Keep it simple – our design Service

Protective coating on Duo prints

May 21st, 2009 in Photography & Design by Nigel Hicks

Tags: Duo, Photojunction Remix, Printing, Service details

You probably know we offer free protective coating on all Queensberry prints bound in Queensberry albums. It’s a fine, almost unnoticeable coating, that helps protect the images.

Prints in Duo albums are a bit more exposed than in matted books, so we’ve decided to coat all prints bound into Duo albums from now on. Free of charge, obviously.

As most of our clients already ask for their prints to be coated, this change will affect only a few clients.

The change will be reflected automatically in Photojunction’s smart filtering system in the next release, due out soon.

If you’d like more information or have any questions about our protective print coating, see our website or contact your Queensberry Account Manager.

Cheers, Nigel

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What we need when you order

March 9th, 2009 in Products & Services by Ian Baugh

Click here for more about our workflow.

Tags: LabFTP, Order Wizard, Photojunction Remix, Printing, Smooth Sailing

This post has been superseded by new Photojunction functionality.

PJ Remix’s Order Wizard saves “Bundles” (folders) of files to your hard disk ready for you to upload them to your album supplier and/or lab. But Remix itself doesn’t do the upload. Queensberry does that with LabFTP. Somethimes confusion arises around two points:

1. Occasionally users think they’re done once they’ve run through the Order Wizard. Not so. All you’ve done is email us to expect an order. You still need to upload the files.

2. Occasionally a photographer will open the bundle, take out what (s)he thinks we need and uploaded those. The thing is we need everything! PJ Remix determines the contents of the bundle depending on the services you want. Just drag the ENTIRE BUNDLE to LabFTP for uploading.

HTH, Ian

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Printing and assembling Duos

February 10th, 2009 in Products & Services by Nigel Hicks

Tags: Album Assembly, Duo, Lab, Photojunction Remix, Printing, Smooth Sailing, Tip

Photography by Michael + Anna Costa

Although we’d love all our clients to print with us, and most now do, we can’t expect that everyone will. It’s a huge ask to send your images to the other side of the world for printing.

But sometimes, for reasons that have little to do with the printing itself, we need really tight control to deliver you a good result. Duos are a prime example. The design and craft processes that allow us to integrate digital and matted pages, create split mats etc are intensive and very demanding.

In particular the variability in output from third party labs is a serious challenge. Variation in print size is one regular problem and complicates trimming prints and aligning images in apertures, split mats etc. The result? Mistakes… having to adjust page layouts and re-cut mats to work around problems… having to replace prints… and the associated costs.

That’s why we need to print Duos at Queensberry. Our lab equipment and systems are set up specifically to suit Photojunction and our album processes. And if we do make a mistake we can re-print a colour-matched image no problem.

All up there are the three Duo “musts”…

The album must be printed at Queensberry.
The album must be assembled at Queensberry (we trim the finished page block before we bind it).
The album must be designed in PJ Remix (Remix knows all about those “design and craft processes” so we get exactly what we need to make the book).

We know “musts” can be frustrating. It’s all about offering you a hassle-free experience, fast service and the best possible product.

Cheers, Nigel

PS See the Costa’s entire album here.

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Best of 2008 – Part 2

January 29th, 2009 in Uncategorised by Nigel Hicks

Designing and exporting your design
Remix Order Wizard and LabFTP
Sending us just your Cover Image

Tags: Order Processing, Photo Front, Photography & Design, Photojunction Remix, Printing, Smooth Sailing, Tip

Wading through our “how-to” posts was quite a job. Trying to single out the best was just as difficult, but worth the effort.

Here are my favourites. Hopefully you’ll find them handy when dealing with Queensberry and Photojunction, and evaluating your own workflow…

There’s so much good stuff in the Smooth Sailing series I reckon you should check them all, but here are a few:

Photo Front covers (easy peasy) - If designing Photo Front covers sounds hard. It’s not. Here’s how to easily do it.

What can delay your orders? – Here are a few simple things that frequently delay people’s orders (long delays in some cases). Interestingly, our staff sometimes end up double-checking things to head off ‘could-be problems‘.

Titles in PJ Remix – There’s no standard “title” aperture in PJ Remix, so how do you add a title? There are actually two ways.

If you search under Printing you’ll find more very useful posts, especially the three in the ”hassle-free printing workflow’ series, which walk you through ordering your printing from Queensberry.

Cheers, Nigel

PS Why not check out the various Categories in the right-hand column of this page to discover your own good stuff.

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Ordering discontinued products in PJ Remix

October 22nd, 2008 in Products & Services by Ian Baugh

Queensberry’s plug-in for Aperture: online demo

Tags: Discontinued Products, Photojunction Remix, Printing, Smooth Sailing

Some of you have noticed that our recently discontinued cover materials have disappeared from PJ Remix, and asked what’s going on. Fair enough too. We haven’t been as clear about it as we should, and we apologise for not explaining this earlier.

Although some cover materials have gone from PJ Remix, it doesn’t necessarily mean we can’t supply them. In fact our policy is, if possible, to make them available for two years after removing them from our swatch book.

So how do you order them in PJ Remix? It’s fairly simple…

1) Choose ‘Other’ in the Cover Material options.

2) Then click ‘Add Note’ and tell us which cover material you want (eg Black Buffalino in the screen shot below).

You’ll need to check the Discontinued Products page on our website to make sure we can still supply what you want, but that’s all there is to it.

HTH, Ian

PS We hope Remix will handle discontinued products better before too long (we’ve told PJ we’d prefer if they didn’t disappear from view completely). Meantime, as always, if you have any questions please get in touch with our Client Support team.

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Keep it simple – our design Service

Smooth sailing

October 21st, 2008 in Products & Services by Ian Baugh

Keep it simple – our design Service

Tags: Photojunction Remix, Printing, Smooth Sailing, Tip

Some of our clients enjoy smoother sailing than others. Less aggravation, calmer waters… An interesting thought whichever group you fall into!

One important reason for this is that some of you understand our systems better than others. And yes, we accept we don’t always do a good enough job of explaining them.

One reason for this blog is to address the problem with bite-sized tutorials on topics suggested by you or our own staff. So over the next few days we’re going to discuss a few key issues. Here’s our goal:

For you, an efficient, easy-to-understand system that gets you back to shooting and selling pictures as quickly as possible.
For us, an order that’s accurate, error-free and ready to go straight into production.

To get you started, why not check out our past tips on Photojunction and printing.

We hope you find this information useful and well presented. Positive or negative, we’d love your feedback, whether by email or comments.

Cheers, Ian

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QBY’s hassle-free printing workflow #3

October 15th, 2008 in Products & Services by Ian Baugh

Tags: Cover Image, Lab, LabFTP, Order Processing, Order Wizard, Photography & Design, Photojunction Remix, Printing, Tip

What if you want us to print your cover image, but nothing else?

1. When you fire up the Remix Order Wizard, choose either the “Assemble From Prints Supplied” or Don’t Assemble” option.

2. On the same screen the Wizard will offer a place to include “support files” for your album supplier. Open your folder of High-Res Export files and drag in a copy of the cover image (don’t double up by sending it to your lab to print as well).

3. Remix may ask you if you want us to print the cover image (generally it’ll be obvious what you want, in which case Remix won’t ask). Be sure to say Yes.
4. When the export is finished you’ll have two “bundles”, one for your lab and one for Queensberry. If you’ve followed Step 2 the cover image file will be in the Queensberry one.

5. Upload the bundle to us using LabFTP.

You could just email the file to us, but we prefer if you don’t. Getting everything in the one bundle is much more efficient. It will save us both hassles and you’ll get your album faster.

HTH, Ian

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Pinky problem

October 13th, 2008 in Products & Services by Ian Baugh

Tags: Digital Pages, Pink Prints, Printing, Quality, Service details, Seth Godin

Photography by David Jay

Seth Godin said recently, ‘If you want to build a brand for the ages, you need to stand for something today, and tomorrow, and every day.’

Among other things, we stand for quality, which is why the prints on our digital pages are split at the centreline, leaving a gap of about 2mm (about 1/16”). Some people might not like the look, but we can’t compromise products designed to last for generations.

Actually, as our website says, there are two reasons for this: more flexibility as to what equipment you can print on, and because the fold in the print almost invariably discolours and/or cracks.

We’ve seen enough “pink prints” to justify our position, and we don’t want to rely on photographic paper for the structural integrity of our books.

We hope you understand.

Cheers, Ian

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QBY’s hassle free printing workflow 2

October 6th, 2008 in Products & Services by Ian Baugh

Full Colour Service request

Tags: Export Wizard, Lab, LabFTP, Order Processing, Order Wizard, Photography & Design, Photojunction Remix, Printing, Tip

We’re describing the perfect way to send us your print-and-bind order…

After exporting your files you definitely shouldn’t jump straight to LabFTP and send us the files – we wouldn’t know what to do with them!

Instead, always use the Remix Order Wizard. (You’ll find it under the Album menu). Remix will validate your order and create an order “bundle” that contains everything we’ll need to process your order – provided you follow these instructions:

1. Run your order through the Send Order Wizard. You’ll find a tutorial here. The Wizard will ask what service you want (eg Print & Assemble) and also pose a few questions we need answers to, such as whether you want copy albums.

2. You can specify where to save the bundle, which is labeled with a unique ID. The graphic above shows what it looks like (on Mac). This particular bundle is for an order where we’re doing the printing (note the Print Files sub-folder).

3. You’ve probably already done this, but you still have the opportunity to edit your print files. Just remember this: Photojunction has made COPIES of the print files created earlier by the High-Res Export Wizard. If you choose to edit them now, before sending them to your vendor, please note that you’re correcting a COPY. The original export will remain unchanged.

4. When it’s finished, the Order Wizard will automatically NOTIFY us of your order but NOT send us any files. If you want us to print for you, (even just the cover motif) we need the bundle, which you need to upload to us with LabFTP.

5. Last step, open LabFTP and upload the files. Instructions for LabFTP are here if you need them. Please make sure you have the latest version (v3 and later automatically check for updates).

Next in this series: What if you just want us to print your cover photo?

HTH, Ian

PS We’ll be posting a movie to explain the Remix Export and Order Wizards shortly.

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