This is an important message if you send us layered PSD files. If any of the layers have reduced opacity what you see on screen may NOT match the print - unless you check an obscure preference box in Photoshop’s Colour Settings. In this post we'll tell you what to do about it, and why. In Color Settings’ Advanced Controls you should CHECK the box, “Blend RGB Colors Using Gamma” (as in the graphic). Leave the value set to 1.00. This is considered ‘colorimetrically correct’ by Adobe and will match our settings in the Lab. This check box affects the way that RGB colours are blended and To View More >>

Food for thought... Photographers do a huge amount more now than they used to in the old days - and it's questionable whether they get paid for it. They used to "send their work to the lab", now they ARE the lab. Colour management and colour correction used to be the lab's problem, now they're the photographer's. My thought for the day – you can't afford cheap printing for two reasons: - YOU do all the work - that's why it's cheap. - BECAUSE you do all the work you can't do other, more profitable stuff (or just go home earlier in the evenings). Truth to tell, many photographers would also get To View More >>

Some people have experienced problems with Retro High-Res Export using Photoshop CS3 due to the fact their filenames have lower-case extensions, eg .jpg instead of .JPG. Photoshop CS3 scripting seems to be fussier about this than earlier versions and the solution is to change the extensions from lower to upper case, which you can do in Bridge, and then try re-exporting. Read on also for how to avoid the problem in the first place. Here are the Batch Rename settings you need in Bridge (click on the images to enlarge them): This will leave the filename alone but change the extension to upper case. To View More >>

Some of our clients enjoy smoother sailing than others. Less aggravation, calmer waters... An interesting thought whichever group you fall into! One important reason for this is that some of you understand our systems better than others. And yes, we accept we don't always do a good enough job of explaining them. One reason for this blog is to address the problem with bite-sized tutorials on topics suggested by you or our own staff. So over the next few days we’re going to discuss a few key issues. Here’s our goal: For you, an efficient, easy-to-understand system that gets you back to shooting To View More >>

If you want your order to sail smoothly through our ordering process, please make sure it's ready to go before you send it. Hopefully this post will give you some insight into why that's so important – why even minor changes to an order can cause a lot of work at our end. For example, suppose you request design or layout changes, or send us new versions of image files or album plans. First we have to call up your original order and work out exactly what you want done to it – not easy when we have hundreds of albums working their way through production at any one time. We may need to, for example: To View More >>