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With the launch of online proofing several years ago and the awesome communication power of the QEMS program, the simplest personal contact on college campuses has become a thing of the past for many CCS customers. The ease of dealing with Party Pics orders via the Internet, and the ubiquitous broadband interaction has created a vacuum on many campuses of a known “face” that represents the greek business and deals directly with the campus-based customers.

Consequently, over the last five or six years there has been a noticeable downturn in the amount of events photographed, the number of images shot and, ultimately, the quantity of pictures sold. This personal communication vacuum has also allowed many new digital photographer pretenders—and contenders—to surface on many college campuses threatening the financial viability of the campus and the livelihood of many businesses.

Recently, Gary Limmroth of ZAP Photography in Tuscaloosa, AL related how just last week his head photographer Keith Zemnes, making personal visits to each of his University of Alabama’s 14 sororities and 16 fraternities to check on billing and upcoming events, had booked 29 events for the Spring semester in a little less than 41⁄2 hours!

On a subsequent visit to the Mississippi State campus ninety minutes away from his Crimson Tide home base, Keith was able to add 18 events to the ZAP calendar from just 6 sororities. In many cases, some of these parties are “found money”, according to Gary, “that will easily pay for his gas and time”. “The contacts made by Keith and others in our office”, says Gary, “keeps students from viewing ZAP as some large, impersonal business that just wants their money”. Simply put says Gary “There is no substitute for visiting your customers in person”.

These 47 events from these two campuses may or may not have been scheduled by a social chairperson using QEMS, but that is not the point entirely. If you want to rely, solely, on your greeks scheduling events via QEMS there is a very good chance that some events may not be scheduled, and consequently, you’ve missed a great opportunity to shoot and sell Party Pics®.

In addition, by being ignorant of events taking place you are encouraging the use of digital cameras at events. Let’s face it, if you aren’t shooting every event for every sorority on campus—someone is. It could be your competitor or it may be the girls themselves.

But there is also a bigger benefit that is nurtured by ZAP visiting each of the houses. Gary is also presenting opportunities for his business to strengthen the bond between ZAP and each of his houses, and build customer loyalty. This nurturing can be difficult if you only depend on your broadcast emails to create the “warm and fuzzy” feeling of a business that cares about their customers.

In a scene from a Woody Allen movie his character utters the reality that,
“Eighty percent of success is just showing up”.
How true, how true!

Quick Retouching Debuts in the Sports Market

Of all the graduates that were offered Quick Retouching last year during grad season, 7.5% took advantage of the retouch option. That may sound like a small percentage but think about this. That number represents nearly 55,000 graduates that paid anywhere from $10 to $15 for this service. A service that:

    •requires no inventory
    •has no direct labor cost
    •can’t be mis-shipped
    •requires no additional postage, and
    •has an 80% net margin

So, what exactly is Quick Retouching? Quick Retouching lightly softens facial complexions including blemishes and wrinkles as well as brightening teeth and eyes, while enhancing the overall quality of the finished photos.

CCS is strongly recommending that the above underlined description of Quick Retouching be utilized when describing this service to your clients on your order forms or on your website. Any other description may create expectations that the service does not cover. For instance Quick Retouching will not remove:
    •stubble
    •shine
    •shadows
    •uneven light
    •stray hairs
    •glare on glasses or,
    •background

The target market for this retouching service is centered clearly on middle school and high school teams—especially women’s teams—where this type of service would be most desired. Did you know that nearly 85% of people between the ages of 12 and 24 develop Acne at some time? That is why we believe this product/service will be most beneficial to those that photograph individual sports portraits in the middle and high school sports market

Your cost from CCS for offering this product/service is $3 per face. Also, it allows you to offer it not just for individuals but you could use it for Buddy Shots. However, keep in mind that Quick Retouching only applies to individual portraits and not team shots.

So what are you waiting for? Add this service to your offerings for the upcoming Spring sports season. Besides gaining additional revenue you may be offering something that your competitor probably doesn’t!

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Identifying and Addressing Flash Card Corruptions
The symptoms are:

You viewed images on your camera, but they were not found on the flash card when you put it into the card reader on the computer.

You put a card into the camera and it tells you that it must be formatted.

You see partial images or are missing some images from your photo session. (They could be in another folder)

You formatted the card before loading the images into your computer.Oops.

Every card has an index file (FAT-File Allocation Table) that tells the computer and the camera what images are on the flash card. When you format a card, it puts a new index or FAT onto the card and allows you to overwrite what is already on it. The images are actually still there, but it requires recovery software to make them viewable again unless a new image has overwritten the original.

When you have a card corruption, the index on the card is damaged or corrupt and you will not be able to see some or all of your images. By processing the flash card through a recovery program, you can recover these images in most instances. You may even see older images that have not yet been overwritten.

Our recommended recovery software is PhotoRescue. It can be purchased for $29 from http://www.datarescue.com/. Customer Support can coach you on the use of this software at 800-750-0494.

Using PhotoRescue

After installing, click on the PhotoRescue desktop icon. If you see the message below, click “Run”.


Click “OK” from the About screen.


Select “Logical Drive” (Default)
Select “Determine the Card Size” (Default)
Select “Cache the input” (Default)
Select “Thumbnail rendering” (Default)
Select the appropriate drive letter that corresponds to your flash card reader. (Usually F:, It may be G: if using a multi-port card reader)
Click “OK” to begin recovery process.


The recovery software may go through as many as 8 recovery methods.
If you see errors at the bottom of this window, please contact Customer Support for instructions on running Expert Mode.


The software is done with the recovery process when you see the “Continue” Button.


After clicking the “Continue” button, you will be prompted to continue with more analysis or stop. Select the “No, Thank you” button.
Any images that were still visible on the flash card will be in the DCIM folder. Any images found will be in the found folder.
Click on the “Found” folder to open it.


You will see all images found on the card. You may even see images from an old session that had not been previously overwritten.



While holding the “Control” button, click on all of the images that you want to save.
From the top menu, select “File” and then “Save”.
Save the images to a folder on your desktop



Click “Desktop” from the Browse for Folder menu.


Click the “New Directory” button and type in the Order Number as the folder name.
This will save the images to your desktop.
You can then load your recovered images into FTP from this desktop folder.
If you have other images for this customer not yet uploaded, you can drop them into this same folder.


Please contact Customer Support at 800-750-0494 for any assistance.

Flash Card Maintenance-What to do after you recover your images

Once a corruption occurs, you are more likely to see another corruption on the same card if not cleaned. Card wiping should be performed once a week during the busy season as a preventative measure.

Download Card Wiper, 248 KB (OS X users download here), a program specifically designed to completely wipe the corrupted/fragmented data from a corrupt card. DO NOT wipe the card until you have completely all recovery steps because this card wiping program will DESTROY all data. Once the card has been wiped, put it into a camera and format it. You will be as good as new. Note: You will see an invalid card or card error message until you have formatted the card. This is normal.

Using Card Wiper
Unzip the attachment and drop the Wiper icon onto your desktop.
Then click on the Wiper icon to launch the program.


Click “OK”.


Select the flash card drive (the smaller one)
DO NOT select the larger drive. This is your hard drive.
Even though the buttons are not active if you point it towards anything larger than a 2 GB flash card, DO NOT take any chances.
Click the “Wipe Card” button.


Once the card has been wiped, put the flash card into your camera and format it.
It is normal to see a card error in the camera when you put a freshly wiped card into it.
Once formatted, the card will be back to normal.

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Blank Perforated Flyer Envelopes
by Holly McCoy

Click to enlarge

It's time again to re-order your need for BLANK PERFORATED ENVELOPES!!! We’ve taken Digital Sports Envelope Design and to create some BLANK FLYER ENVELOPES that can be used FOR ANY MARKET! We’ve had customers saying they can’t wait to use these for DAYCARES, PARTY PICS, ETC. The possibilities are really endless! The perforated/glue strip design has been very popular, as the flyer can be detached from the envelopes.

We have some CCS Customers using the flyer part to show packages, which their customer keeps as a record of their order, then they use the envelope part to obtain the customer’s information and actual order. --OR-- you can make the flyer part the order form, use the envelope as a mailing device, and the customer encloses their order form and check and mails it direct to you in this envelope. Remember too, with these BLANK Flyer Envelopes, you will also have the FULL BACK SIDE to feature your products you wish to offer to that market. It’s flexible to any market!

The BLANK Flyer Envelopes will already be glued and folded and left open flat for overprinting on both sides. The whole piece (including flyer, glue strip and envelope) is 12-3/4" X 8-1/2" but you must allow about 3/4" in the middle of the glued side where no type can be printed. The envelope itself will be 8-1/2" wide X 3-3/4" tall once the top flyer part is torn off. You can overprint whatever you want on either side---it’s up to you! You can customize these for any market, either by printing them off your laser printing or by taking them locally to be overprinted. We have had some customers that can’t laser print on them, and some can. We suggest getting some samples of our current sports envelope, and testing them before you purchase these....they are the same envelope, except with printing. You can get some sports envelope samples by calling X270 at CCS. These envelopes are a special type of envelope that not that many presses can produce. By converting them and leaving them blank for you to overprint–we give you a great cost on them due to the volume we produce for everyone, and then you take it from there for overprinting!

**PLEASE NOTE!!! We will be producing these twice a year (every 6 months), so you will need to estimate your needs for the months of March ‘06-August ‘06. We will NOT be inventorying these, so you must order what you need for this time period!! DEADLINE for ordering is Wednesday, February 8th, 2006, 5PM (CST). Download the order form.

Prom info

Yes, that’s right....it’s time to start planning for the spring Proms & Dances!!! We have a set of beautiful 17” X 23” full color POSTERS and 8-1/2”X11” FLYERS for use in increasing your formal portrait sales. Download the order form. Both are the same design in beautiful full-color. The poster

Click to enlarge

and flyer touts purchasing the PROFESSIONAL formal shot...showing some simple, average shots taken at home in the background screened back. The formal shot stands out and says “This is a must have!”

We have left a screened back area at the bottom right where you can add a sheet of 8-1/2 X 11 paper on the poster if you wish to post the package pricing. You can also have the flyers overprinted with those same prices in the same spot or on the backs of the flyers. The copy on both is: “May I Have This Dance?” and it also says, “A Professional Photographer Will Be At Your Event To Capture The Moment With High Quality Portraits. Remember to bring payment. All orders must be paid for at the event.” This poster can be used to book proms and dances, along with giving to the high schools to hang up in their hallways and hand out to their students.

This piece is important to remind the students you will be at the event and to the BRING THEIR MONEY!!! Order yours today!! We will only print the quantities that are ordered....THERE WILL BE NO EXTRAS. We will only print these one time each year...so order ALL you will need for the year. We will NOT be inventorying these items, so be sure to place your order by the ORDER DEADLINE: Wednesday, February 8th, 2006, 5PM (CST).

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Attention CORE Users!
Do You Know How to Send Emails To Your “Not Ordered” Customers Only?
by Brad Hurley

Email marketing and proofing is a cornerstone of CORE. Taking full advantage of all of the options within the CORE email system can be a challenge.

One of the most common questions we are asked is how to send emails to only those customers who have not yet ordered. This can be accomplished by selecting the "Not Ordered" check box on the Events \ Print Proof Cards page. (diagram 01)

There are also many other ways to filter which customers you want to send proofs or other marketing emails to. You can choose to filter out customers with a valid mailing address, if you wanted to only send emails to those customers that you were unable to send a printed proof. Another useful filter is the "E-mail address had bounced". (diagram 02) This filter would remove any emails that had not been successfully received.

CORE also has the ability to save different sets of email filter options, known as Queue Profiles. (diagram 03) Typically Queue Profiles are defined by the point in time that they will be transmitted to the customer, such as "First Mailing", or "Deadline Mailing". You want to email all customers with valid email address the "First Mailing", but only those that have not ordered on the "Deadline Mailing". The Queue Profile allows you to set a standard set of rules for each type of email.

Combine the Queue Profiles with the new CORE Email Campaign for an extremely strong email marketing system. Be sure to explore all of the powerful email options available in CORE, to maximize your sales.


More News on Customized Product Templates
The templates needed to design these products can be downloaded from CandidNet

Click to enlarge

In a previous newsletter article we announced several new products that allow you to upload custom graphics. The templates needed to design these products can be downloaded from CandidNet. Adobe Photoshop is required to work with these templates.

DOWNLOADABLE TEMPLATES

TEMPLATEMemMateLogo.psd	TEMPLATEMemMateNoLogo.psd
TEMPLATERacePlaque.psd	TEMPLATEFinish.psd
TEMPLATERaceLogo8x10H.psd	TEMPLATERaceLogo5x7H.psd
TEMPLATERaceLogo8x10V.psd	TEMPLATERaceLogo5x7V.psd
TEMPLATEGreetingCardHorz.psd	TEMPLATEGreetingCardVert.psd
TEMPLATECoBrand8x10H.psd	TEMPLATECoBrand5x7H.psd
TEMPLATECoBrand8x10V.psd	TEMPLATECoBrand5x7V.psd
TEMPLATE8x10Matted.psd	TEMPLATE5x7Matted.psd

It is important that you start with one of the default template designs, as it is configured with the correct location of images and text, and also the correct aspect ratio and resolution. Be sure to test any custom products, as colors and other details can print somewhat differently than displayed on a monitor. Contact customer support with any questions or concerns.

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Improved image protection on QPPlus Quicpics Retail
by Demetri Barges


Enhanced image protection was added to the new quicpics retail website that will deter and prevent images from being stolen.

Description of Protection	IE	Mozilla	Mac
Right-click suppressed:  Protection from a user saving or printing an image.	Yes	Yes	Yes
Transparent overlay:  Protection from a user printing from the browser menu.	Yes	Yes	Yes
Direct URL access:  Only available on previews and prevents a user from finding previews on the CCS servers or in temporary internet cache.	Yes	Yes	Yes
Clipboard erasing:  Protects against manual screen capture and cut and paste.	Yes	No	No
Active window protection:  Previews and Thumbnails disappear when window loses "focus".  Protects against screen capture by 3rd party applications.	Yes	Yes	Yes
Temp files protection:  Makes it difficult for a user to find a preview image in temporary internet cache.	Limited	Limited	Limited

Javascript must be enabled for some of the Image Protection features to work. Additionally, if the photographer places Javascript in the event header that is prone to errors, it will crash our Image Protection measures. It is important when photographers implement Javascript on their event headers that they always test their events.

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Did You Get Your CCS Products & Price List CD in Las Vegas?
by Blake Whitney
Order Your FREE QP+ Collage Sample Today!
If you were in the Greek break-out session recently during the Las Vegas seminar or have read the previous newsletter, then you are aware of the new Collage product in QP+. Research has shown the increase in popularity of multi-image prints and now your customers can create their own with their party images and a variety of templates and backgrounds.

Click to enlarge

Since Las Vegas, we had a number of customers add the collage product to their events. But we want EVERYONE to see the new process firsthand. To this end, a sample event has been created for the new QP+ Collages product to be ordered Collage Sample Event. We encourage you to visit this event to see just how easy it is for customers to build and customize this product with the combinations of backgrounds, layouts and zoom/cropping features available. Each CCS customer account will be given one free 8x10 Collage sample, in the form of a gift certificate code. Gift Certificate codes are available by emailing me and requesting one. Please include your account name and number.

Once you have created and received your new collage, we hope you will agree that this new product would be a welcome addition to your product offering.