Photo Finale 8.1.0.25300 Release •  27 January 2012

Redesigned “Review your Photos” Page

New Features/Improvements:

• New “My Projects” page with support for customer-entered names and descriptions per-project, and a Copy Project feature.
• Redesigned “Review Your Photos” page, focuses customer on only photos that require cropping, allows for filtering by status, product and orientation, and supports thumbnail zooming.
• Revamped Photo Browser & Photo Viewer pages with a cleaner, sleeker look and feel, better consistency throughout, and improved load speeds for accounts with many collections.
• Improvements to the Style Selection page to load style preview thumbnails faster and adjust the workflow so customers always see a full-size preview of their style before selecting it.
• All text fields in creative products are now free-form, allowing them to be resized and repositioned as need by the customer.
• Support for drag and drop in the Upload Photos dialog.
• Automatic redirection of iPhone/ iPad / iPod Touch users to the iTunes App Store for dealers with a custom-branded Pocket Pics app.
• New infrastructure to allow Folio Content changes (uploading updates to existing styles) that remove previously linked backgrounds and/or layouts, while still preserving the items for customers with saved projects utilizing them.
• Labs utilizing online payment processing can now choose between Deferred Capture, the existing method where payments are “authorized” when the customer submits their order online and captured later after fulfillment, or a new Authorize & Capture method that captures the payment immediately as the order is placed.
• A number of smaller fixes and tweaks.

The New "My Projects" Page

The judging was done on Wednesday night by a non-Lucidiom individual.  One 12×18 of each of the finished Picnik prints were laid out on the floor and the judge was instructed to pick the one most appealing or one considered to simply be “the best.”  After looking at each print closely, the judge removed prints, shuffled them around, and took a closer look at each.  Curious what they all look like? Take a look at the gallery on the wall down by Jr’s office.  I have also posted them online (artist names are part of the filename).

The following comments were recorded during the judging process:

• This is tough!
• That kid’s got super dimples!
• This picture is good.
• This could be a Bee Gees album cover.
• This is really someone’s personal picture?
• Disturbing.
• Now, that’s just disturbing.
• What’d they do to that one? Nothing.
• Oh yeah, another album cover.
• Weird.
• That’s a cool effect.
• Is that someone’s dog? Holy crap.
• Yep, we have an Eagles [album] cover here! Nice one too.
• Cute picture.
• Ooh, artsy!
• Eh, not so sure about the words.
• This is tough, they are all so different.
• I do like this picture.
• There’s just something about this one.
• Yep, this is the one, sticks with me and is creative.  And weird. I like it.

The pile was whittled down to the final 9, which consisted of entries from: Dom, Rick, Louis, Chris G, Jay, Ingo, Rob S, Peter and Nitya.

For the winner, watch here:

(posted by Rachel)

1. Print out original and Picnik’d photos and a few Picnik logos on 12×18 on the EQ printer…tape them up on the wall.
2. Print out 20 cartoon ants on your EQ printer…if you’re feeling fancy, sure go ahead and cut them out.  Tape them in a path to your Picnik!
3. Be sure to put up a sign with your website, pricing, directions, etc.

12×18 prints on the EQ printer are cheap for you to make, and very impressive. Picnik’d photos look great as 12×18 EQ prints…consider a special promotion for this product!  A staff contest to generate more Picnik’d art is also a great way to fill a wall!

You can create the same Picnik wall in your store that I made in the office…I have posted all the photos (before and after), logos, and even the ants! on the marketing page of lucidiom.com: http://www.lucidiom.com/support/tools_kits.aspx

(posted by Rachel)