New Innovations From PWD

PWD is thrilled to announce a series of great innovations now live on the PWD website. With the ongoing goal of making post-production simple and accessible to all pro photographers, we’re excited to release these 2012 updates for our clients. These great new features are available immediately, only at PWD Labs: Web Downloader – Clients have embraced the PWD Web Uploader for its ease of use. Now we’ve brought that level of simplicity to file return as well!  Starting today, when you request electronic delivery, you’ll be able to download the final files directly from the PWD website. Expanded Retouching Options – Now you can request a retouching quote or authorize a set amount of retouching time – the choice is yours! Additionally, we’ve made it easier to provide explicit retouching instructions for individual files or groups of images. File Preparation Service - Don’t want to worry about the minutae of preparation steps that go into getting files ready to edit?  Let your PWD editor handle sequencing, image rotation, file organization, and more with the new File Preparation service.  Just $0.05 per image for peace of mind and a simplified workflow! Album Design Order Form - You asked for a better way to order album designs, and we’ve delivered with an all-new, intelligent, online order form.  Ordering album design is now just as easy as submitting a post-production job! Easy Album Design Pricing - We’ve even simplified the album design pricing: just $10 per page.  Nice and simple!  Check out the Post-Production Catalog for full pricing details. Updated Style Survey - The Style Survey is one way we get to know you, and it’s been updated to help us do just that.  Please take a moment to look over your survey answers before submitting your next job. And in case you didn’t hear: All pricing, with the exception of Album Design (see above), remains unchanged for 2012! At PWD, we’re constantly striving to improve your post-production experience so your can focus more on your business, receive beautiful images that represent you, and deliver final products to your clients faster.  Thank you for trusting PWD with your images.

WPPI Speaker Spotlight – Roberto Valenzuela

With WPPI fast approaching, we want to recommend a few talks that you might be interested in attending.  Today is our friend, Roberto Valenzuela.  You can learn more about Roberto’s talks and add them to your WPPI planner by clicking below.  Or view all of the speaker spotlights here.

Post-Production Pro Tips: Free Post-Event Workflow Guide

Free Post-Event Workflow GuideYour post-event workflow is just as important as what you do during the shoot.  That’s why we’ve put together a tip-packed guide to help you get organized and be more efficient behind the computer.   Learn about backing up your data, organizing and naming your image files, preparing your environment for editing, and breaking the image work into manageable chunks. Click here to download the PWD post-event workflow guide.
Quick-Tip: Are you going to WPPI next month?  We’re spotlighting some of our favorite speakers whose classes you might want to attend.	Quick-Tip: And be sure to stop by our WPPI booth for more must-see speakers, your chance to win an iPad 2, and a great show special!  Details here.

Free Post-Event Photographer Workflow Guide from PWD

Photographers, your post-event workflow is just as important as what you do during the shoot.  That’s why we’ve put together a tip-packed guide to help you get organized and be more efficient behind the computer.   Learn about backing up your data, organizing and naming your image files, preparing your environment for editing, and breaking the image work into manageable chunks.

Click here to download this great guide.

WPPI Speaker Spotlight – Bambi Cantrell

With WPPI fast approaching, we want to take some time to recommend a few talks that you might be interested in attending.  Today it’s our good friend, Bambi Cantrell.  Bambi is hosting a two-day Plus Class this year, in addition to a platform class.  Learn more about Bambi’s talks and add them to your WPPI planner by clicking below.    Or view all of the speaker spotlights here.

Photos from Imaging USA 2012

Imaging USA is over.  We’re home and have had some time to unpack and sift through the photos we took.  We had a great time and thought we’d share a few of Melissa’s images from the show.  Enjoy!

Thanks again to Emily and Allison for joining us at the PWD booth.  And thanks to everyone who came by and said hi.  We hope to see you again at WPPI in a few weeks.

Post-Production Pro Tips: Leading Zeroes In File Names

Leading Zeroes In File Names File naming is, unfortunately, one of those things that is more complicated than it really should be.  Numbering files just doesn’t work like one might expect.  It would be nice to be able to name your files ​image1.jpg image2.jpg image3.jpg … image9.jpg image10.jpg image11.jpg and so on.  And the above does work… for the most part.  Mac Finder, Windows Explorer, Lightroom, and other intelligent programs will display these files in the logical, expected order. Many systems, however, handle alphabetization differently.  Believe it or not, they see “10″ as coming before “2″ (because they read in one character at a time, and when they get to the the first digit, it compares “1″ to “2″).  Such a system would display the above files in this order: ​image1.jpg image10.jpg image11.jpg image2.jpg image3.jpg … image8.jpg image9.jpg And if your numbering goes up into the 100s or 1000s, it just gets crazier! The solution, as you may already know, is leading zeroes.  The zeroes are used as padding to get every index number to contain the same number of digits.  So if your numbering goes up to 1000 (4 digits), you’ll want every index number to also contain 4 digits.  In this case, you would add 3 zeroes to the numbers 1-9 (0001, 0002, etc.), 2 zeroes to  10-99 (0010,0011, etc.), and 1 leading zero to everything in the hundreds (0100, 0101, etc.). In our original example, we only go up to 11, so we just need every file name to contain 2 digits, as shown here: ​image01.jpg image02.jpg image03.jpg … image08.jpg image09.jpg image10.jpg image11.jpg ​With leading zeroes in place, any alphabetization system will display the files in the expected sequence. Luckily, any decent renaming tool (including Lightroom and Photo Mechanic) allows you to automatically pad your index numbers with leading zeroes.  You just have to decide how many leading zeroes to use (when in doubt, it doesn’t hurt to put too many zeroes). Yes, it’s more complicated than it should be, but at least the fix is fairly simple.  Now go play with some zeroes!
Quick-Tip: For more file naming tips, check out this article.	Quick-Tip: Come see the PWD gang at WPPI 2012.  We’ve got a free iPad 2 to giveaway, must-see booth speakers, and a great show special lined up.  See you in Vegas!

WPPI Speaker Spotlight – Alan Weiner

With WPPI fast approaching, we want to take some time to recommend a few talks that you might be interested in attending.  First off is our good buddy, Alan Weiner.  You can learn more about Alan’s talk and add it to your WPPI planner by clicking below.  View all of the speaker spotlights here.