Proof Positive » Programs – Utilities – Gizmos

Having Problems Pricing Assignments, Jobs or Photos?

Melanie — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 19:31:22 +0000

The hair tearing angst! It seems like “What will it cost?” is practically the second sentence out of a potential clients mouth.

Cradoc Bagshaw and his PhotoQuote Pro software have been helping photographers price their work for decades. The software is designed for both stock and assignment photographers as well as videographers. PhotoQuote Pro works on both PC’s and Mac’s, is easy to install and use.

I can’t promise that your bouts of angst over pricing your work will completely stop, but you will become a better negotiator simply because of the confidence and knowledge you will gain from seeing what other photographers sell their work for!

Let us all know what YOU think about PhotoQuote Pro or if you use any other photo/video pricing programs.

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Sell Your Fine Art Photos

Melanie — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 21:54:39 +0000

Photographers often ask me how to sell their photo images as fine art. To tell you the truth, I pretty well never enter into the conversation because, up till now, it is such a complicated and difficult process. There have been multiple libraries written on selling fine art and most of the books I’ve read only gloss over the topic. How could I possibly tell anyone in one email message how to do it!

Now I can. Go to Imagekind.com

Imagekind is a Cafe Press company that has been set up just to sell your fine art work and your fine art photo images.

There are free and paid membership options. Surprisingly, even the free option gives you a lot of services and value for your buck!

In a nutshell: Imagekind is dedicated to selling and producing art and photo images with the highest quality framed giclee prints.

Here are just a FEW of the things you can get at Imagekind:

Create your own customizable storefront, with an easy to remember URL
Secure Checkout & Payment Processing – credit cards and Paypal accepted
Market your art effectively with Imagekind marketing tools.
Set the mark up for your art, and keep 100% of the profit (also get a % of the framing costs)
Create Art! Let us deal with the order processing, customer service packaging and worldwide shipping
Give your customer the best with museum quality printing and framing
Get a dedicated URL (http://johndoe.imagekind.com)
Display your art to a global audience in public, private or locked galleries
and LOADS more

To find out more go to Imagekind.com

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Safeguard the Privacy of Your Photos

Melanie — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 22:11:55 +0000

Do you have any PRIVATE PHOTOS on your PC?

The kind of thing you wouldn’t really want your kids, colleagues, or a nosy PC technician to see?
Or how about PRIVATE FILES – such as your accounts, or job application letters?

Well, if you use Microsoft Windows, you’ll know there’s NO WAY to protect them.

You can’t password-protect a folder. You can’t store them in a “secure zone.” You can’t even password-protect the file itself: most file protection systems can be broken within seconds.

That’s why today I’m writing to recommendation a FANTASTIC little program I just discovered.

It’s called Photo Vault.

And it’s like a real bank vault for your PC files.

Just drag-and-drop the photos and files you want to protect into the vault.

When you want to view your files again, just open the vault and enter your password. You can view your photos and files without leaving a single trace anywhere on your PC.

It’s total privacy.

And it’s available to YOU – RIGHT NOW.

Download your copy of this great little program NOW

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Hit the PANIC Button!

Melanie — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 21:38:14 +0000

We’ve ALL been caught on the PC before…

Playing games when we’re supposed to be working
Planning a secret birthday party
Looking at the “wrong” kind of website
Just HATE someone looking over our shoulder … doesn’t matter what’s on the screen!

Suddenly, someone strides into the room - and we’re scrambling to hide all of those windows.
That intense panic, worry, suspicion. It’s BAD. It LOOKS bad. The other person can see us scrambling
to hide something, which makes them curious to find out what!

There IS a better way…

The Panic Button Software hides ALL of your private windows - with just a single keystroke.

It’s totally customizable:

it can mute your sound
hide particular browser windows
open programs
and more!
It can run in stealth mode too, so nobody knows it’s even installed.

Panic Button Pro is the ULTIMATE privacy guardian for your PC.

And YOU could have it protecting YOUR privacy - within the next 5 minutes.

Check this out to learn more

I highly recommend it. This is one great software tool!

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Are You Just Waiting for a Disaster?

Melanie — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 04:58:58 +0000

Where's YOUR computer?

How many photos do you have stored on your hard drive?

How many client files?

Is all your bookkeeping information on your computer?

Are you just days or weeks away from finishing off that novel or info product?

What would you DO if all that information disappeared tonight when you went to bed?

Some people get an adrenaline kick from disasters … but this is one disaster I can personally do without!

Look at it this way:

You hopefully have some kind of health insurance.

You may have life insurance,

If you drive a car, you should at least have liability insurance.

But there is NO insurance that will make the pain of a complete hard drive failure go away. IF you find someone who is capable of recovering the information from your hard drive, you will be amongst the very lucky and it will still cost you big time … both in cash outlay and in time delays and talk about major stress.

There is NOTHING that will alleviate your anger, anxiety and stress if your precious laptop is stolen.

One study found that 93% of the companies who have had their data disappear are usually OUT of business within a year.

I know you’re thinking … “Duh, I’ll just backup my files once a day or once a week. Easy!”

Question: Have you done it? When was the last time you backed up ALL your information. Where is the backup?

Mozy is the closest thing to data insurance you can get. With Mozy, you regularly back up your files and if a disaster occurs, you have the ability to easily restore the files.

Given the costs in time, stress and money, Mozy is a real bargain.

For the month of July, it is even MORE of a bargain because you can get a 10% discount off their annual or biannual plans. Type the code (JULY) into the referral box at signup to get the discount.

Mozy Unlimited Backup – $4.95/Month

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Free Online Image Editor

Melanie — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 21:35:40 +0000

PIXLR

Pixlr is an online image application that allows you to create or edit images. You can edit images from your hard drive or from a URL.

Pixlr is a Flash based application … so you should have a current version of Flash to get it to work. It is fast and relatively easy. The “relatively” means that you should have some knowledge of image editing because one of the things that Pixlr is missing is good documentation.

Pixlr is also meant to be used for web based photos. If you need to edit photos for your website, for your blog, for facebook or other online uses you’re in the right place. If you need to edit images for print then Pixlr is not a great choice.

It’s free and very fast. I re-sized and cropped 10 photos in minutes using PhotoExpress. It took me 10 minutes to create a small text based graphic using Image Editor. This same image would have taken me over an hour in photoshop … which tells you how challenged I am by photoshop!

Give it a test run and let us all know what you think!

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Can’t Afford Photoshop?

Melanie — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 03:56:14 +0000

Unless you are one of the lucky people who can get an educational version, or somehow “poach” a free copy … you may have experienced the shock of Photoshop’s hefty sticker price.

If you have not purchased a photo editing package because of the price, you will be very interested in my latest discovery.

Aviary.com

Aviary is receiving rave reviews and rightly so. It is a powerful combination of design and image editing tools that allow you to indulge your creativity to the max.

The cost? Free for the basic tools and tutorials … and a mind blowing $24.95 per year for the full range of editing tools and advanced tutorials.

The tutorials are fabulous and easy to understand. So far, I have found the image editing tools to be intuitive and easy to use.

AND, there is no downloading necessary … everything you need is online.

Take a look at what some of the Aviary devotees have created:

aviary.com

Take a look at this really GREAT video review of Aviary:

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Free 10-Week PhotoShop Course