That’s a question we’ve been asked a few times, and the answer is different for Press Books and Press Albums.

Books are inherently more affordable than albums – although as the saying goes you can really pimp your ride with Queensberry’s Press Books: translucents, art papers, leather covers, Mayu cases, the works. In fact it’s surprised (and gratified) us a bit how many of you have gone for the upmarket options.

On the other hand, with Press Albums the challenge was two-fold: to offer something you couldn’t get with our classic albums (art papers in particular) and to strike a dramatically lower price point.

How did we do that? By keeping things simple, and leaving out the options that ramp the cost up.

Nothing non-standard. No Pagemount. No Duo. Just gorgeously simple Flushmount and Overlay. No optional extras, fewer sizes. As the price list says, “For more upgrade and design opportunities check out our other album ranges.”

No compromise on quality though. They’re made in exactly the same way with exactly the same materials.

By the way, the fact that Queensberry Press products are printed digital-offset instead of silver halide does help with costs, but surprisingly little in the big scheme of things. Check ’em out and you’ll see we’re not compromising on quality there either!

Cheers
Ian

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In 2000, when we started doing business in North America, our representative lived in Edmonton, Canada, and our very first clients lived in Houston, Texas, and Sacramento, California. No way could Darlene drop by!

It’s a good illustration of our most interesting challenge as an international supplier: getting our products into new clients’ hands for them to touch and feel, no matter where they live.

Getting started is an act of faith on your part, and an act of commitment on ours. “You take the first step and we’ll go the extra mile.”

It gets even more interesting when the product is new to existing clients, as has been the case with Queensberry Press. To introduce our new books and albums we’ve been giving away some major discounts.

It’s cost us serious money, but it’s got the product into your hands, and when we see the feedback from our clients we think it’s money well spent.

And maybe we’re not finished yet…

But this is one reason we won’t be there in force at WPPI and FOCUS. We can only spend the money once!

Tomorrow: why Queensberry Press is cheaper.

Cheers
Ian

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Yesterday we introduced you to our Good Better Best product matrix, designed to help you navigate our products and services. We designed our new price lists, which you can download here, to match.

Maybe the best thing about them is that they’re SIMPLE. The prices for each range of products fit comfortably on a single page. No jokes, please, but that’s a step forward!

How did we do that? More than 95% of you now order our albums and books in Photojunction, printed and fully assembled, so that’s what the price list assumes you’re doing. If you’re interested in DIY, contact us and we’ll send you a supplementary sheet.

The next best thing about them is that, despite the destructive currency movements that have been impacting us afresh since early this year, our prices will remain the same, and in some cases reduce. (There are two minor exceptions you can read about below.)

More good news…

• We’ve dropped the prices on Queensberry Albums un-matted pages by 10% including printing. (We’re calling them “Flushmounts” now to avoid confusion with our digital offset products.)

• We’ve reduced our album design prices for Flushmount, Duo and Press albums, by about a third in most cases.

• You can now add translucent titles to all our album products, including press albums and flushmounts.

• We’re discontinuing the 9×9 format and replacing it with a 10×10 at the same price.

To make way for the new we’ve also discontinued a few cover materials, as well as the 6×6, 15×15 and 20×16 formats. (The 6×6 format is now Press Book only.) Also going are all un-matted self-mount options, including digital albums, demis and self-mount miniatures.

All discontinued lines will be available for a further twelve months as per our normal policy.

I mentioned a couple of exceptions.

1. Since everyone is now using the latest version of our software we will be canceling the small “PJ Credit” in the New Year.

2. We need to align the price of smaller format covers (8×8, 10×7, 10×10) in the Queensberry Albums range with those of the Queensberry Press (the small formats have been cheaper in some cases). Obviously that is a potential cost increase to you, but it’s countered by the fact that all small albums, including 8x8s and 10x7s, will now qualify for free freight, or if you order them with a 12×12 or larger album we’ll discount the smaller album by 20%.

With that exception all the significant price movements are reductions, so why wait? They come into effect immediately.

Next: why we’re stepping back at WPPI and FOCUS.

Cheers
Ian

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This has been a big year for Queensberry. Especially the launch of Queensberry Press. New products, new services, new technology, new price points.

The challenge is making it easy for you to get your head around. Why so many products? What’s the difference between them? How much do they cost?

We came up with this Good Better Best matrix to map out what we do.

Good Better Best is a strategy – having a range of products and services to tempt your clients across a range of price points.

Good is your entry level – affordable if you like. Best is aspirational (expensive). Better is in the middle – what you budget on!

Before Queensberry Press we were under-represented at the lower end, so one of our goals was to establish new, lower price points, important in an environment where people are looking after their cash more carefully.

Queensberry Press is about more than lower prices, however. It’s also about digital offset printing (as opposed to traditional silver halide) and books (as opposed to albums).

The graphic above shows how everything fits together, but it caused a fight here at first, so in the end we went with Great Better Best, and added an extra column for Musée!

You may notice that we’ve reorganized our website along these lines, with a couple of changes in product names along the way.

Our new price lists include a more detailed version of the matrix, designed to give you a quick insight into the main differences between our various products. More about them in our next post.

Cheers
Ian

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To continue my rave on The Junction earlier in the year about image slicing and dicing, here are a few thoughts about designing a pressbook with particular consideration to keeping your mind (and your clients’ heads) out of the gutter!

Photojunction makes designing a Queensberry album very easy and FAST. But while the layouts look very similar on-screen between albums and press books – in reality these two products are vastly different.

When you’re working on screen it’s really easy to forget that a press book is, well, a book, and the pages don’t lie flat. Queensberry press books (like most other photographic books) are perfect bound, which means that a small amount of the inner side of each page is obscured in the gutter, or spine, of the book. It’s not unusual (common to many high quality books and magazines) but it is an important factor to consider when you’re designing.

Currently Photojunction has general ‘photosafe’ guides on Pressbooks, but unfortunately there isn’t an easy answer as to how much of a gutter to leave in any given book. The number of pages in the book, thickness of the paper stock and the size of the book are some of the factors that determine exactly how much of the page is obscured.

Photojunction takes care of most of the technical bits, but book designers train for years in the art of layout design, so here are a few gutter-minded tips about designing press book layouts.

1. Visually allow more white space for the inner margins of the page. Remember the tighter you make the white space, the easier it is to see any small discrepancies.

2. If you are wanting to have an image bleed into the gutter – make sure that there isn’t any critical information that could be obscured, like heads, hands or text.

3. If you’re using a Panoramic image, make sure there’s plenty of space either side of the gutter so it doesn’t look like your subject is ‘sinking’ into the centre of the book.

I hope this helps!

Anna

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With the arrival of Press Books and now Press Albums, we’ve got a very big range of products on offer.

In order to keep things simple and fresh we’re retiring a few of our less popular older material and mat colours.

Listed below are the colours that are now discontinued. For more about what ‘discontinued’ means and our policy on discontinued product options, sample upgrades and Swatch Book updates, click here.

COVER MATERIALS

1. • Classic Leather Sand
2. • Micro Leather Gingerbread
3. • Silk Claret (discontinued by our supplier so is no longer available)
4. • Bengaline Silver
5. • Bengaline Sage

 Ed- Buckram Copper and Rose are also now discontinued.

MAT COLOURS

1. • Grey
2. • Navy

So it’s out with the old and in with the new, however these colours (apart from Silk Claret) will still be available for your customer orders until August 2012.

Cheers,

Anna

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We’ve created albums for celebrities of all sorts over the last forty years, from the likes of Pope John Paul 2, Queen Elizabeth and Princess Diana through to many others famous in business, entertainment and the arts.

It’s hard to talk about because many famous clients quite rightly insist on total privacy regarding their images and we often receive requests from photographers for confidentiality, not just from celebrities but regarding culturally sensitive weddings.

Those photographers have been chosen by their clients because of the trust and confidence they instill.

To honour that confidence and trust we have created a separate, structured and controlled workflow to cater to those specific requirements – whether privacy for celebrities or a special woman-only workflow for cultural reasons.

This workflow costs 20% more for our feature albums and 50% more for our Queensberry Press range. Please contact us if you’d like to discuss any special requirements that your client may have, and take a look at our confidentiality policy.

And just to reassure you that we mean what we say, check out Ian’s tongue-in-cheek blog post on bragging rights.

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Most artists sign their work and as a photographer you probably (very rightly) want to ‘leave your mark’ somewhere on your images. So what are your options when it comes to including your studio name or logo in Queensberry albums and press books? Here are some actual examples:

On press books you have the option of placing the studio or photographer’s name on the back of designable covers:

The inside flaps of dust jackets are a subtle place to include your logo or any further studio details like your website address:

Titles are the most common place to include a studio name, and all of our templates have a space for this. Here are some examples below.

Horizontal matted title in Futura black with studio name:

Translucent title with studio name:

Or a title set up with your logo instead of just your studio name.

If you’re after something special you could always add your signature to the first layout, or have your logo mounted on the last layout at the end of the album, like Christophe Flers:

Tell us how you leave your mark!

Cheers,
Anna

Email us if you’d like to know more about the options illustrated.

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Not the movie!

I am talking about wedding photography.

OHHHH if only I had a dollar for every time somebody said to me can you airbrush/photoshop me thinner/more beautiful/younger/less wrinkled, and why oh why is it always, I want to look like Brad Pitt or Angelina?!

I would be RICH!!!!! Filthy dirty rich, and in truth I would not have to make any money as a photographer.

Photographers didn’t really invent the lie … Adobe did. Actually that is a lie, it was the first person to do a cave drawing representing themselves (or somebody else) as a bit more upright than they really were, or possibly slightly taller.

Why do we do it? Of ourselves it is vanity. Of others it’s for profits.

In our studio we talk about keeping the lie real.

Real enough that people never ask, “Who is that with your husband?” Nor do they suggest that things “seem to have gone downhill since your wedding” when they note the sudden onset of crows feet, a few extra laughter lines and a dramatic change from porcelain skin to something much more leathery.

A good lie is one that is reinforced by the evidence. So creative body enhancements and beautification needs to be maintained throughout the telling of the story. In the case of a wedding album the same lie needs to be told consistently.

Queensberry is happy to lie on your behalf. They call it “artwork”. It means that you can partially distance yourself from the emotional burden of dishonesty.

This doesn’t come free! There is a price to be paid for bending the truth. But then sometimes a little white lie can make things so much better.

If you would like Queensberry to lie on your behalf,  talk to them about sharing the burden.

Cheers,
Johannes

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Queensberry’s colour correctors are passionate about their work and achieving a result that pleases you, but even if you’re not using their services the way they approach the job is worth thinking about.

When they get an order, the first thing our colour correctors do is open up all the layouts to get a ‘feel’ for the overall colour of the album.

Their goal is to optimise key elements like flesh tones or a bride’s dress, and to achieve a consistent, natural look across page layouts and the entire album. Often we see albums where individual images have been tweaked without thought for how they look alongside their neighbours. The inconsistencies always seem more obvious in the actual album!

It is important to remember that colour is subjective and that every photographer has different ideas about what good colour is. Some people’s preferences are so specific that we advise them to colour-correct themselves and use our print-ready service. But for most, full colour service is cost effective and a great way to reduce the production work in their studio.

With your first order from us you get free test prints. Your feedback helps the colour correction team get to know what you are “going for” in terms of colour. It’s also a chance for them to raise any issues they notice with your files. Sending us some hard copy samples is a good idea, and clearly shows us your colour preference right from the start.

Here’s some tips to help ensure you get great colour, save time and money and have a faster turnaround time for your albums.

• Send the layouts as layered PSDs (Photojunction will prompt you to do this). Yes, the uploads will take longer but we’ll be able to colour-correct professionally layer by layer (image by image).

• Be consistent. A good idea is to keep a few good files on your desktop that you know have printed well, to use as a reference, shoot by shoot.

• Take well exposed images. There can be a wide variation of exposures throughout a wedding and from one wedding to the next and it’s difficult to match colour from such a wide spectrum. The most important thing is to get your White Balance and Exposure right – a silk purse cannot be made from a sow’s ear.

• If two cameras are being used on the same shoot – it’s a good idea to make sure they are using similar settings – for example – either jpeg or raw.

• Take responsibility for what you send us and check your files at 100% in Photoshop. We do check your images but we cannot guarantee that we will discover all the problems that you might notice.

• Flatten any artwork and adjustment layers onto their corresponding images so that the entire image/layer can be corrected as one, or unexpected results can occur. But see Stephen’s important comment below – he suggests not doing this with borders, as their colour would then change along with the image – Ed.

• It is extremely helpful to let us know when the guys’ suits are not black –  eg if they are a dark blue – so we don’t try and twist the files to get black.

• Tell us anything specific we need to know about your files. For example, a note to say that filters or special effects have been used and on which images. That way we can work with you, not against you!

For more on our Full Colour Service and other Lab services, click here.

Cheers, Anna

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