Shop and payment
Actions and scripts
The website
For a start, it's good to have a general idea about MindfulRetouch.com and what's going on here. Let's get acquainted! There's a separate page with detailed info about me HERE (LINK). To keep things short: my name is Anastasia, and I've been working in e-commerce for 8 years. I know how to retouch product images in a fast, cost-effective manner, and I know how to make this process nice and profitable for both the employer and the employee. When I say "we at MindfulRetouch.com", I mean myself and my colleagues, but most of the text on this website is written by me.
Ever tried googling product image retouching, how to make background white quickly, how to align images to make them fit some margins, how to make 100 images in a day? Well, until June 2019 there was little to no relevant coherent information. Now it's all here. All the secrets and tools of the trade. And you know what? 100 images in a day is not such a great result. It's possible to retouch much faster than that, but it also depends on the image quality, of course. Check out this video below if you think I'm exaggerating.
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Five images in one minute, I'm not kidding! How is that possible? With all the automation, all the scripts and actions I've made, of course.
But that's not all that matters. It's really good when you have actions and scripts to replace the background with white, remove moire, clean the background if you need it, make skin smoother without any selections or masks, things like that. But that's not what makes you a professional. Learning how to retouch, that's what's important.
And I'm glad to assure you that this subject has been covered completely in my course dedicated to product image retouching for online stores. You can find it right here, on this website, as well as all the automation necessary to retouch images quickly and efficiently, just the way it should be.
Free stuff
It's always good to know what's free and what's not free when you're visiting a website that has paid content. Let's get this straight: there's a lot of free stuff here – articles, videos, even actions and scripts. Make sure you see everything available for free before you consider purchasing anything – this way you'll be sure you're getting exactly what you need.
As for the course, well, good news. It's totally free, no tricks. Visit the Table of Contents (LINK) and you'll see how big and detailed it is. Trust me, it will take you more than two weeks to study, so take your time and please, enjoy.
There's more than just free education here. There's also free automation! It's not just the information in the free videos that show how to write actions and even scripts. There are free actions in the shop as well! For example, the Sharpen and Save action pack (LINK) is worth 0$. Same with the Colorizing action set (LINK) – it's free.
And for the premium actions, where you might sit and think whether you're really ready to pay such a steep price, there are free test versions (LINK). Try them out to be completely sure before the purchase!
The course
The retouching system that I've managed to establish was and is used in many online stores even as I write these words. More than 2 million of goods were retouched and put online with its help, and more than 50 retouchers produce hundreds of images daily by using it. The approach has proven itself to be very efficient when it comes to product image editing, when you need to retouch images by the hundreds under strict deadlines. Anyone who learns how to do will be able to increase their retouching speed greatly. More images per working day – more money. It's as easy as that.
Video courses are great fun for sure, but if that's what you're looking for, well, you'll be disappointed. I'm not here to entertain. This whole website is a huge textbook where you can learn by reading, watching videos and practicing at your own pace. There's about 11 hours worth of video material, more than 260.000 words (video captions included) and 200 images. You can find all the necessary information quickly instead of clicking through endless videos while trying to remember when exactly you heard what you're looking for.
There's nothing wrong with the videos, and the quality is good enough. It's just that you need to make sure Vimeo doesn't mess it up. By default, the quality is set depending on your connection speed. Click on the gear icon and switch it to 1080p. You should also watch all the videos in the fullscreen mode. However, as the MPEG video format is lossy, there will be some quality loss due to all the compression. Because of that, you should try the techniques being explained on your own images to be able to see everything properly.
Sorry, no. You can't retouch LIKE a pro, you're either a pro or not. When courses promise you that, it's just clickbait. Besides, this "pro" word is so hackneyed nowadays. But if you're looking for a place where you can study hard to master catalogue retouching, you've found one.
Mindfulness is the most important thing in the world. Being mindful means to be constantly aware of what's going on with you and around you. In retouching, being mindful of what you're doing and why is the thing that makes you responsible, reliable, and attentive. Otherwise, you're just sitting there pressing buttons, never aware of how things work. I'm not preaching about how everyone has to be mindful, though, I just find it necessary for any human being.
This is not a course for beginners. You have to be at least familiar with Photoshop to benefit from the information available here. They don't teach ABC in the universities, and I don't teach how to create new documents and stuff like that in Photoshop.
Because it will make you earn more money. In catalogue retouching, the wages are usually image-based, not hour-based. Without understanding how to retouch fast and without any automation, how many images can you produce in a day? A hundred? Too bad. By implementing my methods, you'll be able to retouch at least twice as much depending on the technical demands. Double the image count, double the pay.
In catalogue retouching, any number between 50 and 1000 would be true, it all depends on the images and what needs to be done with them. Our main priorities are speed, average quality, and consistency, and we have to be cost-effective. So no, we don't do any fancy retouching in this industry, and 20 images is just laughable, as it's more like 200 on average.
I'll be honest with you and tell you straight away: making unwilling retouchers learn something as hard as this course is not such an easy task. But that doesn't mean you can't benefit from the website. What I offer here is not just information, but my expertise and guidance as well. For now, all the products in the shop provide but a single license that cannot be used by companies. You can buy a license for every retoucher, of course, but I have a better idea: contact me at info@mindfulretouch.com and I'll see what I can do for you. Building and implementing automation for online stores was my job for so many years after all!
Shop and payment
That's because I'm a citizen of Russia and my shop is technically located in Russia and is governed by Russian laws. That's not convenient, I know, but shouldn't be a problem either. If you are visiting the website from any country but Russia, you should be seeing all the prices in USD.
However, during the checkout, you will be paying the same amount in Russian Rubles, as required by the payment processor that I use.
Bank cards or PayPal. The transactions are secure, they are not processed by my website, but by PayPal and Yandex depending on the method you choose. We accept Visa, Master Card, Maestro, Мир, American Express, and JCB.
No. As all the products are digital, a possibility to get your money back would mean that anyone could just download all they need and then request a refund. That's why you should be absolutely sure you understand what you are buying and how you will benefit from the purchase. Contact me at info@mindfulretouch.com if you have any other questions.
Actions and scripts
What you buy is digital products or better files that you will be able to download an save on your computer's hard drive. But you should treat them just like any other products meaning that you shouldn't carelessly delete them or, on the contrary, share with your friends. The digital products available on MindfulRetouch.com are protected by copyright law.
Yes, you are expected to have Photoshop installed on your computer to benefit from the products presented on MindfulRetouch.com. They are scripts and actions and they require you to have Adobe Photoshop CC 2017, 2018 or 2019 (older versions have not been tested) to be able to run them.
No, and yes. The minimum required is to be able to run actions and scripts. If you've never done this before, make sure you study through the Automation in Photoshop (LINK) chapter first. But without understanding how it all works, running actions can be a disappointing experience. Most complaints I got came from inexperienced users, and despite the fact that I was always able to resolve all the issues, it's evident that the less you know, the more problems you might and will have when trying to implement automation into your workflow. If you're new to product image retouching, I encourage you to study through the course (LINK) before actually buying anything else.
All the actions and scripts are Mac-compatible and will work under both macOS and Windows.
Because my actions and scripts are awesome. If you need sky overlays, flower frames, flaming letters, Lightroom presets and things like that – sure, they are cheap as peanuts. But that stuff doesn't make you more productive. If you're retouching for online stores, every second you save is money for you. With my automation, I've increased retouchers' capacity from 50% to 200% depending on what kind of work they did. If you count how much more you would earn in a month if you could retouch two times faster while keeping the same quality or better, I doubt you would still think my actions are that expensive.
Yes. All the actions and scripts are only supposed to run on RGB 8-bit images. Some actions are only supposed to be run on the Background layer of a flattened image. Some scripts require an active selection or an alpha-channel available to run properly. But if a script or an action needs some specific conditions to function properly, it will be mentioned in the respective instruction.
In product image retouching or better mass image productions for online stores, keeping things easy is essential. I doubt anyone would be able to retouch 500 images in a single working day if they had to organize a bunch of layers and masks for every image. I explained the idea thoroughly here (LINK). And if you are in desperate need of non-destructiveness and reversibility, contact me at info@mindfulretouch.com. I will make a custom version for you.
All the actions and scripts I provide have been tested by me and many other people. I wouldn't get far if my scripts deleted random files, would I? Every product has a detailed description and it's always stated there what exactly each action and script does and why. They don't do anything other than that. But yes, if you resize an image to 10 by 10 pixels and save with one of my scripts, technically it would ruin the image beyond repair. That's why the Terms and Conditions (the document you have to agree with before purchase) states that I would not be held liable for any damages caused by any of the scripts or actions (including but not limited to computer hardware, software, loss of data, loss of profits, or business interruption). Just read the instructions and the descriptions before you buy or run anything on your computer.
Of course! If there's a bug, something doesn't work etc., feel free to contact me at info@mindfulretouch.com anytime. I will also do my best to keep my products up to date if Adobe releases a new Photoshop version. I will also be updating the course if I find it necessary.
No. As the products are digital, a possibility to get your money back would mean that anyone could just get the products for free, as there's no way to know whether a person keeps using them or just deleted all the files they received. That's why you should be absolutely sure you understand what you are buying and how you will benefit from the purchase. Watch all the videos and read all the details carefully. Contact me at info@mindfulretouch.com if you have any other questions.
That's easy. Just contact me! Despite being busy with all these website materials, I am a living person and I love e-mails. You can write me a letter and attach some images, and ask any additional questions. I'll test my actions on your images and tell you whether you should buy them or not. The last thing I want is unsatisfied customers, so don't be shy to contact me at info@mindfulretouch.com
Contact me at info@mindfulretouch.com. If your situation requires just a bit of tweaking on my side, I'm sure I'll be able to provide you with actions and scripts that do exactly what you need.
If you haven't bought Photoshop, I can't guarantee that my actions and scripts will work on your computer. You never know. So, purchase at your own risk! If something doesn't work in cracked versions of Photoshop, I will not be held liable in any way because of that. Same with the language, but at least you can always switch to English if that's the case. There's one way to check if you can run my actions on your Photoshop: try the free actions or the test versions of premium actions and you'll see. If you can run them, you'll most probably be able to run them all. But no promises here.
No. Every action pack or set available for purchase in the shop is not supposed to be copied or distributed in any way. Before you purchase any of the action sets provided by MindfulRetouch.com, you get to read the license agreement, and you've got to agree with it to proceed with the purchase. It's a single-user license, which means only the person who made the purchase gets to use the products. But don't worry, I've been managing retouching departments long before I started working on this website. Contact me at info@mindfulretouch.com, and I will provide you with an automation solution depending on your particular needs. Scripts and actions made just for you – what can be better than that?
No. Or yes. Here's how it works: the *.jsxbin scripts that are encoded cannot be opened and modified, and they are not supposed to be modified in any way. They are my intellectual property and they are protected by the copyright laws. But there are actions that can be theoretically modified because there's no encryption to stop you even if I wanted to. I see no harm if you modify something for your own convenience, and sometimes I even encourage you to do so in the instructions. But you can't sell either original, or modified actions or scripts (when they are open source), you can't call them yours, and you can't copy them and distribute among other people. It's also a good idea to save the original actions somewhere in case you need some technical support – I won't be able to help if anything stops working after modification. There's more information about that in the license agreement you're supposed to accept when you purchase or download any products from MindfulRetouch.com, so make sure you read that. I would only be happy if my products help you to learn and develop your own products, it's just that we all should respect each other's rights.
Actions and scripts installation guide
To be able to benefit from the action packs MindfulRetouch.com provides, you need to install them first. Action packs might include three kinds of automation-related files. Let's see what these file types are and how to install each of them.
The first thing you need to do is open the zip folder that your action pack or set is located in. That's what you downloaded from the website. Now, let's check inside and see what files are there.
If you see a file with the “atn” extension – that's a Photoshop action set. Each set may contain several actions or just one, but it doesn't matter. What matters is that Photoshop can recognize this file type, so all you need to do is to open it in Photoshop. But before we do that, let's make sure the Actions panel is active, because we'll need it soon anyway.
Go to the Window menu and make sure that the Actions command has a checkmark next to it. If not, click on it. After that, you'll be able to find the Actions panel among your panels.
See this button in the upper right corner of the panel? It's there to give you access to the menu. Click on it. There's the “Load actions” command, and if you click on it, you'll get a window where you have to find the action set you got from MindfulRetouch.com – it will be in the folder you've downloaded it to. Find it and load it.
There's another way how you can load actions: just double-click the *.atn file right in the File Explorer, or drag it to Photoshop window when it's opened, and it will be loaded automatically.
However! It's easy to forget where you've put the action files after you've loaded them, and it's easy to lose them in case Photoshop resets itself or something like that, which is unlikely, but still possible. Make sure you make a backup of all the files you got from MindfulRetouch.com in case you ever need them again.
After you've loaded an action set, you can open it and access any actions inside it. For every action set, there's a special kind of action that always comes first, and it's called “HOW TO USE!!!”. Run it and you'll see a message or messages that will tell you all you need to do to be able to use the action or actions properly.
Scripts that can be viewed and edited as code have the “jsx” extension. If you wish to edit and write scripts all the time, it might be worth installing a script editor. Adobe offers one for free. It's called ESTK (ExtendScript Toolkit) and you can find it on their website. But if it's just to have a quick look, you can use any text editor to open a *.jsx file. Even the simplest editors, like Notepad, will do.
An open source script is just a few strings of text. Even if you are not a programmer, you might be able to understand it and even change it to make the script suit your needs better. Make sure you remember that and don't confuse free-to-read-and-edit *.jsx scripts with the other kind of scripts.
It doesn't mean you have to open them anywhere, of course. It's just necessary to install them so that when actions call for their respective scripts, no error occurs. You'll learn how to do that in just a moment, let's just get finished with the different kinds of scripts first.
These files are just like the *.jsx scripts, but you can't open them and see what's inside because everything is encrypted. But you can still run them in Photoshop, and here's how you do it with both *.jsx and *.jsxbin files:
MindfulRetouch actions use scripts when it's necessary, and they call scripts by their names. To make Photoshop recognize the scripts when they are called, all you need to do is copy all the *.jsx and *.jsxbin files in a special folder.
Windows users will find it here:
C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop (***your version here***)\Presets\Scripts
Mac users will find it here:
Macintosh HD:Applications:Adobe Photoshop (***your version here***):Presets:Scripts
That's all. Just copy the files there and restart Photoshop. You will be able to use all the actions that require scripts to be run properly.
However, if you wish to edit any scripts later on, you'll have to move them somewhere else first, as the Scripts folder is read-only. But if you're not going to do that, you can just leave them there.
And don't forget to make a backup!
Whenever you download any scripts or actions from the website, you need to do two things:
- Load the actions in the Actions panel in Photoshop
- Put the scripts in the Scripts folder in Photoshop installation directory
And that's it! Thank you! If any problems with the installation arise, make sure you contact me at info@mindfulretouch.com!