplicate font files. Font Explorer X [Link] CopyPaste Pro [Link] iCopy [Link] Audio Conversion Switch [Link]

Video Conversion Any Video Converter Pro [Link] Roxio Toast [Link] HandBrake [Link]