Dan Margulis is known worldwide as a leading specialist in color grading. He is the author of the bestseller Photoshop for Professionals, which, since its first release in 1994, has become an unofficial Bible for professional photography retouching. In 2013, Dan Margulis released a new book, “Prepress Resources,” which describes accelerated prepress and printing techniques.
Color grading master biography
In the past, he was a professional manager with over 20 years of experience heading electronics departments in high-end retail stores. He then gave small hands-on color grades in the US, Canada, and Europe in four different languages. Dan Margulis’s book, Photoshop for Professionals, is still a desktop book for many photographers who understand the basics of color grading. Now retired, he continues to teach and speak at conferences from time to time. In September 2001, Margulis became one of the first people to appear in the National Association of Photoshop Professionals Hall of Fame.
Dan Margulis and advanced color grading technology in Photoshop
In 2007, he introduced a radical approach to color grading called Picture Postcard Workflow (PPW). Instead of the traditional method of using only a set of curves to adjust colors in contrast, PPW consists of three main steps: one to eliminate color imperfections, the second to add contrast, and the third to change the color to a nice one.
Initially, this tool was created to accelerate the processing of materials in the printing industry. There was a need to create a method for achieving quality results in five minutes or less. It was clear that for this it would be necessary to make some compromises, since traditional professional color correction requires much more time for image processing.
As it turned out, the result, as a rule, is superior in quality to traditional methods. In March 2013, Dan Margulis published his book, Prepress Resources, which contains detailed descriptions of prepress settings and tools.
PPW Panel
Since 2007, the basics of this method have not changed, but various additions have appeared in the new versions. Many actions were reduced to a few simple steps, and some, on the contrary, became more complicated. In September 2011, a special panel was released that combined all the actions and commands used in the workflow, arranged in a logical order.
Each action can be played with one click. The panel includes extensive PDF documentation for each of the actions, as well as an overview of the entire panel. In addition, although some of these actions involve fifty or more steps and, therefore, completely fill the image history buffer, they were all written to be considered a single state of the history so that they can be undone with the Z key. The panel includes adjusting the curves using the traditional Photoshop curve dialog, rather than the one introduced in Photoshop CS4.
PPW Panel Version History
Version 2.0 was released in March 2012, 2.1 was released in May. Version 3.0 was introduced in March 2013, along with the publication of a workflow book. Version 3.3, with minor modifications, was released on October 16, 2013.
After an open beta period, version 4.0.5, the first with Photoshop Photoshop support, was released on January 1, 2015. In later updates, new features do not appear, only compatibility with later Photoshop is added. Version 4.0.9, the first to support Photoshop CS 2014, was released on January 18, 2016. Version 4.1, which supports Photoshop 2015.5, was released on June 26, 2016. And Version 4.1.1, which adds support for Photoshop SS 2017, was released on November 5, 2016.
What is included in the PPW panel
The program package contains an installer that downloads the entire set of actions, full documentation of each action, and the panel itself with PPW operations. The panel cannot be used with a version released earlier than Photoshop CS5, but some operations and documentation can be downloaded separately.
Installation in Photoshops CS5, CS6 or CC requires a corresponding version of Adobe Extension Manager. AEM utility is automatically installed with Photoshop CS5 and CS6, but in some versions there may be an outdated program, so it will have to be updated. After installing the package, you can use the operations for retouching photographs, prepress and printing.