Personally, I am not a big fan of using templates. My personality likes to have each creation look different. That is not to say that templates are bad, they are really cool and a big time saver. It is more of my own personal hang up and part of my maximizer personality trait.

Not using template does mean time consuming computer work. You have probably read in previous articles that I am becoming a more efficient business person. What is one to do?

I mix it up. I have one product that is a template that every client who orders that product, gets the same look-exactly. Everyone is happy.

I have another product that involves eight images on an 11×24 framed piece and I sort of can not use a template for. This product feels like it should be different for everyone. The different images for each subject also call for a different feel, size, and format. But what I did was save my own design as a template for myself. Now I pull up my template, drag and drop the images, change the background color under the overlay (like we talked about two weeks ago), change my stroke color and I am done.

Christmas card templates never seem to work for me either. My clients want customization as well. I take parts of different templates to create my own custom card to fit my client’s photos. This saves me hours of design time, gives the client a visual of the idea, and I end up with a cool new design.

Again, a great resource for professional use templates for photographers is http://www.mylilcreations.com/

Google “professional use templates for photographers” and check out your own color lab. Many labs are providing or selling templates too.I can’t believe I used to start from zero each time. How inefficient of me!