Light Blue: Photo 1.2 released

Posted on Wednesday 3 June 2009

With a host of new features, including localisation options, instant publication to iCal, extra web gallery templates and more, Light Blue: Photo 1.2 is now available.

If you've already registered a copy of Light Blue: Photo, you can upgrade for free and import your data; if it's new to you, download the full version for a 30-day trial. If you like what you see, you can buy it for the special introductory price of just £325, including VAT.

Don't forget to check out our extensive set of video tutorials, which will help you get started.

Below is the full list of new features and bug fixes; do let us know what you think of version 1.2.

Localisation options: We've added a series of localisation options for all of our customers from outside the UK. You can choose a default paper size (either A4 or Letter), specify your preferred date format (dd/mm/yyyy or mm/dd/yyyy), currency and even customise various field labels.: The localisation options are part of the setup wizard if you are installing Light Blue: Photo for the first time, but you can change them at any time by going to the 'Settings' section and then clicking on the 'Localisation' tab.

Improved iCal publishing: For Mac OS X users, we've dramatically improved iCal publishing. We've improved its speed and are now publishing more information to the iCal event (including contact details, the shoot schedule and requests lists) and added a new 'Auto-publish' option on the 'Settings' screen. With 'Auto-publish' turned on, shoot details are instantly published to iCal as soon as the changes you make have been saved by either clicking out of any fields or going to another record. This means that you will rarely need to use the 'Publish Shoots to iCal' command in the 'File' menu.: The calendar you publish your shoots to in iCal should be dedicated to Light Blue: Photo. If the 'Publish Shoots to iCal' command finds any events in iCal that have no corresponding 'Shoot' record, you will be asked whether you want to delete them.

Quotes can now be printed: A new 'Print quote' button has been added to the 'Quotes' tab of the 'Shoot' screen. Printed quotes use the same header and footer images as your invoices and receipts.

Receipts can now be printed: When printing a Payment record, it is now printed as a formatted receipt that you can give to clients, rather than the previous, more formal-looking report. The receipt uses use the same header and footer images as your invoices and quotes.

'Do not rename' option added when importing images: The 'Picture naming style' field on the 'Settings' screen now has a 'Do not rename' option. Images imported into Light Blue: Photo no longer have to be renamed, so it now works more flexibly with workflows that involve renaming image files outside Light Blue: Photo.

New web gallery templates added: Six new web gallery templates are installed when you run Light Blue: Photo for the first time. If you want to add these templates to your existing copy, go to the 'Web galleries' tab of the Settings section and click the '+' button to import a template. The new templates can be found in the 'sample files' folder in your Light Blue: Photo application folder.

New fields on the 'Contact - detail' screen: 'Birthday': The birthday fields are separated into day, month and year so that you can enter as much information as you have and run birthday-based promotions. 'This Month's Birthdays' and 'Next Month's Birthdays' have been added to the 'Quick Queries' menu.: 'Type': The 'Type' field defaults to "Client" for new records and shows an automatically-updating list of other types you've used in the past when you click the arrow to show the drop-down list (e.g. "Supplier", "PR", etc). This 'Type' field is distinct from the 'Contact type' field that appears when you link a Contact to a Shoot, which has renamed as 'Role' - the same Contact might be linked to a wedding shoot with a 'Contact type' of "Bride" and a later portrait shoot as "Mother".: 'Website and VOIP': The new 'Website' and 'VOIP' fields have icons next to them that can be used to open the links you enter into these fields. For example, clicking the icon next to 'VOIP' when you have Skype installed will make a call to the username you've entered.: 'Job title': A 'Job title' field has also been added.

'Original filename' shown for Picture records: If you are renaming your image files when importing them into Light Blue: Photo, the original filename is now shown in grey under the current filename in the 'Picture' screen and on the 'Linked pictures' tab of the 'Shoot' screen.

'Home' link added to web gallery templates: New tags, %homePage% and %registeredUserHomePage%, have been added for web gallery templates, along with a new 'Home URL' field on the 'Settings' screen. These tags can be used to create links back to your main website from the web galleries you create with Light Blue: Photo, encouraging your clients to visit the rest of your website once they've looked at a web gallery.: The web gallery templates supplied with Light Blue: Photo have been updated to include these tags. If you are already using Light Blue: Photo and want to use these new templates, you can import them from the 'sample files' folder that is installed in the Light Blue: Photo application folder.

'Default location' setting added: The 'Location' field on newly created Shoot records will be filled in with the contents of this new field.

Payment allocation system improved: The amount allocated to an invoice by a Payment record is automatically updated when you change the 'Payment amount'. As before, you can override the allocation for situations where one payment is used to pay off more than one order.

Additional mail merge tags added: %clientlastname%: %shootquotenet%: %shootquotetax%: %shootquotegross%: %shootquotebookingfeedescription%: %shootquotebookingfee%: %shootquotebalancegross%: %shootquotebalanceduedate%: %shootquotebalanceduedatetext%:

Bug fixes

Missing 'Landline' field on the 'Schedule item' dialog: The 'Landline' field wasn't shown when adding or linking an address to items in a Shoot's schedule.

Contact address text colour: The 'Copy to clipboard' button could copy a Contact's address as white text instead of black. It now always copies black text.

Contact & Shoot details added to the printed to-do list

Page numbering removed from printed invoices

Link between quotes & orders improved: When a quote is invoiced, the link between the Shoot record and the new Order record has been improved. You will no longer be asked if you want to re-invoice a quote if you have deleted the original order you had created.

White space removed from contact names: Any additional spaces (or other white space) accidentally added to contact names is removed wherever the contact's full name is used.

Illegal characters removed from Shoot folder names: When creating a folder structure for a Shoot record, any characters that are in the 'Shoot title' field but can't be used in a folder name are removed.

RTF mail merge documents now detected by file type on Mac OS X: On Mac OS X, RTF mail merge documents are now detected by their file type as well as their file extension, so documents that do not have a '.rtf' file extension will now be recognised as Rich Text Format documents.

Tab orders: The tab order in some screens wasn't always consistent. Using the tab key to navigate between fields is now more predictable.

Improved handling of corrupted images when creating web galleries: If a processed image file was corrupted in a way that prevented Light Blue: Photo from creating a preview image, odd data could be added to the web gallery. This has been fixed - such corrupted images will still show up as missing images in the web gallery, but you will be warned as the gallery is created and the rest of the gallery will be unaffected.

Picture import order and web gallery orders fixed: Under some circumstances, the order that images were imported into Light Blue: Photo and the order they appeared in the web gallery were inconsistent.: When importing pictures that have an unprocessed file, Light Blue: Photo always uses the file's modification date & time - this should be the date & time the picture was taken. If you are importing a processed image that doesn't have an accompanying unprocessed file, Light Blue: Photo now uses the file's creation date & time.

Importing pictures with long file names: On Mac OS X, images with long file names could be imported incorrectly.

Importing empty shoot folders: If the shoot folder is empty and you try to import images, the current shoot record could be changed.

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