Bear with me for a minute while I get opinionated – I know plenty will disagree with me ;-) I happened across a forum post recently. Someone asked if a certain prominent photographer's winning print at a certain prominent convention was so close to the edge that it had fallen off! After checking it out I thought the comment was a bit tough, but I could see the point. And the prominent guy wasn't alone – all the winning images were photoshopped within an inch of their lives. But the most striking thing? How different those images were to so much of what we see and admire in our Bindery. It's To View More >>

Three things I love... Metaphors ("Remix 'Collections' are like iTunes Playlists"). Stories (like Danny's PJ speed test). One-liners ("Colour management used to be just calling the lab to complain about your prints.") Words, that's all... But they make you think. They illuminate what you're saying and make it memorable. They use the familiar to explain the unfamiliar. They're gems of great price if you polish them till they shine, and really awkward if you don't. Cheers, Ian A few more from Bob Tulloch's seminar in Auckland last Wednesday: Our clients have two motivations, love and pride. We're To View More >>

Talking to Photoshop via script can be a delicate process, so here's a few tips for exporting your high-res layouts from PJ for printing... • Open Photoshop before you start exporting. (Sometimes it takes so long to open PJ forgets who it's talking to.) • Close all other open images in Photoshop. • Make sure the Photoshop start screen is closed. • Let Photojunction and Photoshop do their thing. Keep your hands off that keyboard! Cheers, PJ Support To View More >>

The industrious PJ developers have certainly been busy. They've just posted another new beta that builds on the last release, v1.26. Put them together and we have a transformation. Ever since we first released Remix we've been asked to simplify and streamline the workflow, and we believe we've done that here. As you can see from the screen shot, album set-up has been transformed - reduced to a single screen that can gather up all the information an album vendor needs to make your album (click on the images to see them full-size). This particular screen shot is to order a Queensberry, but the options To View More >>

We read this by Finao recently : InDesign is becoming more and more popular for album design work, however, we do not recommend it for new designers. Unless you know your stuff with InDesign and consider yourself an InDesign master, don’t use it... There are more variables and settings to check with InDesign. Wrong settings and improperly sized linked images are easy to miss and are common problems we have seen with inexperienced (and even some experienced) users... We have also experienced more problems with file corruptions during upload with improperly exported or converted InDesign files. To View More >>

What is it that our clients are paying for? Photography? (But what does that mean) Entertainment? (Couldn't afford the clown for the party) Documentation? (Recording content for a historical document) Memories? (Least we forget) Glamorisation? (See, the bride can look glam with the right dress, makeup, hairdo, and some photoshop!) Impressionism? (To impress the neighbours) Fairytaleism? (Living the dream) Then you might ask, what are each of these worth in the final package? It would be an interesting exercise to give each a percentage value. And then think about those percentages, and ask yourself To View More >>

We told War Story 1 (about the guy whipping out a flash drive and challenging Danny to replicate his Photoshop layout) to a gentleman, who... whipped out his own flash drive and challenged Danny to do the same! He signed up too - thank you sir. Think of PJ Remix this way - as a tool for laying out PSD files. Really fast. Unlike most programs we saw at Focus, Remix doesn't compromise your Photoshop experience, it supercharges it. Cheers, Ian To View More >>

At our FOCUS booth a guy walked up to Danny and asked him how long it would take to replicate a design he'd done in Photoshop. It took a slightly anxious Danny 3-4 minutes, and when he was done the guy whipped out his credit card and signed up. Now, we know it's a lot faster to copy an existing design than it is to dream it up in the first place, but the point of the story is to confirm that you'll save heaps of time if you design your PHOTOSHOP page layouts in PHOTOJUNCTION. To View More >>

I spent my lunch hour reading a forum post (not here obviously!) about "the best album template software". I guess I may be preaching to the choir, but... 1. Are "clunky" and/or "badly supported" the most common descriptors for album planning software? (We know Remix is "v1.0" right now, but check out our forums - we're committed!) 2. So, why not design your albums in Photoshop? It's exceptional software, but even Adobe doesn't suggest that's a good idea. Adobe's layout software is InDesign, part of Creative Suite. Another great application - we use both ourselves. 3. But what does InDesign know To View More >>