Version 1.47, builds on changes introduced in v1.46. Our main focus was on Queensberry’s new press books, including fixes to the new workflow, many of them “behind the scenes” from the user point of view. We know we have a way to go with this and the developers are continuing to work on cover design issues in particular.

Having said that we’ve introduced three new features to speed up your album design. They’re still a bit “v1.0″, but we wrote them in consultation with Queensberry’s design team, who live and die by productivity, and we wanted to get them to you early so you could take a look and tell us what you think.

You’ve been able to auto-build an album from templates for a couple of years now, but the design team don’t use the feature. Instead they wanted three things:

• - a way for their clients to tell them which are the “hero shots”.
• - a way to automatically lay the images out on the pages in chronological order (if possible without ending up with unrelated images on the same page together).
• - a way to auto-search for templates.

The first one was easy. If you right-click on an image, you can now give it a star to signify it’s important.

What about laying out the images on the pages? First you need to set up the album, including the number of layouts you want, and create a collection with the images to go in it.

Then it’s just a question of clicking the More button and selecting Divide and Conquer. The software will divide the images in the collection evenly and drop them on the number of layouts you’ve specified. The cool thing is that along the way you’ll be asked to set a time interval to automatically divide the images into groups. When PJ finds a time gap bigger than what you specified it will automatically start a new layout, which generally means adding a couple of extra layouts to the number you’ve specified in setup.

You can guarantee that you’ll still want to shift images around a bit, so it’s doubly cool that if you open the Preview tools panel you can drag an image directly from the active layout to another one. NB ALT-drag on Windows, OPT-drag on Mac.

You’re going to have to play with this to get the hang of it, but our designers reckon this saves them 20-40 minutes on every album they do.

Now let’s go for treble cool! Once you’ve got yourself a heap of templates (your own past work or collections you’ve bought from the PJ Store), how about being able to auto-search for the ones that match the number of images you’ve got on the layout?

Well you can. “Auto Template Search” is the last item under Template Collections. Select it and, if you’ve got suitable templates, there they’ll be. But there’s an easier way: Right-Click on the layout (avoiding the images), select Auto Template Search and Photojunction will take you right there.

It’s early days for these new features, so let us know what you think. We’re going to make them really great.

Cheers, Ian

PS And here’s a bonus. To generate a list of images used in the album, including the path to them, go to the Album menu / Export / List of images used. If you just want to see them on screen go to Image Collections and click on Images Used. Both of these are shown in the screenshot below.

In my earlier post about real-world alignment I said, Slight differences in size, spacing and alignment look like mistakes: obvious differences look like design decisions.

You can determine what “slight difference” means by setting tolerances in the Display Warnings section of Preferences:

Reading from the top down:

Incorrect aperture sizing: By default, if apertures are less than 5mm different in size (height and/or width) the Problem Reporter will display a warning. However you can reduce that to as little as 1mm by shifting the slider.

Aperture misalignment: By default, where apertures are misaligned by more than 2mm, the Problem Reporter will ignore it, but again you can reduce the tolerance to as little as 1mm.

Aperture spacing: By default, where aperture spacing varies by more than 2mm, the Problem Reporter will ignore it, but here also you can reduce the tolerance to as little as 1mm.

Check “Report problems on exporting proof sheets and slideshows” if you want to to activate the Problem Reporter for those outputs as well as for albums: it means you’ll get prompted to fix layout problems before asking clients to approve them.

Checking “Display equal spacing…” (between apertures and to the page edge) is very handy if you align using the mouse. But if you use the button tools instead, and find this distracting, you can turn the feature off.

Finally, you can set the level at which Photojunction displays pixelation warnings. We all know that if you output images that are larger (or have a higher DPI) than the original file, the software (eg Photoshop) creates the necessary extra pixels by interpolation. We also know that, beyond a certain point, adding those extra pixels will degrade the image quality to an unacceptable level.

Unfortunately, what is “unacceptable” is a matter of personal preference.

By default Photojunction will warn you if your design requires more than 20% more pixels than exist in the original file, but you can adjust the tolerance between 10% and 100% (ie twice the pixels in the original file).

Please don’t treat this as advice on how to ignore the Problem Reporter! Have a play with the settings to see what works best for you, and always review the layout and the print files full size before you commit.

Cheers, Ian

PS Personally I have the settings pretty much as above, except I have the aperture size tolerance set to 2mm (5/64in), like the others, and I do check for problems on exporting proof sheets and slideshows.

Photography by Rodney Hobbs, Design by Anna Breetvelt.

This morning I was put on the spot by someone asking what’s the best way to tackle alignment (and alignment warnings).

I suspect some people “sweat the small stuff” about this, but I’m not in production, or support, so I thought I’d ask someone in the front line. Like the rest of the team, Anna plans albums with PJ day in, day out. If she isn’t efficient the work’s not profitable, and if people don’t like the results they come back to haunt us. So who better to ask?

It turns out the team have a few simple rules.

1. Use the standard aperture sizes wherever possible. A standard 9×6 horizontal aperture will fit exactly alongside a standard 6×5 vertical, for example. Fast, no calculation, no handiwork, no sweat.

2. If you’re creating non-standards, make one and duplicate it as necessary, so they’re all the same size.

3. If you want to create apertures that are different widths but the same height (for example) start with a duplicate and change just the width. Then duplicate that if you need to!

4. Lay the apertures out roughly on the page first, so you know what you’re aiming for, and only then start aligning them.

5. Align the apertures to each other first. Like a bricklayer, start at one end and build out. Only when that’s done align them “to the page” (centre, top, left or whatever).

6. Keep the design simple! Honestly, it generally looks better and it’s much faster. The more different sized “bricks” you’ve got, and the more of them, the more complicated it gets.

7. Set a standard “distance between apertures” and “distance to page edge” in the Supplier section of Preferences. This means you can use the alignment tools much faster.

8. PJ is trying to be helpful, not trying to be boss, so here’s the dirty secret: ignore the Problem Reporter warnings if you need to. Let’s be clear, the warnings reflect decades of design experience, so please don’t take them lightly, but, like the pixelation warnings, it’s your call.

What matters is how the actual album looks in the real world. A book full of apertures that are slightly differently sized, slightly differently spaced, slightly out of alignment, will look a bit of a mess. But follow the rules above and that shouldn’t happen. Anna reviews the warnings systematically. If she sees something to fix, or tweak, she does. But if it looks fine she just checks the “ignore” box and moves on.

Your experience and design sense obviously matter, and your confidence will grow. Don’t forget you can and should always review the layout and the print files full size before you commit.

Two final points. Slight differences in size, spacing and alignment look like mistakes: obvious differences look like design decisions. And watching people use the software it’s clear they often do things quite differently. Watch this video, experiment and settle on a strategy that works for you.

Read more.

Cheers, Ian

Last Friday NZT Stephen, Danny and Ian ran an impromptu webinar to introduce the Queensberry Press and demonstrate how to design the books.

This excerpt concentrates on the “how-to”. Much of the new functionality is behind the scenes (eg built-in colour management to convert the exported layouts to the printer colour space) but Danny concentrates on the process, especially how to specify the books and design the covers.

Click here to watch it full screen.

Cheers, Ian