Hello dears, if you’re like me you find the modern inter-web and computer thingamys a little overwhelming. in fact I had a conniption the first time my nephew plugged my Macintosh SE into a network and I’ve never been really comfortable since.

But I like what it lets me do, so I struggle along.

I did peek in my iTunes music folder once (looking for my old Tom Jones and Seekers’ records) but I thought, “Good grief, that looks complicated,” and I’ve never looked again.

I suspect that’s exactly what Apple want. They don’t even mention their “back end” (nasty expression) because you can really get in a mess if you play around with it.

Now dears, I mention this because Photojunction has a back-end too, and I suppose what I really want to suggest is, if you can, keep your hands off it.

Let me tell you what happened to one of our users recently. All jokes aside, if it had happened to me it would really have got my knitting in a knot, but there are lessons to learn, so let me explain what they did:

1. Went in and made copies of the Project folders (where Photojunction stores everything to do with a specific job).

2. Manually deleted content from the Project folders (which PJ put there for reasons I don’t really understand).

3. Saved extra stuff in the Project folders (which PJ won’t know about – especially if it’s in one of the duplicate Project folders they made, which PJ also won’t know about).

4. Renamed files (which means PJ won’t be able to find them).

5. Used illegal characters when renaming (which PJ, your operating system or lab might not be able to handle).

6. They also configured their Preferences to put the default saving folder inside the default project folder (this is “I’m my own Grandpa” territory and confusing for the software, and it certainly makes my own head spin).

Now I do know everyone has their reasons, and I’m the last person to criticise, but I hope you don’t mind me offering some suggestions:

Click on my Preferences and you’ll see I don’t even know where Photojunction is storing my bits and pieces. As with my iTunes, I’m happy to leave well alone. Some users need to change their Project Folder because they need to place the files on a different drive or central server, and it’s easy to do: I just don’t need to.

I haven’t even changed the default “saving folder” (where PJ stores my exports and upload bundles), so the files still go to my desktop.

But my main advice is not to mess around inside the folders.

If Photojunction puts things in these folders I assume it has its reasons, and who am I to disagree?

If I want to duplicate Projects, Events or Albums I do it in Photojunction, because if I do it that way PJ can keep track of everything, and everything keeps working.

Same if I want to edit, duplicate or delete my image files or the exported page layouts: I can do it in PJ, and if I do it that way everything works.

The developers, who are very nice young men, have spent a lot of time building all this into Photojunction so that they can help you avoid all this frustration.

Bless you all, and please cover up outdoors (it’s cold and wet here in New Zealand right now – not that I’m complaining).

PJ Nanny