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Everyone wants to know about ‘presenting to clients’… It’s one of our most asked about feature sets.
Since we’re big fans of mini-series (like Band of brothers, The Pacific, and our Template store tips), over the next few weeks we’re going to look into some of Photojunction’s cool features to help you present to your clients.
We’ll cover all sorts of things like using the Collection Builder, creating Slideshows, exporting Proof Sheets and plenty more.
Talk soon 
Cheers, Danny
A good question about templates came up in one of our recent webinars and we want to cover it for everyone…
If you drag and drop an album template onto a different sized layout, Photojunction (normally) treats the apertures as a ‘Group’ and scales them down (or up) to fit them into the layout.
That means a 7×5 aperture on a 12×12 template (for example) would be scaled to an irregular size if you dropped it onto a 14×10 layout, and could require some adjustment.
Here’s a little catch. Because Photojunction drops apertures onto a new layout as a ‘Group’, you’ll need to first ‘Ungroup‘ them before you can edit each aperture individually.
Now that’s great, but how can you drop a template onto a different sized layout, but retain the apertures’ original size?
By holding the SHIFT key while dropping the template onto the new layout. Photojunction will retain the apertures’ original sizes and spacing (so long as the new layout isn’t too small) and treat each aperture as separate (ungrouped).
Here’s an example to demonstrate the difference. A 12×12 template of four 3.5×3.5 apertures has been dropped onto both sides of this 14×10 layout.
The ‘Group’ of apertures on the left have been adjusted down in size to account for the reduced height of this layout, while the apertures on the right, dropped holding the SHIFT key, have retained their original size (3.5×3.5).
This SHIFT key trick is particularly useful if your album supplier charges for non-standard aperture sizes on matted albums, or if you want to use particular aperture groupings in a variety of album sizes.
We cover this and plenty of other useful tips, tricks and power features in a recent webinar we recorded and uploaded to our Vimeo channel here.
Cheers, Danny
Being able to see aperture numbers on your layouts can be very handy, for example when you’re trying to identify a specific aperture that the Problem Reporter has suggested you check out.
However they’re not always visible, so when do they appear? By default, Aperture Numbers only appear when the Problem Reporter is open.
However, you can toggle them on and off at any time through the Album menu.
HTH
Cheers, PJ Support Team
Version 1.27 turned up the other day …. in the usual way, unannounced, with the usual set of promises, and a small degree of suggestive insistence.
I downloaded the update as requested and at first paid little attention to what might have changed … Then I noticed the absence of the album specs from the Tools window … Thinking I had misplaced them I soon realised that they had been relocated.
What a great idea that is!
Now the flowchart approach works simply and logically, tries to minimise the potential for idiocy and is much less mysterious.
Suddenly I feel that PJ has moved on from being the teenager that it was to a robust and effective design tool.
My thanks to Danny, Ian, Stephen and the PJ design team for taking PJ to the next level.
Thanks heaps
Johannes
Continuing our tour of the major new features in the latest beta, check out this movie on Queensberry Connects about the FTP functionality we’ve built into v1.26b. We’ve added an upload function to the Order Wizard so you no longer need LabFTP. It’s automatic, so you don’t need to think about it – Remix just uploads everything the supplier needs. Even our resident geeks like not having to think for themselves. Occasionally.
Cheers, Ian
PS The Order Wizard only works with participating album suppliers – we’re happy to talk to yours!
We’ve added some new functionality to two buttons you’ll know well. Until now, the Rotate buttons in the Event Window have just rotated images. Now they allow you to rotate single sided templates as well (by 90, 180 or 270°).
Simply select the single sided template and use the buttons to rotate it to the right or left.
In this case the template has been rotated 90° to the right, and is ready to apply to a layout.
OK, that’s half the story. By default templates are double-sided, and you can select them and click the Split button at the top of the Event window to make them single-sided.
But Photojunction doesn’t split the original. It makes a single-sided copy and keeps the original. Very handy if you’ve got a square album and want to make three copies so you can rotate them by 90, 180 and 270°.
Cheers, Nigel
Manual sorting is a super easy drag-and-drop solution to sorting your images and templates in the Event Window.
We’ve added a new option to the ‘Sort By’ drop down list, called “Manual”. It’s the default option when the window opens.
While this option is selected you can manually drag and drop images or templates to new locations within a Group or Collection. Very handy if the default order options (eg date-and-time or file name) don’t work for you.
Here’s an example…
Say you wanted the B&W image to be the third image in the sequence.
With Manual selected in the Sort By menu, drag and drop the image between the last two images.
Now you can re-sort by date-and-time, filename or whatever, then go back to Manual where Photojunction will remember the changes you made.
Cheers, Nigel
We read this by Finao recently :
InDesign is becoming more and more popular for album design work, however, we do not recommend it for new designers. Unless you know your stuff with InDesign and consider yourself an InDesign master, don’t use it… There are more variables and settings to check with InDesign. Wrong settings and improperly sized linked images are easy to miss and are common problems we have seen with inexperienced (and even some experienced) users… We have also experienced more problems with file corruptions during upload with improperly exported or converted InDesign files. Let this serve as your warning, use InDesign at your own risk.
Finao have an excellent point, and you won’t be surprised if I agree and maybe add to what they’re saying. 
InDesign and Photoshop don’t design “real” physical products (and generally the tools that are based on them don’t either). Instead they’re entirely dependent on the user to create a design that complies with all the producer’s requirements, whether that be a book, a magazine, a poster, an album or whatever.
One of the major problems album manufacturers can have is when the orders they receive are not “ready for production”. Here’s a great example.
I believe photographers are familiar with the problem with respect to labs, but in fact it’s far more difficult for album manufacturers. As one example, Asuka’s File Checker is an attempt to address it, by stopping users from sending problematic orders.
And that’s why PJ has built-in presets for both labs and album manufacturers. Not very sexy but very practical.
There is a lot to choosing an album design tool but getting orders to your album manufacturer and lab that are accurate, complete and ready for production is an important consideration.
Warm regards, Danny
Hopefully by now you’ve watched the short movie Danny and I recorded covering the main new features of Photojunction beta 1.26b and all the geeks and enthusiasts are up and running with them. We’ve had some great feedback about them since we released.
We’ll blog about a few more features over the next few days. First up, a new right-click function…
Try right-clicking on an image in the Event window or on the album layout. You’ll notice we’ve added a new option to the Right-click menu called “Show in Finder” (Explorer on Windows) which reveals the location of the original hi-res version of the image in your Finder/Explorer.
Cheers, Nigel
Many people first arrive at the album design process without much prior thought or experience, and they think, “Templates sound easy”. Basically they’re nervous of the album design process, and an easy drag and drop solution sounds great.
Sometimes the templates they buy have limitations: ugly, clumsy, can’t be edited, hard to sort through or fit your photos into, suit a different style of photography or whatever. So some people get dissatisfied and move on to more powerful design tools.
Creative freedom is great, and you get all the flexibility and control you want – but it takes time, especially if you’re not disciplined.
So a new challenge shows up on your radar – the need to increase your productivity and define your style … you might start thinking about creating you own templates.
And I imagine this is cyclical in a way. A pendulum effect. Even experienced designers get tempted by the ease-of-use of templates and conversely people are inspired to leave the template nest and spread their wings.
My point is you probably need both, and if you can find both in the same piece of software, chances are you’re onto a winner. And yes you can!
Photojunction isn’t template-driven, it’s template-friendly. It’s a free-design tool that saves templates automatically from everything you do. And we’ve spent a lot of time on tools to help you edit, organise, filter and share them.
There’s a lot to choosing an album design tool, and maximising both creativity and productivity is a major factor.
Warm regards, Danny
Portrait and wedding photographers… Organise, display and sell your images, design stand-out albums, interface with Photoshop, send your work to your vendors.
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