Today's Guest: Ron Nichols of Ron Nichols Digital Solutions in Grand Ledge, Michigan
Today's Host: Damien Allen
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Ron Nichols Expert PageANNOUNCER: This VTalk Radio Photography Spotlight is brought to you by morephotos.com helping professional photographers with all their internet needs. Welcome to the VTalk Radio Photographer Spotlight.
DAMIEN: Good afternoon and welcome to the VTalk Radio's Photography Spotlight. My name is Damien Allen. Today we are at the Great Lakes Institute of Photography Show at Northwestern Michigan College, and today we are are speaking with Ron Nichols of Ron Nichols Digital Solutions. How are you doing today, Ron?
RON: Great to be here.
DAMIEN: Why don't you tell us a little bit about your business.
RON: Well after spending about 25 years in the photographic business, I was spending a lot of my time out teaching and working doing seminars and going all across the country, and really what happened is I had to start working on efficiency tools for myself. I started out doing things like Photoshop actions and from that actually a hole product line evolved and that's where we came up with Ron X Digital Solutions so right now 100% of my time and my larger staff now is dedicated to creating work flow solutions for portrait and wedding photographers.
DAMIEN: Ok, now when you say a work flow solution for somebody who is just getting into the business what would be work flow? How do you define work flow?
RON: Well our initial premier product is really it's the portrait re-touching palette, and what it does is it gives users a linear approach to portrait re-touching. What it does is it's a floating palette that sits on top of your Photoshop or any application for that matter and what it does is you can simply just go through the list by double-clicking on a key it actually sets up all your tools, brushes, blending modes, opacities, layers, manages everything, and really what it does is turns Photoshop into click and paint. So what happens is that you can take and you can go through this approach and do a step by step approach and not have to know a whole lot about Photoshop, and you're able to do portrait re-touching. Now one of the key features to all of our palette products are that any time you have a question, all you do is click a little video icon and whatever key you're onto it will launch a video either off your local machine or stream from our web servers that shows you exactly how to be able to do the technique.
DAMIEN: So it's a not only a great little crutch to get you through the process of re-touching that picture, it's teaching you how to use Photoshop at the same time? Am I understanding that correctly?
RON: Exactly. It's educational, but it's also a work flow tool. It's all about speed. One of the things that people sell a ton of action sets out there, and when people first look at this, they think it's Photoshop actions. Well it's far beyond Photoshop actions, because it is a separate program and it sends calls using java scripting calls back into Photoshop. With Java scripting, we can actually control far more than you can ever do with Photoshop actions. So being able to take and go the step by step process it appeals to a very, very broad spectrum of users. It applies to people who are brand new, because they don't understand anything about Photoshop and by simply questioning a button, it will set all these different controls for you in Photoshop to be able to do the work. But for somebody who is really good in Photoshop, what you'll find is it's a speed tool, because it moves things along. You'll find that a lot of the top photographers around the country are actually using our palette products to be able to do their portrait re-touching.
DAMIEN: Now besides the pallette project, what other solutions do you offer?
RON: Well some of the other things that we've done is what I've done is I'm working with some of the top photographers around the world to actually go through and to actually be able to take and create palette products for them. For example, Helen Yancy. Helen is very famous for her watercolor interpretations using Painter, and what happens is when Helen goes through and creates an image while working in Painter, she has the hole series and steps that she does in Photoshop first. So her palatte works mine by using Helen's techniques and her videos in there. So you can click through the linear process to be able to prep your file to get ready for Painter. Then you want to go in and actually work in Painter. Now Painter itself is not as sophisticated as Photoshop. We can't control that like we can Photoshop; it doesn't allow us to use scripting calls, but what it's got is it's got a hole series of step by step videos so for example you want lay color into a background. You just click key, it launches the video so you can see how to do it, and it's very, very easy to go back and forth and be very, very interactive. We've got palettes for Tim Walden and they're black & white portraiture. Peter Eastway is an Australian landscape photographer. We've got a pro select tutorial palette which is one for Pro Select which is a sales presentation and work flow tool, and that's something else we can talk about...the cost of part of our product line.
DAMIEN: So, not only are you able to manipulate the images and get them ready for your client, you also have the ability to set up the entire process from leaving your camera, going through the editing process, and getting the sales to the end user?
RON: Actually, where that comes in is another product we work with. It's called Pro Select. Pro Select is a presentation sales and work flow software. It's developed by www.timeexposure.com out of Australia, and we actually teamed up with them about 3 years ago to begin working with them on the software. I'm kind of the main person in the U.S. doing a lot of the design. I don't write any of the code myself, but I'm very familiar with all the studio aspects.
DAMIEN: The idea that man is important.
RON: So anyway, what we are about to do is go through with Pro Select. Once you've got your images on your system, you load them in, it creates proxy images, it gives you an interface to be able to do sorting, be able to do editing. You can then do black and white conversions, sepia tone conversions. We can do Photoshop actions. We can integrate that, and then we can go through and make slide shows. We can export things out to IPOD slide shows. We can export...take images to be able to go out to websites. Then from there we can actually do a client sales presentation, create invoices, we can build albums, we can create multi-image composite products all directly in Photoshop. Then when you go to the production module, you are able to take and merely just push a button and it will actually take and build all this thing up and give you final output files. So what we've been able to do since we've been working with time exposure is to be able to take and actually integrate, not only our palette products back with Pro Select and really create a solution that's actually becoming a studio standard around the country. People are amazed with what it can do and the integrated work flow that it's actually created. We've been very fortunate. I am involved with PPA. I'm actually currently the Vice President of Professional Photographers of America, and I've been working with Studio Management Services there and a lot of their instructors, all of the time basis and everything for working when they're determining pricing and efficiency in the studios are all using our products, because they're key marketing people there have actually determined that we have some of the most efficient things out there, and it really is becoming a standard in photographic studios, much like it did with Photoshop.
DAMIEN: And time is money. What's on the horizon for Ron Nichols Digital Solutions?
RON: Well we're constantly developing products. As a matter of fact, in the next couple weeks, we're going to be releasing a John Hartman Quick Proofs palette, and what that is is many people are familiar with John Hartman out of Wisconsin, and he created what is called Quick Proofs which is for designing proofing books for high school seniors or weddings for multi-image ones, and what we did was we took John's product that he released a few years ago, and actually re-developed it into this huge, robust type of thing for being able to do these multi-image pages, backgrounds, logos, and really be able to quickly produce these books, sends everything right to a printer, right to the lab in just a matter of a few flicks of a button. Some of the other things we've got going. We're working on a product that can actually be used in photographic labs. They've got auto re-touch systems in some of the labs..they're integrated into some of the lab software, and we're actually releasing some things that are going to be more efficient for the labs, allow them to be able to do it at a less of a click charge so that one is in development. We've got some more Painter products that are coming down the line so my development staff is working very, very hard.
DAMIEN: Sounds like a lot of exciting developments coming up. If someone wanted to get a list of your services or perhaps order something, where would they go?
RON: Well the easiest way to get ahold of us right at our website. If you want to go right out to www.ronnichols.com. You can see everything there. We've got movies out there on the products. Almost everything we've got has got free downloads. Most things are fully functional for 30 days. There may be a couple of limitations on a couple of things. Pro Select is available right at www.ronnichols.com, but it makes it so you can go out there and learn. You can get your hands on the products and actually feel with them, and what we found is that once people take and are able to work with these, they're totally amazed. It brings everything together. Our palette products are unique in that what it does is that you can have the techniques of some of the top photographers around the world and it all goes into a single dock that actually would float on your system, and you can click from Ron Nichols to Helen Yancy to Peter Eastway to be able to utilize all these different techniques that are right there, and it makes it very, very easy for your staff to get up and running on these things. It's going to save you time and money.
DAMIEN: Sounds like some completely wonderful products, and we really appreciate you spending time with us today, Ron.
RON: Well thanks a lot. It's great to be here; great to be back up and seeing all my friends here that I've know for many, many years.
DAMIEN: And once again, if you need more information on these products you can go to www.ronnichols.com. You have been listening to the VTalk Radio's Photography Spotlight live from the Great Lakes Institute of Photography Show at Northwestern Michigan College in Traverse City, Michigan. Thanks for joining us again, Ron. Have a great afternoon folks.
ANNOUNCER: You have been listening to the VTalk Radio's Photography Spotlight; only www.vtalkradio.com on Radio for the 21st Century.