Introducing a new product or feature sure keeps us on our toes. In fact sometimes there’s a race between our very switched on customers and us here in tech support to find out what the latest version of Photojunction has to offer.

I would like to say Merry Christmas from our tech support team to everyone who has emailed, talked and done screen sharing sessions with us. We all hope that our efforts made your lives a little easier.

As  you would be aware from recent emails we are lucky enough to have Summer coincide quite nicely with Christmas here. The stockings are hung, the tinsel dusted off, and on the Christmas tree. Also the sunglasses and board shorts are out. Life is good.

Anyway back to my snow globe and the fact I can see the future in it.

What I saw was pretty exciting. Recently we were lucky enough to have a sneak preview of what the little elves in Photojunction’s workshop have been working on. There’s some stuff that’s going to bring a twinkle to many a photographer’s eye.  We might even gift wrap it for you seeing you have been so good this year. But unfortunately you will have to wait until after the holidays to get your hands on it.

So until then be safe, take bit of time away from the camera and computer, give your wife, husband, partner, kids, Mum (Mom), Dad, cat and dog a big hug from us and wish them all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Cheers
Peter

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Now times that anxiety by 4-1/2 million and that was New Zealand in the last two minutes of the Rugby World Cup Final. The game was so tight that it came down to a kick from a fourth-choice reserve player from my little home town of Waiuku to clinch the cup. Stand up and take a bow, Stephen Donald.

Talk about pressure. Now we can breath again.

No we can’t! We have an an earthquake, a shipwreck and an election to think about. Plus Christmas.

At this time of year the pressure’s on everywhere. Not that we’re complaining – most of us love to rise to these big occasions – we just want you to know we’re aiming for the same goal posts as you. Part of your team. Lining you up to touch down or nail that goal or get that album in their waiting hands.

So let’s keep pushing hard till the final whistle. Get the orders in early and keep the lines of communication open. We need to know what’s going on at your end and I’m pretty sure you’d like to know what’s happening at ours. Any questions, or concerns, let us know. We’re here to help.

So congratulations to the All Blacks and commiserations to Les Bleus (the French Rugby team). 8-7 was the final score of a match that was 24 years in the making.

Cheers
Pete

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Ah, no.

“They could change your life”, he said. “Anybody can have a computer now, and just imagine what it could do in your warehouse.”

Back then, managing a boat yard in the Solomons involved importing everything from hammers and nails, and nuts and bolts, to the Caterpillar engines that drove the ten tuna pole and line catcher boats we were building. Our warehouse was a big deal, and we kept all our stock records on 5-inch cards.

Computers never happened in my time in the Solomons, but when Heather’s business started to crank up I quit boat design, and one of the first things I did was to buy an Apple //e and VisiCalc, and computerise our accounts and order processing.

My OP app worked OK, but Apple and accounting didn’t get on in those days, and we had to sleep around a bit. We couldn’t afford the new IBM PC, so I bought a Morrow running CPM and a local accounts package. I liked that machine because when it crashed mid-transaction I could go in and edit the text record manually to balance the books.
Those were the days

But my heart was already Apple’s. God knows how we saw the Superbowl ad in New Zealand – probably on the news – but I wanted a Macintosh. The 128K was a seductive toy, but when the Macintosh Plus came out, and the Laserwriter, and Pagemaker, I was in like Flynn.

We run a Windows and Apple network now, and write cross-platform software, but … my heart belongs to Apple. We’ve stuck with them through thick and thin.

I retired from geekdom when Stephen networked our computers back in the day, and now I’m a happy dumb user. Thank you Stephen, Team PJ, Alkesh, Anna B, the lab geeks and the support crew.

Today I unpacked my new cinema display at home, plugged in my MB Air, cranked up my Parallels upgrade to make sure it ran with Lion, and sat down to read the Herald online while I ate lunch.

The first thing I read was that Steve Jobs had died.

I’ve been working at computers for almost thirty years now. Thank you Steve, and SteveW, for empowering the rest of us. What a different place the world is. RIP.

Ian

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Rugby World Cup fever is gripping New Zealand at the moment, which ties in nicely with my topic (sort of). Twenty teams are here to be beaten by the mighty All Blacks. (Go you good things!)

OK, all the teams want to win, but only one can. Whereas our goal is to deliver the best possible books and albums, so everyone wins. How’s that for cheesy? But we mean it!

We have had an influx of press book orders over the last few months and nearly everybody has been over the moon about them. However not everyone has had the same warm fuzzy feeling.

Why? Often it’s the nature of the product itself.

Press books are books. Not albums. When you design them you need to remember they’re three dimensional. Like all perfect bound books and magazines, the pages curve in to the centre, and Photojunction doesn’t show this very well.

I raised this with our developers and the design team. The dev team have increased the photo safe guides to 10mm from the spine. The designers say that’s helpful, but you can’t depend on it to keep you out of trouble. They’ve written a post of their own about this.

But back to the rugby analogy. Press books are great in that they enable you to design with lots more pages and images, but maybe in your case you need to field a different team. If you love the look, touch and feel of our art papers, but want a lay-flat product, check out our press albums.

Good luck to the boys in Black, and to the other teams and their fans coming down under.

I’ve hidden the remote from my wife and it’s time to sit back and enjoy the fireworks.

Cheers
Pete

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I have a lot of fruit trees at my place but two of my favorites are a Peachcot and a Peacharine. These are cross pollinations between a peach and an apricot and a peach and a nectarine. Individually beautiful to eat, but when you blend the two together you get something special.

The guys at Queensberry and Photojunction have been doing a bit of cross pollinating of their own.

Press albums are the new kid on the block for us. Taking two products, both beautiful in their own right, and blending them together to get something unique and special. The album options of a matted overlay or flushmount style album blended with the texture and feel of art papers printed on our Indigo press.

Wow, bam, lets put them in the blender and come up with a cocktail of pure delight.

If you have a gap in your market between press books and albums, let us fill it for you.

If you have Photojunction 1.53 then check it out. If you don’t here is the link to download.

Contact your account managers for more details.

BTW, while we are using fruit metaphors here’s the cherry on top.

Who’s tried the new film strip aperture tool in PJ yet?

All you need to do is have a series of images in a row on your layout either vertical or horizontal. Select them all, so the apertures are highlighted, then right-clck on them. A pop up menu will appear and one of the options will be Make horizontal film strip, or Make vertical film strip. Photoshop kicks in and merges them together. One aperture from multiple images.

Anyway, some cool stuff to have a look at.

Cheers, Pete

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1. You’ll lose access to all your old PowerPC applications. It’s been six years since Apple transitioned to Intel processors, and with the introduction of OSX Lion you will no longer be able to run PowerPC based software. Rosetta kept the old software running pretty smoothly, so you could be in for a few surprises. For starters I had to upgrade Microsoft Office. Never thought of that!

2. Closer to home, you will no longer be able to run Photojunction Retro (yes, there are still a handful of you out there).

3. There are also people still using Photoshop CS2. That won’t run on PowerPC chips either. But then we’ve already recommended that you abandon CS2.

While we’re on the subject, Photojunction Remix (i.e. the current version) will also stop running on PowerPC Macs one day. Won’t happen any time soon (probably twelve months away or more) but it will happen as our development environment moves to Intel-only.

All in all, it may be time to think about retiring your G4s and other pre-Intel Macs.

Not sure if your Mac has an Intel or PowerPC processor? Apple explains how to find out: http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1531

If you have any questions, please do contact support.

Cheers, Ian

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If you’re using PJ to design Queensberry albums, or not using the functions listed above, you won’t notice any difference.

Only those designing for a handful of vendors are affected, and we understand that those most affected have been working through the transition with their clients.

The vast majority of people use PJ primarily to design and export page layouts. Rest assured that we’ll still be supporting all page types (matted, digital etc) and you’ll be able to export your page layouts for uploading and printing as now.

This process has taken longer than we expected, and we still have more to do in terms of how Photojunction works with third-party vendors, but we’re working on it.

Meantime, you can read more about the story behind these changes by following the links above, and please do contact info@photojunction.com if you have any problems or questions.

Cheers, Ian

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Sorry, I digress. Coach wants me back on the field, keep it short and get over the line.

Come on, Ref, blow the whistle and let’s get started!

6. Alignment tools

OK, I’m cheating a bit here – this isn’t a button but a complete tool kit. But get these working for you and life becomes easy. Here’s a video to get you going.

7. Duplicate button

How often have you got a message saying Aperture A is similar to but doesn’t match aperture B? Which causes the other error message everyone loves, that A and B don’t align! One way to minimize this is to use Duplicate. Select the aperture on your layout that you want to duplicate, and, in the tools window, select Add, or simply type CMMD-D (Apple) or CTRL-D (Windows). Hey presto, two identical apertures and a lot less problems.

8. Open In Editor

This one appears in several locations. Why? Because it’s so good it’s worth repeating. With your default editing program set up in Preferences, select the image you want to lay a bit of Photoshop love on, and hit Open In Editor. Works for the exported page layouts too. (Open In Editor makes Photojunction your Photoshop Control Centre – that’s got a nice ring to it!)

8a. (It’s my post, I can do that)

My favorite Open In Editor option is to open the cropped image. This isolates the actual image area that’s going to appear in the book. Great for actions like vignettes.

9. Copy and Paste

This is under the Effects section in the Tools window image tab. You can copy and paste an effect such as a border without having to enter the details over and over for each image. Just copy once and paste away to your heart’s content.

10. The Send Order button

You’ve done your bit, used all your favorite buttons, drop downs and short cuts, and it’s time to kick the ball to Queensberry (they’re a safe pair of hands!)

Those are some of our favourites.

What are yours? You never know, your favourite might be one the rest of the team don’t know about. While we’re at it, what new buttons would you like to see?

Cheers
Pete

PS Sorry if you don’t get my rugby jokes. I don’t blame you, but we don’t follow the NFL, you know? Hmm… NFL stands for Not Football League, doesn’t it?

PPS And I’m still not convinced that soccer is football either.

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Coach reckons this isn’t as clever as Divide and Conquer but we think it’s really cool. Do you have a collection of templates that you love and use all the time? Click Create Album from Templates, select an image collection and your template collection, and PJ will build an album from the templates and pop all the images in the apertures.

Sit back, have a coffee if you’re American, or a nice cup of tea if you’re a Brit. You Aussies will want a cold one, and as for us in New Zealand, it’ll be a nice Sauvignon Blanc from Marlborough, thank you.

Just let PJ do its thing. Actually it only takes a few seconds so take care not to spill your beverage on the keyboard. Like Divide and Conquer, this one’s under the Event window More button.

5.Split templates

Ok, one more about templates, the Split option. Like one side of a double sided template but not the other? Click on the template and then hit the Split button. This one really is a button. It divides the template into left and right sides. Once you’ve done that you can also copy and mirror or rotate them, which can be handy.

That’s our first five. I will be back for the second half shortly.

Cheers
Pete

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Unlike a lot of our customers I’m relatively new to Photojunction. Luckily I work with a great team, so when required they make me look good. The cool thing is that I look at Photojunction and discover things about it daily that I didn’t know.

There are features that are a little hidden. It’s a bit of a shame, really, that they aren’t more obvious, because usually they do something that can change the way you work for the better.

So I thought it would be nice to share our ten favorite buttons (in no particular order).

1. Open templates in new window

Place your cursor over Template Collection in the Events window and right-click. This will ask if you would like to open your templates in a new window. No more scrolling up and down between the templates and the images!

2. Undo

OK, this isn’t a button but an Edit menu selection, but I think it’s everyone’s number one so it has to be in. Those who had the pleasure of working in PJ Retro will remember that you only had one edit/undo chance. These days it’s sheer luxury to be able to undo multiple levels.

3. Divide and Conquer

OK, Divide and Conquer worked for the Romans so why not us? Basically you tell Photojunction how many images you want per layout and the software spreads the images you’ve selected out across the pages in chronological order. That’s a pretty basic description but PJ is a bit smarter that that. It knows the time you shot each image based on the exif data. So you can decide on a time gap (eg 30 minutes) and when PJ finds a gap of that size or more between images it thinks, OK, this must be a new series, so it starts a new page. (Darn, this isn’t a button either. It’s UNDER a button – in the Event window under the More button).

§

Well I’m a bit brassed off, really. I wanted to split this into two posts, and crack a joke about us being a Rugby nation and this being half time. But Coach reckons if I make the posts too long you’ll stop reading.

I guess I’ll have to go with us being a Netball nation and this being the end of the first quarter. Either way I’m off for an orange and a team talk. I’ll be back on the court shortly.

Cheers
Pete

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