A discussion about album upload times (specifically the length of them) last week reminded me of a good post Danny wrote on the Junction a while back, about internet connection speeds, pricing and plans. While we do everything we can at our end to optimise the FTP process, ultimately (album) upload speed is determined by your internet provider, so it pays to understand exactly what you’re getting for your money. Here’s Danny’s post – Nigel

Warning: contains math and abbreviations

From time to time I’m asked for advice about internet connection speeds and pricing plans, so here goes…

Most internet packages are lame (especially in New Zealand: but our internet service providers (ISPs) learned their tricks from your ISPs, so we’re not alone).

Most internet packages assume you’re a consumer … but you’re not a consumer, you’re a producer (so you need upload speed, not just download speed).

Here’s what’s lame. Most ISPs show their speed (how quickly you can download and/or upload information) in kilobits (kb), not kilobytes (kB) (or megabits instead of megabytes) simply to make the numbers look bigger.

To convert kilobytes to kilobits, you multiply by 8… 128 kilobits per second sounds better than 16 Kilobytes per second, doesn’t it?

How to calculate typical upload times

Suppose you need to upload a 5MB (megabyte) jpg to your lab.

5MB = 5120KB

5120KB (size of your file) / 16 KB per second (upload speed) = 320 seconds

So 5 minutes 20 seconds is your absolute best case scenario. Unfortunately though, that’s theoretical (another example of loose standards). In my experience it’s realistic to expect 50% of maximum capacity, so I would double the time, which means:

• 10 minutes to upload that 5MB jpg

• 16 hours to upload a print order of 100 jpegs

• 48 hours to upload a 1.5 gigabyte album order!

That’s asking for trouble. Disconnections, hibernation, and flakey wireless connections all add to the time … and explain why we spent so much time building “resume” functions into Photojunction – so you don’t need to start again!

I used 128 Kbps upload speed as my example because it’s the speed you’re promised when you buy the $39.95/month “most popular” plan from NZ’s most popular ISP.

Something else to bear in mind: upload and download speeds are not the same: ISPs routinely cap upload speeds. 128Kbps uploading may be OK for (some) consumers, but it’s useless to a producer like you.

I want to encourage you to evaluate your internet package and do your own sums. Consider how long things should take to upload, or download for that matter.

Cheers, Danny

PS: Here’s a site where you can test your own speeds (and do your own upload time calculations). Note, it gives the results honestly, in kilobytes, not kilobits!

~ Article originally published on The Junction

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How do you reference your album orders in Photojunction?

If you want the reference on all the paperwork/emails (including Photojunction) regarding an album order to be your clients’ names (for example), that’s what you need to enter into the Your Reference box during the Album Setup stage.

Whatever you input under Your Reference is what comes through to us, and is then assigned to your order.

Being specific and having a formula is really important for both of us. Searching a gazillion orders for the right “Bride and Groom” or “Wedding Album” or “QBY 12×12″ is a bit hopeless. Having a specific formula (eg client names and the event date) is far, far better.

HTH

Cheers, Nigel

PS Queensberry allocates its own unique ID to your order as well, and we love it if you use it, but many of our clients quote their own reference … which is great if it’s reasonably unique.

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Each version of Photojunction takes us further towards a seamless workflow to design, export and upload your album orders to Queensberry – right first time and hassle-free.

And it works amazingly.

What we’re still noticing however, is a small number of people using LabFTP to send, or re-send, their layouts to us.

This is now built into Photojunction (including the ability to re-send “part-uploads” for whatever reason), so there’s no longer any need to use LabFTP. Photojunction does it all.

You can still see your upload progress, and pause and restart uploads just as in LabFTP. And the advantage over LabFTP is that the process is better managed and automated – so there’s minimal opportunity for anything to go wrong, and you’ll get your album faster.

Cheers, Nigel

PS Please note: LabFTP is still our recommended print ordering tool for Lab Direct clients.

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Cheers to everyone who’s participating in My Album’s Hot.

Have you seen them showing up on our consumer blog and Facebook page?

We’re seeing a nice little boost in readership, so thanks and please tell your friends.
It’s early days yet

Cheers, Ian

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Photojunction have hit the GO button and released the latest Final version – 1.40.

If you don’t use the Betas we think you’re in for a treat. As with all Finals, this is a combination of features from the past two beta releases, 1.38b and 1.39b, but this time there are two important changes that specifically affect Queensberry clients.

Panoramas – We’ve put in place several ‘controls’ regarding Panoramas. Ian blogged about these a few days ago so we’d encourage you to have a read of his post. It outlines the changes that have been made in detail.

Send order - There is no longer the option to ‘Send Later’ when going through the Send Order process.

‘Send Later’ was a kind of limbo state that confused some people. It meant the forgetful among us (me for example) sometimes never got around to actually sending their files. We’d have half an order and not know whether the files were coming on DVD or somebody just hadn’t got round to uploading.

Now, when you click the new ‘Order Now’ button you’re offered the choice of Uploading now or Saving to Disk. There’s no option to ‘Upload Later’.

Both options are fairly self explanatory. Selecting ‘Upload via FTP’ will initiate the file upload, while choosing the ‘Save to Disk’ option will do just that – save your project to your computer.

If a you’re not ready to send yet, saving your project before going through the Send Order Process will achieve the same thing as ‘send later’ used to. Or you could always pause an upload if you so wanted.

Keep an eye on The Junction for more information about 1.40.

Cheers, Nigel

PS Big props to the PJ team – 1.40 represents a huge amount of work.

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Well we’re delighted with the response and feedback we’re getting to the new Directory – and apart from a couple of tweets and one post we haven’t even mentioned it. So, some feedback on your feedback.

1. We haven’t found anything buggy yet (that’s tempting fate). If your listing doesn’t show up, you don’t have an active account, your web address hasn’t been entered or has a typo, you’re searching for it in the wrong location or you haven’t completed the set-up (especially “Step 1″). The solution to all those is to log on and click on “Set Up Directory Listing”. Do tell people about your studio, and your “location”, and add all your contact details.

2. Biggest problem: we’ve found rather more URLs with typos than we’d like. If you see any that are wrong, especially your own, please fix it (as above) or tell us.

3. Yes, we need to tweak the formatting a bit, especially the website icon – the one we’re using now isn’t really appropriate.

4. Finally, one or two people have said they’d like to add more than one “location”. That’s a technical challenge, but … we hear what you’re saying (no promises, mind).

Meantime, do play. To see what people are doing check out somewhere big like New York or London.

Or Auckland

Cheers, Ian

PS Don’t you love the way it knows where you live? That’s Google for you.

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Between you and me, we’ve just quietly published Queensberry’s Photographer Directory. Check it out here and tell us what you think.

Enter your own location and you’ll probably see we’ve “auto-published” you (provided we have your website details – that’s public after all) but if you’d like to edit and approve your listing, you can do so by logging on to your account on our secure website and clicking on “Set Up Directory Listing”. You can edit your location, tell people something about your studio, and add your Email, Twitter and FaceBook details. (There were people working on their listings even before the page was finished! It still needs a bit of formatting.)

We’re pretty excited about the possibilities for this, and hope you can see them too – but do tell us what you think.

Thanks in advance for checking it out.

Cheers, Ian

PS Actually, please tell your friends, we’re not shy

PPS Great job, Stephen

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The new final of Photojunction will be out in a few days and it has a new feature that may affect you.

First, to set the scene, our matted albums were designed to be constructed mainly of “standard” (single) sides, as opposed to panoramas.

But lately we’ve noticed that one or two of our clients are designing with heaps of panoramas, more than the book can accommodate. This puts more thickness into the spine of the book than it’s designed for, and so stresses it in various ways.

For the last year or so our goal has been to make PJ smart enough to stop people from designing an album that we can’t make – or that’s compromised in some way (welcome to red Xs and the Problem Reporter!) and so we have introduced three more controls regarding panoramas in the latest version:

1. PJ won’t let you add more than 30% panoramas to an album.

2. It won’t allow a panorama unless there actually is an image across the spine of the album.

3. It won’t allow an image across the spine unless there’s an least an inch of it on each side (this last because a sliver of image on one side might look OK on the screen, but it looks pretty bad in the actual album).

Team PJ are sensitive enough about these “Nanny features” that Danny’s doing a blog post on The Junction right now about them! But they head off a lot of problems.

Cheers, Ian

PS If you don’t use betas there are heaps of new features in the new final. Take a look at the release notes for the last few betas (1.38 and 1.39) and you’ll see what I mean!

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I am so proud of this from Ross Grieve (a UK-based Kiwi photographer) because it’s Queensberry to the core. I’m sure Jo is too. When Ross’s photos arrive we’ll feature the album on our consumer blog. – Ian

Ross & his idea guru

Last year our Queensberry Account Manager, Jo (or our idea guru as I like to call her), suggested we get a Duo sample to have something unique in the studio. Now the thing I like about Jo: she is not a sales person, she is someone who is there to help you and your business.

With that in mind Jo talked me through the Duo and then the full colour service. Brilliant, I thought, I just have to send Queensberry print-ready files and they do the rest, including the design … wow, how easy is that. It saves so much time, and gives a twist as it’s not me designing, but “my designer” as I tell the clients.

So we got the Duo design proof through and I thought that I’d introduce my clients to it even before having the actual sample in the studio – in other words by using the proof movie and my swatch book as a reference for size (18×10).

We upgraded two clients before the sample even arrived.

With Jo’s advice we did a real showcase album with 104 images (from a wedding we were flown out to Australia to shoot – we are based in Wales) and the feedback has been amazing.

I think Queensberry have such a unique product and the bonus is that no one within 100 miles has the Duo album.

So thank you Jo (my idea guru) and thank you Queensberry for providing us with such a beautiful product to sell.

Best regards, Ross Grieve

Check out more of Ross’s Queensberry albums here.

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Since our re-branding last year the front flyleaf of every Queensberry album has been embossed with the new Q-mark. Why’s it there?

It’s simple really: to sign our work with pride and to acknowledge the craftsmanship and detailing that goes into every album we build.

We’re doing the same thing that you do as a photographer when you sign your work. We’re branding it.

Let me explain in detail what we’re doing and why, because our goal is to build a brand that will support you as our clients.

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Branding is primarily about getting recognised – not a “camera” but a Leica, not a “wedding album” but a Queensberry, not “wedding photographers” but individual photographers like these people, for example.

The purpose of brand recognition is to add brand value. If it’s Bentley, Hermès, Rolex, Chanel, it’s worth more. It’s better made … more exclusive … confers status … worn by celebs … made from hen’s teeth or unicorn leather … so it’s worth more. The brand justifies a better price.

If that sounds cynical it’s not meant to be. You need to be recognised for the right reasons. A strong brand is your reward for long years building your reputation. Louis Vuitton and Burberry have been building theirs for more than 150 years, Rolls Royce for well over a century, Apple for three decades.

So … Queensberry wants to build a brand so they can charge more?

No, so you can charge more!

Right now Queensberry’s brand recognition is very high with photographers but much lower with consumers, who, let’s face it, are the people paying the bills.

Most people who see the Queensberries that you design and sell will recognise the quality of the product but won’t recognise the Q. For all our sakes we need to change that.

Branding our albums, our bride book, our consumer-oriented website, our Facebook pages, cross-promotion with clients – they’re all designed to build brand recognition AND to help drive business to our clients.

We’re building the Queensberry brand, but we’re doing it so we can add value to yours*.

We hope you’ll understand why we stand strong and proud on our “Q” and why it needs to be there.

Cheers, Ian

PS I hate to sound mercenary but I hope you treat our albums as a profit driver, not simply an expense. If you were selling handbags you’d charge more for an Oroton or an Armani. This may sound like I’m stating the obvious but not everybody gets it…

*Unlike other album suppliers we ask for an up-front commitment from would-be customers and we won’t sell to anyone else, including other photographers. We really are committed to your success.

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