What better way to welcome back Angelique than to publish another of her Photojunction posts? – Ed.

I don’t think Image Collections and Groups get enough credit from Photojunction users. What better way to speed up your album design than not waiting for all 1100+ images in your Event to load every time you switch back from viewing templates?!

Sorting them into Groups and Collections will stop that…

There are Image Groups and there are Image Collections.

Image Groups can be great for narrowing down your groups of images. They keep your images separated. You could sort by the time of day, making it easy to only look at portraits when you are building a portrait layout, or you could reject images and not have to look at them at all. Once you put an image into a Group it is removed from the default group “unsorted”. This is sort of like keeping your images in folders, they can only be in one place.

Image Collections are a bit more creative. Danny used to always explain that they were a bit like playlists in iTunes.
Not wanting to insult anyone, they are also like playlists on a Zune.

Your images can be in multiple collections, and they will always stay in the All Images Collection. Here you could sort out favorites, maybes, client picks etc. My favorite image collection of all is the Images Used Collection.

Try them out, experiment with what works best for you. I guarantee you’ll like it better than always looking through ALL your images throughout your entire design process.

Can’t wait to hear what works best for you!

Angelique

I’m a bit obsessed with clearing my problem reporter. When I do, I know I did my best to make the album perfect production-wise.

When we did the Problem Reporter Webinar, Ian had a list of the different errors that could come up. I like to think of it as a cheat sheet for questions Photojunction users might have for me. The most common one I hear is missing HR files.

If you are receiving this message, it means that Photojunction doesn’t know where your High Res images are. They may have been moved or the path could have been renamed. In the Event Window, click the More button, select “Relink High Res Images”, and navigate to the folder containing your images. This should refresh the links and remove the warning.

When relinking images it is important that the original high res images have not had their names changed as Photojunction will be looking for the original file name in the original location.

If you have renamed a file, you’ll still get the error in the problem reporter after “Relink High Res Images”, and you’ll also see a warning on the image (on your layouts and in the event window). To fix that, right-click on the image, select “Browse For Original” and go find the renamed file. Let’s hope you haven’t batch-renamed, because that could be a big job.

Angelique

A while back, in a post about the problem reporter, Ian listed all the possible issues that might pop up in the problem reporter.

Beyond alignment, the most common issue seems to be problems with images. The problem most users encounter is missing high res files. The next two are missing low res files, and HR and LR files that do not match. Both the last two problems have the same solution, which I’ll talk about here.

The Low Res files that Photojunction is referring to are the Low Res Proxies that are created when you import your images into your event. These files are what allow you to layout your album and export proof layouts so quickly. Rather than working with your original (possibly up to 20MB) files, the low res proxies are nice tiny screen size images.

But if you modify the original image outside Photojunction after the proxy is created, your Layout Window won’t reflect these changes, and neither will your exports.

To fix these issues, you’ll need to rebuild your Low Res Proxy collection. If you aren’t done building the album, the best bet is to do this for all images. If you’re finished, you can shorten the process a bit by only rebuilding the Images Used Collection.

In your Event Window, choose the Images Used collection (assuming you’ve finished the design). Select all the images in the collection, right-click (Ctrl-click on a Mac), then choose Reimport from Original.

Run the problem reporter again and those warnings should have disappeared.

Angelique

PS If you have your High Res Images properly linked, and this process does not resolve your issue, shoot us an email at info@photojunction.com.

As promised in our recent post about the Photojunction Welcome screen, I wanted to take some extra time to go over the Browse tab with some suggestions to maybe make your workflow smoother.

The first column is your Client column. This seems fairly self-explanatory right?

In column 2 your clients could have multiple Events. For example, an engagement shoot, wedding, day-after session, maternity shoot, newborn shoot, and then family shoot. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if every client were booking that many shoots?

Each event can then have multiple Products (column 3). For a wedding, you might create proof sheets, a slideshow, a bridal album, and two different parent albums, among other things. The primary reason to keep multiple products under one event is to only import the images once. HUGE timesaver.

The last column is Exports. Here you can easily locate where you saved your exports (proof layouts, high res layouts, etc) to for each Product.

How about those buttons at the bottom of each column? From left to right, Add New, Edit, Duplicate, Delete. If you float over the button in question while in Photojunction, you will get a bit of a longer description.

Now for the tips you have been waiting for!

(Now I work in support I know how important these are to both you and your vendors. And you’ll find the most important of all under PRODUCT.

CLIENT
- Remember, over time you’ll develop a big database of projects here. Call your clients by their actual names so that you know what to search for! This is what Photojunction uses to name your project folder.
- Folders don’t like funny characters, so don’t use them. Avoid &, *, <, etc.
- If you use only letters, numbers, and underscore, your project folder will be named exactly as your client, plus a string of characters PJ adds.
- Use the other fields! If you have a client ID number, use the reference field, this can only help in sorting through clients to find the job you are looking for.

EVENT
-Since you named your client so perfectly, you can name this however you please. Wedding, Engagement, etc.

PRODUCT
- This is the main ID used for your album orders (“Your Reference” on the set-up screen) and how you name them is really important. Especially when you’re talking to Queensberry!
-As this earlier post says, searching a gazillion orders for an album you’ve called “Bride and Groom” or “Wedding Album” or “QBY 12×12″ or “Final” is a bit hopeless. Having a specific formula (we recommend the client names and the event date – eg BOB AND CELIA MAR 11) is far, far more helpful.
- Since the product type is included automatically, there’s no point calling it “Slideshow” or “Album” anyway.
- Avoid special characters in this name as well. This will be especially helpful if you upload to AlbumExposure.

Follow these tips and check out the classroom videos if you have a minute. PJ Nanny would be so proud!

Angelique

As I am sure you’ve seen, the Photojunction welcome screen got a bit of a makeover recently. I thought it might be worth a few minutes of your time to review it.

The News tab has been added and if you are like many users, you might just quickly flip to the Recents tab and ignore it. But expect the content to change regularly, and take a minute every now and then to check out the links. The content will help you learn a bit about the websites and connecting with the Queensberry and Photojunction teams.

Next, we have the Recent tab. Based on conversations with many Photojunction users, this is everyone’s favorite tab. It used to be the default. The Recent tab lists your most recently opened projects, with the last one you opened shown first.

The third tab is Browse. This tab is very useful for those photographers and designers who are dealing with more than 10 clients or projects at a time. This will give you the breakdown of your clients and projects in a column view. This tab deserves it’s own post, so more on that later. Just know that if you are looking for a project and it isn’t in your Recent tab… you can find it in the Browse.

Last is the Uploads tab. This tab is for Queensberry users, where you can see all of your order bundles created in Photojunction. It lists all of them by default, but you can break it down by when the order was created, or what the status is. By default the Uploads tab will list ALL your order history. I know this can be a bit overwhelming, but filtering the list as I’ve just described will help. We give you the option to delete items from this tab, but we do suggest that you DON’T. My personal advice… at least wait until you have the album in hand and know it is 100% perfect.

Cheers, Angelique.

When I talk to Photojunction users and they express frustration with the application, I have to know more. When we hear so many users rave about how much time it has saved them, I am just perplexed when someone feels the exact opposite.

For example, I’ve talked to few of you who are frustrated with the time consuming nature of exporting high res layouts when you simply want to send a client a layout to approve. Or, you had to make tiny changes requested by the client and had to deal with the Problem Reporter all over again.

High Res exports of layouts only need to happen once. This step in Photojunction is only to produce print files. It is a time consuming process. There is no denying that. And if your computer isn’t the newest, it is going to take even longer. But if you simply want to send your clients layouts for their approval, they certainly don’t need full res files and Photojunction knows that.

A little while back, Danny did an entire series of posts on how to present your album to clients. The ways of presenting seem almost endless, but it seems some of our users missed out.

Among the proofing/presentation options, one of the simplest is to create screen resolution (proof) layouts, which may be all you need.

To create proof layouts, go to the Album menu, select Export and then select Proof Layouts. You can check out more on creating Proof Layouts on Danny’s post or you can just try it. It’s easy, I promise.

What are you going to do with all the time you just saved?

Angelique

Following the recent webinar covering the Problem Reporter, I decided to cover the problems that happen AFTER the Reporter. First you might encounter problems exporting. Once you get those resolved, you need to send your order. Should be easy enough, and usually it is, but sometimes you can have problems there too. Since we don’t have 24 hour support coverage, we thought it might be helpful to post some tips on how to resolve some of those issues too. Now when you go to send your order at 5AM, you might be able to help yourself before you even need us to help you!

Problem #1: Photojunction Crashes While Creating the Order Bundle
This is a memory issue. Try restarting your computer and not having other applications open. Yes, this means I am saying stop working in Lightroom for a minute and give Photojunction a moment of your time.

Problem #2: TCP Error 102
This has to do with permission problems on the Queensberry side. Pause the upload and wait about 15 minutes. Try again.

Problem #3: TCP Error 103
Usually this means that you didn’t follow all the tips in the Exporting Problems post. Most specifically number one. There is a naming issue somewhere. When it comes to folder names, computer operating systems have progressed to the point where there seem to be no rules. The internet has not. Check your order bundle. If there are funny characters in any of the folder or files names, take them out. Try the upload again.

Problem #4: TCP Error 530
Your username or password is wrong. To verify this information go to the Photojunction Preferences (Options in the Edit menu in Windows, or the Photojunction menu on Mac) and click the supplier tab. Be sure your username is entered under the supplier username and that your FTP information is filled in below. Queensberry users – these pieces are case sensitive! Delete the username, then type it in again. You should do the same with the password.  Save the preferences and try the upload again.

Problem #5: TCP Error 550
This is typically another naming issue, but a bit easier to fix. Something may have just went wrong on the server. Try to upload the project as a Full Re-Upload. This will re-create folders on the server for the order. To do a full re-upload, click on the Uploads tab of the Project Browser and choose the appropriate project. Click the Reupload Button along the bottom of the window.

If none of these help, take a screen shot of the error you are receiving. It always helps us determine what the issue might be.

Angelique

We just had a webinar covering the Problem Reporter. Hopefully it helped clarify some questions you all had.I’m going to talk about problems that can occur after this step.

There are two ways to export your printable files from Photojunction. You can do it through Photojunction Direct (if you just need JPGs) or you can use Photoshop (required if you need layered PSDs). If you choose to use Photoshop, the process is no longer completely controlled by Photojunction and this means that, unfortunately, we can’t control everything that happens.

Last year Danny posted some tips to avoid these problems on the forum. It seemed like a good time to revisit these tips and maybe add a few more. Even if you aren’t receiving script errors in Photoshop, some of these tips might help you save a bit of time too!

#1 – Keep It Simple
Just because the computer will allow you to name your folders anything you want, doesn’t mean you should. Resist the urge to use characters you couldn’t use 10 years ago. I’m looking at you, question mark, comma, apostrophe, slash, and colon!  And any of your little friends too! Following this rule will save you headache all over the place.

#2 – Open Photoshop First
This is especially helpful for a slower computer or if you have more than one version of Photoshop installed on your machine. Make sure you don’t have any files open in Photoshop though! Just the application itself. If you receive an error when exporting and you had Photoshop open first, try closing it and letting Photojunction launch it.

#3 – Close Other Programs
The scripting (communication) that is happening between Photojunction and Photoshop is pretty hefty. On top of that your computer is opening all those High Res files, cropping, moving, resizing, etc. This can be very memory intensive. A restart before an export can never hurt your speed either. This will help clear up the memory so it is really only worrying about the export.

#4 – Step Away
Set up your export to go BEFORE your next coffee break. Or just use it as a good excuse for a break. Photoshop likes to be a shining star. It is not a fan of running in the background. If you are trying to do other things on the computer at the same time, this could cause some communication issues between Photoshop and Photojunction and one of them may get confused. It is sort of like trying to have a conversation while someone in standing between you and your mate reciting poetry. Completely distracting, how could you deal with that?

And since you can’t do anything at the same time as the export anyway, did you follow tip #3?

#5 – Replace the Image
Sometimes things look right in Photojunction, but the tiniest thing might be funky. If your export seems to go to a certain point and ALWAYS has a problem at the same spot of the album, try replacing those images on the layout and going to the export again. To save yourself a bit of headache, try to only export the layout that you just replaced the images on. As odd as it sounds, this has fixed 95% of the times I have received an error in Photoshop.

Still having issues? We can certainly try to help. Please take a screenshot of the error message you receive so we can try and decipher exactly what is going on.

Angelique

I like to think I am a power user for Photojunction. Every now and then, however, I feel like I get smacked in the face with “How did I never know this before?!” One of my favorite things about Photojunction might be the seemingly endless possibilities. Properly trained in Graphic Design, I despise having to use a mouse. I prefer using a tablet whenever available, but I also work on a laptop quite a bit, so I have adjusted to my trackpad as well. Not quite as accurate as my stylus, I still find I am better with a trackpad than a mouse.

If you haven’t seen it yet, Apple recently release the Magic Trackpad. The Apple geek that I am, we bought one almost immediately. It is the perfect compromise for our desktop. I no longer need to pull my tablet out for simple things, and I can avoid using a mouse. Thanks to the tips on the box, we learned even more tricks for our laptops, that we did not know were possible.

This extends to Photojunction. The more I use the trackpad, the more I accidentally learn.

And so, my tips and tricks for today:

Did you know…. using two fingers on your trackpad (same as you would to scroll in a window), you can swipe over an aperture on an album layout and adjust the crop/zoom? I am finding it to be far more accurate than using the slider. On a current Wacom Intuos table you can use the wheel to do this as well.

Next… (and this one I didn’t find, Danny told me) building on editing the crop/zoom on the layout, you can hold the command key and move the image within the aperture.

Go ahead. Try both. It’s awesome.

Angelique

Shortly after the iPad was announced, Nigel posted about wanting to run Photojunction on it. While that hasn’t happened (yet), the iPad has become quite a popular tool for photographers.

Personally, I like to use it to present final album designs to clients. Photojunction makes creating and editing layouts so simple, that sitting there with a client flicking through their spreads takes the mystery out of knowing exactly what they’ll end up with.

There are so many presentation options within Photojunction, but here’s a few that work with the iPad…

1. Slideshows

Want an album slideshow to fit perfectly on your iPad so you can present it to your clients? Choose the Computer (Projector) size from the Slideshow movie size presets. They’re the same exact dimensions as the iPad. Easy enough right? Imagine pre-designing the album and having the slideshow playing on the iPad when your client comes in to view their proofs.

2. Proofs

Would you rather your clients could flip through the pages of their album design at their own speed, while you take notes of any changes they may want to make? When you export Proof Layouts in Photojunction (Album menu > Export > Proof layouts) choose 1024 as your export size (the second option on the drop down list).

Add the proofs to your iPhoto library (or whatever you have set up to sync with your iPad) and you are on your way!

3. albumexposure

This is my personal favorite. We made an excellent decision when we joined forces with albumexposure, and they made sure it wasn’t long before albumexposure was iPad compatible.

All the great albumexposure features you’re used to on your computer are available when you access an album design via your iPad browser. Clients can view, comment and submit their album comments or approvals using the iPad. albumexposure and Photojuntion will do their thing and your clients’ comments will be available for you to view back in Photojunction.
Of course, this particular method does require an internet connection

So what’s your favorite way to present albums to clients? Leave a comment below, we’d love to know.

Cheers, Angelique