| Client | We use the term "Client" to refer to the photography companies that use our services, as opposed to customer (see below) |
| CompositeLayout | CompositeLayout is our free software for designing composite products - single prints made by combining all the portraits for a given group/class (See the appendix CompositeLayout). |
| Customer | We use the term "Customer" to refer to the person who is actually purchasing prints, as opposed to client (see above) |
| CSV Files | We use CSV files quite a lot throughout our systems. A CSV files is comma separated file that can be read by spreadsheet programs and databases but is actually just a simple text file (that can be dropped into Windows Notepad for example). Each line in the file represents one row in the spreadsheet. Each column in the spreadsheet is separated in the CSV file by a comma. The CSV file can easily be generated from an Excel spreadsheet file by selecting Save As and then choosing CSV (Comma delimited) (*.csv) in the Save as type field. There may be some complaints from the spreadsheet about loss of information but this is only format information, which can generally be safely disregarded. Note: formulae will not be saved only values. See also Pack CSV below. |
| Job: Portrait | A portrait job is the normal type of job; an event where individual portrait images are to be taken. Note: there is no reason not to include portraits of more than one person (eg. siblings). |
| Job: Group | A group job is an event where groups of subjects are to be taken (eg. classes, sport teams etc.). The main distinguishing features of this type of event is that it is anticipated you will have captions with the final prints including things like the class name, event title, names of all the people in the group etc. Also when each order form is printed you can print multiple copies (for each member of the group). |
| Job: Combined | If you have a combined job (portraits and groups) then each individual portrait shot will be associated with a group along with one group shot. When order forms are printed, proofs of both the portrait and associated group will be printed on one order form. |
| Job: SIMS | A SIMS job is an event where the host is a school that is using SIMS (or similar) data. They must have provided this data before the event in the form of a spreadsheet or CSV file. See Running Events and Appendix 1 SIMS and Group Names Data. SIMS are part of Capita Group and charge for automating SIMS data into the schools Data Base. The school can manually import each image without extra cost. |
| Job: Group Names | A group names job is an event where names are provided for each subject in each the group, allowing images to be produced with text at the bottom identifying the subject names in the image by row. The names data must already have been provided by the event host in a spreadsheet or CSV file. See Running Events and Appendix 1 SIMS and Group Names Data. |
| OrderGen | If you have the time you can save money by doing your own order data entry. Our OrderGen software is our free software for this purpose (See the appendix OrderGen). |
| Pack CSV | The Pack CSV file (see also CSV File above) is a simple tabular text file that is generated by our PackCoder software (See the appendix PackCoder). It contains a list of all the packs with their contents and prices that you want to offer for the event. With it you have the complete flexibility to decide exactly what you want to have in your packs rather than have to choose from a limited set specified by a lab. |
| PackCoder | PackCoder is our free software to design the packs you would like to offer to your customers from our list of products. It generates a Pack CSV file (see above) containing a list of all the packs with their contents and prices that you want to offer for the event. With it you have the complete flexibility to decide exactly what you want to have in your packs rather than have to choose from a limited set specified by a lab. See the appendix PackCoder. |
| ProofLayout | ProofLayout is our free software that allows you to design order forms or proof card layouts to suit you (See the appendix ProofLayout). In practice we often do this job for our clients to their specifications (for no charge). |
| EventUpload | EventUpload is our free software to upload your jobs to us via FTP. However for anything other than very small jobs this tends to be very slow and it is generally faster and easier to simply copy the job to a CD/DVD and post it to us! |
| Virtual Cropping | You can do cropping of the images in ProofStation and we recommend doing this rather than using another application such as PhotoShop. The reason for this is the cropping in ProofStation is virtual; that is no changes are actually made to the image file; instead the crop settings are retained in the database and applied before the image is displayed or printed. Therefore all of the original image is retained, allowing the crop to be loosened later if it is found to be too tight. See the Main Image Pane page for more details. |