We’d love to be there when you hand your bride her Queensberry album. Waiting for her reaction with baited breath.

Now times that anxiety by 4-1/2 million and that was New Zealand in the last two minutes of the Rugby World Cup Final. The game was so tight that it came down to a kick from a fourth-choice reserve player from my little home town of Waiuku to clinch the cup. Stand up and take a bow, Stephen Donald.

Talk about pressure. Now we can breath again.

No we can’t! We have an an earthquake, a shipwreck and an election to think about. Plus Christmas.

At this time of year the pressure’s on everywhere. Not that we’re complaining – most of us love to rise to these big occasions – we just want you to know we’re aiming for the same goal posts as you. Part of your team. Lining you up to touch down or nail that goal or get that album in their waiting hands.

So let’s keep pushing hard till the final whistle. Get the orders in early and keep the lines of communication open. We need to know what’s going on at your end and I’m pretty sure you’d like to know what’s happening at ours. Any questions, or concerns, let us know. We’re here to help.

So congratulations to the All Blacks and commiserations to Les Bleus (the French Rugby team). 8-7 was the final score of a match that was 24 years in the making.

Cheers
Pete

In 1981, I was on a fishing boat chugging from Tulagi to Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands, taking the Asian Development Bank auditor to catch his plane. He said to me, “Have you heard of a company called Apple?”

Ah, no.

“They could change your life”, he said. “Anybody can have a computer now, and just imagine what it could do in your warehouse.”

Back then, managing a boat yard in the Solomons involved importing everything from hammers and nails, and nuts and bolts, to the Caterpillar engines that drove the ten tuna pole and line catcher boats we were building. Our warehouse was a big deal, and we kept all our stock records on 5-inch cards.

Computers never happened in my time in the Solomons, but when Heather’s business started to crank up I quit boat design, and one of the first things I did was to buy an Apple //e and VisiCalc, and computerise our accounts and order processing.

My OP app worked OK, but Apple and accounting didn’t get on in those days, and we had to sleep around a bit. We couldn’t afford the new IBM PC, so I bought a Morrow running CPM and a local accounts package. I liked that machine because when it crashed mid-transaction I could go in and edit the text record manually to balance the books.
Those were the days

But my heart was already Apple’s. God knows how we saw the Superbowl ad in New Zealand – probably on the news – but I wanted a Macintosh. The 128K was a seductive toy, but when the Macintosh Plus came out, and the Laserwriter, and Pagemaker, I was in like Flynn.

We run a Windows and Apple network now, and write cross-platform software, but … my heart belongs to Apple. We’ve stuck with them through thick and thin.

I retired from geekdom when Stephen networked our computers back in the day, and now I’m a happy dumb user. Thank you Stephen, Team PJ, Alkesh, Anna B, the lab geeks and the support crew.

Today I unpacked my new cinema display at home, plugged in my MB Air, cranked up my Parallels upgrade to make sure it ran with Lion, and sat down to read the Herald online while I ate lunch.

The first thing I read was that Steve Jobs had died.

I’ve been working at computers for almost thirty years now. Thank you Steve, and SteveW, for empowering the rest of us. What a different place the world is. RIP.

Ian

Mac OSX Lion is exciting new software, but before you install it there are a few things to think about:

1. You’ll lose access to all your old PowerPC applications. It’s been six years since Apple transitioned to Intel processors, and with the introduction of OSX Lion you will no longer be able to run PowerPC based software. Rosetta kept the old software running pretty smoothly, so you could be in for a few surprises. For starters I had to upgrade Microsoft Office. Never thought of that!

2. Closer to home, you will no longer be able to run Photojunction Retro (yes, there are still a handful of you out there).

3. There are also people still using Photoshop CS2. That won’t run on PowerPC chips either. But then we’ve already recommended that you abandon CS2.

While we’re on the subject, Photojunction Remix (i.e. the current version) will also stop running on PowerPC Macs one day. Won’t happen any time soon (probably twelve months away or more) but it will happen as our development environment moves to Intel-only.

All in all, it may be time to think about retiring your G4s and other pre-Intel Macs.

Not sure if your Mac has an Intel or PowerPC processor? Apple explains how to find out: http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1531

If you have any questions, please do contact support.

Cheers, Ian

As we announced back in February, we’re in the process of streamlining the way Photojunction handles third-party vendors. As part of that process, we will tomorrow be removing the Cover Material, Cover Style, and Titles resources, as well as the largely unused “Send Order” functionality for all suppliers other than Queensberry.

If you’re using PJ to design Queensberry albums, or not using the functions listed above, you won’t notice any difference.

Only those designing for a handful of vendors are affected, and we understand that those most affected have been working through the transition with their clients.

The vast majority of people use PJ primarily to design and export page layouts. Rest assured that we’ll still be supporting all page types (matted, digital etc) and you’ll be able to export your page layouts for uploading and printing as now.

This process has taken longer than we expected, and we still have more to do in terms of how Photojunction works with third-party vendors, but we’re working on it.

Meantime, you can read more about the story behind these changes by following the links above, and please do contact info@photojunction.com if you have any problems or questions.

Cheers, Ian

Things have a habit of creeping up on you, as our friends at Seldex have reminded us by sending an email to their clients reminding them that come July they won’t be able to use Photojunction’s cover design and Send Order functions.

(We announced as much here back in February.)

We’ve counted Seldex as friends for years – in fact they sold Queensberry albums in Australia back in the day! – so this is a rather sad time, the culmination of a process that started to unfold a couple of years ago when we realised that most suppliers weren’t going to support PJ as a universal album design tool, which was our original goal.

Since then we have been trying, and failing, to reach agreement with Seldex and a couple of other suppliers (who to be fair did buy into our original goal) that would make it commercially sensible for Queensberry to continue allowing them to use our intellectual property in Photojunction.

The features in question are of no use to the vast majority of non-Queensberry PJ users – photographers who use the software pretty much entirely to design digital albums and press books and create their layout files for printing. They are, however, as we see it, a key part of Queensberry’s competitive advantage.

Here are two posts on The Junction that will help explain the thinking behind this.

The first is a survey we did in January to see what users do with Photojunction, which functions they value and which suppliers they use etc. There were a lot of surprises!

The second explains the decisions we took as a consequence, which included turning off the functions that Seldex has been using.

Seldex users, like everyone else, will still be able to use Photojunction to design their albums. No change there. As I said at the time, “…the vast majority of people use PJ primarily to design and export page layouts. Rest assured that we’ll still be supporting all page types (matted, digital etc) and you’ll be able to export your page layouts for uploading and printing as now.”

The vast majority of users will notice no change, and rest assured we are still committed to making Photojunction the most productive, creative, intuitive page design program out there for ALL professional photographers.

Please contact support if you have any concerns or questions.

Cheers, Ian

Hello dears

It was a busy day at the office getting out v1.49, which fixes a few problems that surfaced in v1.48. But the most exciting thing is that we also published the resources for the Queensberry Press v2.0. The new books are gorgeous.

Oh dear, I nearly forgot – Queensberry is offering half price on all Press Books until the 6th of May 2011. Click here for more!

Wrap up well!
Love, Nanny

PS You can check out the list of fixes on the Photojunction software update notification screen.

We’ve now released v1.49 to fix a few minor issues in 1.48, but everything in this post is still current – Ed.

In case you haven’t noticed, we kiwis are very modest

Which is why I like announcing stuff that I didn’t have much to do with, but I feel really good about, because I can sing its praises without feeling bad about myself!

Anyway…

The dev team have been busy busy today pushing out a new final release, and I think it’s a really good one. They’ve put a lot of time and effort into refining features first released in v1.47, especially for Queensberry Press Books, but there’s some juicy new stuff too. So read on!

1. It’s really nice that PJ now remembers open tool panels when you save your work space – even the separate template window and preview – and on separate monitors if that’s how you do it. So go ahead, update your workspace!

2. Make sure you check out the goodness under the More Button on the Event window! Divide and Conquer distributes the images across the album layouts based on the number of images you specify per layout. It also splits the images into groups based on the time interval you set. It’s now a great time saver in my humble opinion (it wasn’t my idea!).

3. You can now design the dust jackets of Queensberry Press Books separately from the cover (you don’t have to use the same design on both as you do in ordinary press books).

4. You can now freely design translucent pages in Queensberry Press Books (ie add images and text as on ordinary pages). Add translucents anywhere you like using the button at the bottom of the layout window. You can also download translucent title templates free of charge from the PJ Store. Should you reduce opacity on translucents? Our designers say it depends on the images, the amount of detail in them and whether you want to be able to see through them or not. Many images look good at 100% opacity, and we don’t recommend less than 60%.

5. You’ll see that we’ve added new paper stock options for Queensberry Press Books too (Art Tintoretto, Art Nettuno and Pearl Metallic). Art Nettuno is what you saw in the unreleased “art album” that we showed at WPPI and at FOCUS (UK).

6. There are also new cover options for Press Books. By all means have a play. We’ll be adding more cover styles next week, and posting images of the new cover and page stocks on the blog, next week. We’ll have prices for you then too.

7. We’ll show you our new Japanese-inspired Mayu Press Book Case then as well – I think it’s beautiful.

8. We’re finding more and more users are avoiding Photoshop and doing all their image editing in Lightroom or Aperture. But that means they don’t have Photoshop to create their page layouts. To deal with that we’ve introduced a new “Export, Print and Assemble” service for Queensberry. If you choose the new service PJ will upload the original high-res files to us instead of layouts. We’ll then create the layout files for printing at our end. There’s no charge for the service, and because we can create layered files we can also offer Full Colour Service printing. Cool eh?

9. We’ve added a new and improved FTP upload procedure to Queensberry. It’s faster, and robust in testing, but in this release, if you prefer you can go back to the existing process (you’ll be offered a choice when you hit Send Order).

And that’s just the major news. You’ve been asking for a simple list of image names to find files in Lightroom or Aperture, and it’s there now. You can space apertures easier based on your defaults in preferences. Check out the release notes to see a full list of tweaks and fixes.

With so many new features to show off we’re going to do a couple of webinars over the next few weeks to introduce them. Meantime, as always, have a good play and tell us what you think!

From everyone at Queensberry, thank you for using Photojunction.

Cheers, Ian

Well, Danny’s leaving.

Danny started working for Queensberry almost seven years ago as a part time support person while he studied computer science at Auckland University.

After graduation he worked as a developer on the PJ Remix project and went on to head up the entire Photojunction team.

Many of you’ve met Danny at WPPI and FOCUS, or on tour in Australia and New Zealand. But for most people he’s the principal voice behind the Photojunction webinars and classroom movies.

He’s also been a regular writer for The Junction.

I’ll miss Danny saying my posts are too long to read, and I’ll miss telling him his posts are too short to be informative!

But I’m editor so guess what.

PJ Remix was a glimmer in our eyes when Danny started. The goal was to use our PJ Retro experience to build an app that could process “complete, accurate, valid” orders for the most creatively empowering albums around. No small challenge that, but:

• Photojunction now processes 99% of Queensberry’s business, and can handle everything in the user’s workflow from image selection to order upload.

• Since we made the software free-to-all we’ve developed the the biggest user base in professional album design, and it’s growing 30% a year.

The software is a tribute to Danny and the entire team.

We’ve had a lot of fun along the way. Danny’s less than proud of this movie, but the rest of us still think it’s funny. To me it demonstrates the fact that we’re not happy doing anything second-rate.…
Danny arrived a callow graduate but he leaves a married man

Married, but not ready to settle down. He and Natalie are embarking on nine months of travel through Europe, the Americas, India and South East Asia. If they tackle Siberia before me I’ll be upset.

They head off with our very best wishes. We’re going to miss them.

Cheers, Ian

To recruit his replacement maybe we’ll use this ad Danny himself wrote (it worked).

The purpose of our recent survey was to get a better picture of how you’re using the software, and the features most important to you.

It turns out you use Photojunction to design albums for almost a hundred album suppliers that we don’t even offer resources for – no wonder a third of you “always” use Remix DIY!

It’s also clear that unless you’re one of Queensberry’s clients you’re most likely using PJ primarily to design and export page layouts. That’s not so surprising. Getting past “page design” requires a lot of input from vendors, and unfortunately they’re much less engaged with PJ than their clients are.

We’re going to stream-line the way PJ handles third-party vendors based on those findings, so here’s what’s coming up:

1. We’re creating a new tool so vendors and users can author their own album resources and sell them through the PJ Store (just like templates now).

2. We’re improving the DIY function so you can define the position of the “photo-safe guides” – something we’re often asked for.

Those two features will be a big step forward for most of our users, but to make them work we do need to simplify the album resources. And so:

3. We’re removing the Cover Material, Cover Style, and Titles resources for all suppliers except Queensberry (you will be able to enter text into a field to DESCRIBE your cover option).

4. We’re also removing the largely unused “Send Order” functionality for suppliers other than Queensberry.

We are very ambitious for Photojunction – as an ever-improving, hassle-free, differentiating, money-making platform for selling Queensberry albums … and the most productive, creative, intuitive page design program out there for ALL professional photographers. There’s a mouthful.

As I said, the vast majority of people use PJ primarily to design and export page layouts. Rest assured that we’ll still be supporting all page types (matted, digital etc) and you’ll be able to export your page layouts for uploading and printing as now.

We’ll be rolling out more details about these changes over the weeks ahead – and we have a lot more on the development schedule besides – but I think that’s probably enough for now!

Let us know what you think.

Cheers, Ian

Hi All, we need a favour.

Our newest recruit, Angelique, is taking some time off to have a baby. (Congrats again to Angelique and Pete.)

But while Angelique is off on leave we’ll need a temporary replacement to help with Photojunction support – answering emails, phone calls, tweets, and Facebook posts (with a dash of blogging).

You can work from home (as New Zealand can be a killer commute) and use your own computer. Other than that we’ll sort you out with software and a phone to get the job done.

Here are a few details:

- Monday – Friday, 9am – 3pm EST (If you can’t figure out how those hours map to your time zone then it’s probably not the right job for you ).

- This is a temporary contract expected to end in mid May.

- You should know Photojunction well as we’d like to get you up and going ASAP.

- Excellent written and verbal English.

If you’re interested, tell us why you’d be a great fit: danny@queensberry.com.

Cheers
Danny