We’re still here to help over the festive season, but we’re also going to be taking a bit of a break so won’t be answering emails quite as quickly as normal between Christmas and New Year:

• We’ll be offering our usual support hours until 4pm UK time on Wednesday 24th December.
• There’ll be no email support during the public holidays on Thursday 25th & Friday 26th December.
• We’ll be offering limited email support 29th, 30th, and 31st December.
• There’ll be no email support during the public holiday on Thursday 1st January.
• We’ll return to normal hours from Friday 2nd January onwards.

Wishing you all the best,

Tom & the Light Blue team

Everything You Need to Book Clients, in One Easy Proposal

Light Blue’s proposals let clients build their own quote by selecting a package and optional add-ons, creating a more interactive booking experience.

This makes it easier to upsell additional products and services while giving clients more flexibility in choosing what’s right for them.

Proposals streamline the quoting and booking process, allowing you to combine contracts, forms, payments, and scheduling into one seamless workflow.

And much more…

Our updates always include lots of improvements, and you can discover them in the Light Blue 2025.1 release notes.

Free upgrade for subscribers

Light Blue 2025.1 is a free upgrade for all of our subscribers. We’ve loved seeing how our prerelease testers have been using the new features, and we’re keen to see what you do with it!

We’re still here to help over the festive season, but we’re also going to be taking a bit of a break so won’t be answering emails quite as quickly as normal between Christmas and New Year:

• We’ll be offering our usual support hours until 4pm UK time on Tuesday 24th December.
• There’ll be no email support during the public holidays on Wednesday 25th & Thursday 26th December.
• We’ll be offering limited email support 27th, 30th, and 31st December.
• There’ll be no email support during the public holiday on Wednesday 1st January.
• We’ll return to normal hours from Thursday 2nd January onwards.

Wishing you all the best,

Tom & the Light Blue team

Bump2Baby sources 100% GDPR-compliant, opted-in leads for mums-to-be and new families. Photographers who receive leads from them enjoy total exclusivity and can build a newborn and baby photography business around being the recommended and approved Bump2Baby photographer for the local areas of your choice.

Photographers working with Bump2Baby used to receive a weekly spreadsheet of leads, but their new integration with Light Blue allows photographers to receive those leads in real time. As soon as Bump2Baby receives a lead for your area, it will be sent straight to your Light Blue account!

Start using Bump2Baby with Light Blue

Our knowledgebase shows you how to set up Bump2Baby and Light Blue to work with each other. When you start receiving realtime leads in Light Blue’s Inbox, you can start using our marketing and automation features to turn them into paying clients!

• Workflows allow you schedule emails and text messages that help you communicate your offer, along with reminders for you to check in on the lead from time to time.
• Two-way text messaging is great way of building a relationship with a client and works brilliantly alongside text message reminders that cut down on no-shows.
• Scheduling requests make it easy for your newborn leads to turn themselves into clients by booking an available slot in one of your Light Blue scheduling calendars.
• Integrations with everything from email marketing apps to online accounting packages allows you to make Light Blue the centre of your business while taking advantage of industry-leading apps and services in a totally automated fashion.

Getting started with Bump2Baby

You can find out more about Bump2Baby on the Click website and take advantage of an exclusive offer: for a limited time, they’re waiving the £50+VAT joining fee for £5+VAT per postcode one-off subscription fees, so you’ll be paying just £2.75+VAT per lead that they send to you.

Want to find out more about how Light Blue can help you to run a busy and successful photography business?

Visit our features page to find out more, book a Zoom demo via our help page, or start a free trial today!

Light Blue now integrates with Pics4Schools from One Vision Imaging, streamlining your workflow by automatically importing client orders into your CRM. This integration connects Pics4Schools’ efficient sales tools with Light Blue’s powerful reporting, helping you maximise & track revenue from your school, nursery, & event projects.

Orders placed by clients in Pics4Schools will get sent to your Light Blue account automatically, imported into the Sales section, and linked to the right shoot, enabling you to combine Light Blue’s planning and reporting tools with Pics4Schools’ sales tools.

What is Pics4Schools?

Pics4Schools is specifically built for schools, nurseries, and event photographers looking for an easy, fast, and efficient e-commerce solution. This incredibly simple shooting solution enables the photographer to shoot, upload, and walk away from any further administrative duties. The system itself offers popular prints and products that have a proven sales track record thus maximising revenue from each booking.

Because Pics4Schools is built in-house by One Vision Imaging, it’s one of the only solutions in the UK with a fully integrated lab, thus ensuring 100% control over quality, delivery, and customer service. It offers:

• No monthly costs.
• Zero payment fees.
• No order costs.
• No lab handling fee.
• Free colour correction.
• Free storage.
• Free support.
• Only 6% service fee.

Start using Pics4Schools with Light Blue

Our knowledgebase shows you how to set up Light Blue and Pics4Schools to work with each other. Once you’ve set up the integration, all you need to do is enter the Pics4Schools booking ID into the relevant Light Blue shoot. Pics4Schools will send orders to your Light Blue account as soon as they’ve been confirmed by your clients.

Want to learn more about Pics4Schools?

Visit the Pics4Schools page on One Vision Imaging’s website!

Want to find out more about how Light Blue can help you to run a busy and successful photography business?

Visit our features page to find out more, book a Zoom demo via our help page, or start a free trial today!

We’re pleased to announce a new update that helps you to get more from Light Blue’s powerful online scheduling feature, gives you more options for accepting payments from your clients, and improves dozens of other features.

Convert incomplete bookings into confirmed shoots

Light Blue’s scheduling calendars make it really easy for clients to book shoots and appointments with you, but sometimes they don’t complete the booking process. You can now review incomplete bookings via the Inbox, giving you new opportunities to convert them into paying customers. Our beta testers loved being able to reengage with these potential clients and book them in for shoots!

New payment options for multiple brands

One of Light Blue’s strengths is allowing you to manage as many different shoot types and brands as you need. We’ve extended this flexibility to online payments and you now have an option to link a different Stripe or Square account to each of your client portal brands. This means that invoices for one type of work could be paid into one account, and invoices for another could be paid into a different account.

Updated Stripe integration

Stripe are introducing some changes to the way that you link a Stripe account to apps like Light Blue. We’re preparing for these changes by making it possible for you to reauthorise Light Blue’s access to your Stripe account using their latest authorisation process.

Setup export & import

You can now export or import a comprehensive Light Blue setup, including shoots & appointment types, price lists, workflows, scheduling calendars, and templates. This makes it easy for photographers to share part of their Light Blue setup with others, e.g. in training workshops or when setting up a new franchise or branch.

And much more…

Our updates always include dozens of improvements, and you can discover them in the Light Blue 2024.1 release notes.

Free upgrade for subscribers

Light Blue 2024.1 is a free upgrade for all of our subscribers. We’ve loved seeing how our prerelease testers have been using the new features, and we’re keen to see what you do with it!

We launched the first version of Light Blue 15 years ago this month and WOW, what a 15 years it’s been. Light Blue’s founder, Tom, reflects on how far we’ve come since 2009.

It’s an understatement to say that Light Blue has been so much more successful than we ever imagined, used by thousands of photographers around the world and winning awards from both the photography and software industries. A lot has changed over the last 15 years, but some really important things have stayed the same.

Light Blue was launched in February 2009, but it has its roots in a simple system that I started to build in 2003 to run my own fledgling wedding photography business. That system grew alongside my business and my wife’s family photography business. Enough photographer friends started asking if they could use it too that I started to think about turning it into a commercial product, and eventually I got together with my friend Hamish to found Light Blue Software¹. Together, we developed it into an app that could be used to run wedding, portrait, and corporate photography businesses and released Light Blue: Photo² 1.0 in February 2009.

From our very first days, a few core values helped Light Blue to take off quickly:

• We put an enormous amount of effort into supporting our customers. You’ve trusted us to help you run your business, so we’re here to help you.
• We listen to our customers. Your feedback determines how Light Blue evolves and we’re constantly working to improve Light Blue as your needs change.
• We use our own experience as working photographers to guide Light Blue’s development and help you succeed.

Although Hamish and I started Light Blue Software as a side hustle, its rapid success meant that it soon took over our working lives. Our ambitions for what Light Blue could be outgrew the platform that we originally built it on, so we decided to rebuild it in a two-year project that laid the foundations for what Light Blue is today:

• Native apps that give you powerful features, high performance, and the ability to use Light Blue even if you don’t have a great (or any!) internet connection.
• Cloud services that allow you to sync your data across as many devices as you like and provide features that make it easier for clients to work with you.

We launched this major rewrite as Light Blue 4 in February 2013, and in many ways I think of it as a second founding of the company. Rewriting an established piece of a software is an enormous undertaking, but Light Blue 4’s success allowed us to build the many, many awesome features that you’ve come to rely on since then. To pick just a few:

• Online contract signing.
• Contact forms and questionnaires.
• Online invoice payment.
• Text messaging.
• Automated emails, text messages, and questionnaires.
• Payment schedules.
• Online scheduling.
• Integrations with thousands of other apps.

This strength of this new foundation also changed the shape of the company. Hamish left the company to return to academia in 2016³, but in his place we’ve built a small but dedicated team, all with experience of running their own photography businesses.

Running any kind of business involves plenty of challenges along the path to success but, for professional photographers, the pandemic has undoubtedly been the biggest test that we’ve faced. COVID-19 and the restrictions that came with it meant that the photography industry effectively ceased to exist for an unknown (at the time) number of months. It was a tough time for all of us, but I’m incredibly proud of how we were able to help our customers to get their business through it by making sure that they could afford to carry on using Light Blue and use it to rebuild their businesses as soon as they were able to.

Looking back on the last 15 years, Light Blue has changed so much as to be unrecognisable from its starting point, but there’s still so much that stays true to its origins: it’s still built around your shoots and clients that are the most important part of your business; we’re putting more and more work into looking after our customers; and we’re always working on new ways to help you run a successful photography business.

We couldn’t have done any of this without your support, so I want to take this opportunity to say a massive thank you to everyone who’s chosen to use Light Blue. You’re the reason why we do this, and we can’t do it without you. Thank you for trusting us with such an important part of your business.

I’m proud of everything that the Light Blue Software team has achieved over the last 15 years and I’m looking forward to seeing what Light Blue looks like in another 15!

To celebrate this milestone, we’re running a special birthday offer for the next two weeks: you can use promo code 15YEARS to get 30% off for the first 6 months of a new Light Blue subscription. The code is valid until 4 March. If you’ve got any questions about getting started with Light Blue, please get in touch.

1. Hamish and I called the company Light Blue Software because we met as undergrads at the University of Cambridge. Cambridge sports teams wear light blue, so Cambridge is “light blue”. ↩︎
2. Yes, our product’s name changed from “Light Blue: Photo” to “Light Blue”. Originally, Hamish and I planned to create variations of Light Blue: Photo for different industries, but we soon realised that we were a great fit for the photography industry and our customers always called it “Light Blue” so we gave in and changed our product’s name. ↩︎
3. He’s now a fellow of Queens’ College at the University of Cambridge, and working with the Plant Sciences department to save the world. ↩︎

We’re still here to help over the festive season, but we’re also going to be taking a bit of a break so won’t be answering emails quite as quickly as normal between Christmas and New Year:

• We’ll be offering our usual support hours until 5pm UK time on Friday 22rd December.
• There’ll be no email support during the public holidays on Monday 25th & Tuesday 26th December.
• We’ll be offering limited email support 27th-29th December.
• There’ll be no email support during the public holiday on Monday 1st January.
• We’ll return to normal hours from Tuesday 2nd January onwards.

Wishing you all the best,

Tom & the Light Blue team

We’re pleased to announce a major update that makes it easier for you to work with existing clients and get paid in new ways!

Light Blue 2023.1 is available as a free upgrade for all subscribers.

New online payment methods

We’ve added support for the full range of payment methods available via Stripe, including ApplePay, Google Pay, Klarna, Afterpay / Clearpay, iDEAL and Bancontact, in addition to our existing card payment option.

This makes it easier for your clients to pay you. “Buy now, pay later” services like Klarna and Afterpay / Clearpay have been popular feature requests, and in some countries there are specific payment methods that have overtaken card payments as the most popular way of making online payments.

Forms in workflows

You can now include forms as steps in your workflows, allowing you to automate double-checking your clients’ details and requests in the run-up to a shoot.

For example, you could include a “check wedding or portrait session details” step in your workflow, maybe a month before a wedding or a week before a portrait session. The workflow would automatically email the form to your client on the date that you’ve chosen and when they’ve filled it in it will appear in the Inbox in Light Blue just like a normal form.

One of the best features of Light Blue’s forms is that they are pre-filled with the information you already have about your clients and the shoot, which makes it really easy for them to fill it out because they only have to type in new or updated information. This applies to workflow forms, too: the form shows the current information about the shoot and contacts, so any changes you’ve made since adding the workflow will automatically show up in the form.

“The ability to add forms to workflows is an AWESOME addition for time-saving and staying on top of getting valuable information from clients before sessions.

Pre-wedding questionnaires are vital and having them sent automatically 3 weeks before a wedding is very useful.

Automating the collection of feedback from clients after sessions is also great!” – Jesse Starr

Scheduling requests

Scheduling requests allow you to use your scheduling calendars to book meetings or shoots with existing clients. You can send a scheduling request from either a shoot or a contact: your clients will love them because the booking form will be pre-filled with the information that you already have, and you will save time because the event that’s created will automatically be linked to the relevant records in Light Blue.

“Now when we reply to an enquiry we can send them a scheduling request and they book in themselves without loads of emails to find the right time. This makes communication smoother and less invasive.” – Mark Fenwick

You can insert a scheduling request into an email or text message, and you can automate inviting your clients to book a consultation or viewing session by including them in workflow messages.

“I can send clients a link where they can choose and book a planning call (via Zoom), saving time to-ing and fro-ing to find suitable availability.” – Emma Jackson

Making phone calls from the desktop app

You can now make phone calls to your clients from within the Light Blue desktop app. After clicking the “Phone Call” button a call will start using either VOIP software installed on your computer, or your mobile phone. If you make a lot of calls, you’ll save time and cut down the number of typos when dialling.

“We make over 500 calls a day through Light Blue and already by just over a couple of hours testing we have increased our productivity by 60%.”

And more…

You can find out about the other new features and changes in this release in the Light Blue 2023.1 release notes.

Free upgrade for subscribers

Light Blue 2023.1 is a free upgrade for all of our subscribers. We’ve loved seeing how our prerelease testers have been using it to get paid in new ways and streamline their admin, so we’re keen to see what you do with it!

We’re still here to help over the festive season, but we’re also going to be taking a bit of a break so won’t be answering emails quite as quickly as normal between Christmas and New Year:

• We’ll be offering our usual support hours until 5pm UK time on Friday 23rd December.
• There’ll be no email support during the public holidays on Monday 26th & Tuesday 27th December.
• We’ll be offering limited email support 28th-30th December.
• There’ll be no email support during the public holiday on Monday 2nd January.
• We’ll return to normal hours from Tuesday 3rd January onwards.

Wishing you all the best,

Tom & the Light Blue team

We always like to take stock at the end of the year and reflect on the things that we’re particularly proud of and we hope you’re able to do the same!

“Best Professional Software” award

We’re here to help professional photographers to run a successful business, so we’re delighted that so many of you voted for us in the “Best Professional Software” category at The Societies of Photographers convention awards. Light Blue was up against giants of the photography industry such as Adobe’s Lightroom and Photoshop in this category, so it’s an enormous achievement for such a specialised product to win.

We’re incredibly grateful to everyone who voted for us, and to our customers for placing their trust in us to look after such an important part of their business. We’d love to win again in 2023, so we would really appreciate you casting your vote for us in the “Best Professional Software” category!

Major updates and new features

This year has been a great year for launching new features that are helping thousands of photographers to book more shoots and keep themselves organised.

Light Blue’s new online scheduling calendars allow your clients to book shoots and appointments directly into your diary. You no longer need to send messages back and forth to find the perfect time, or rely on complicated integrations with third-party tools. This has been a really popular addition and we’ve had great feedback from customers, old & new.

Most recently, Light Blue 2022.2 is a major update that expands the range of third-party apps that you can use with Light Blue. Linking your Zoom account to Light Blue makes scheduling online meetings with your clients even more convenient and you can now configure your scheduling calendars to automatically create a Zoom meeting when a client makes a booking. Light Blue’s new Zapier integration is the most comprehensive in the photography industry, with triggers and actions that allow you to use Light Blue for all of your day-to-day work while taking advantage of industry-leading apps and services in a totally automated fashion. We also launched new integrations with Pic-Time, Square, and GotPhoto, helping you to make the most of other apps while keeping Light Blue at the heart of your business.

Out and about

Things definitely felt like they were getting back to normal in the UK by the Spring, so it was great to be able to get back to seeing photographers face to face at trade shows including The Photography Show, The Societies of Photographers convention, and the The Newborn and Portrait Show.

If you’d like to come and see us in person to find out more about how you can use Light Blue to organise and grow your business, your first opportunity in 2023 will be The Societies convention in London in March.

What’s next?

We’re always working hard for you, helping photographers to succeed with Light Blue and building new features that will help your business in exciting new ways.

Our prerelease testers will shortly be getting their hands on features including forms in workflows, scheduling requests that make it more convenient to use online scheduling calendars with existing clients, and new online payment options for anyone who’s using Stripe with Light Blue. All of this work is happening alongside work on our Android app, so if you’d like to get early access to any of these features then please let us know.

Meanwhile, we’re always available to help you get started with Light Blue or to make the most of any of the features that are designed to help you make the most of the opportunities out there while delivering a great service to your clients. The Help section of our website lists the ways we can help you, from our getting started guide through to booking a Zoom call to give you a hand with anything that you need to get 2023 off to a great start.

Wishing you all the very best,
Tom & the Light Blue team

Email template giveaway

Get 37 email templates for your business, absolutely free!

Get more organised for less this November.

Save money on Light Blue’s time-saving software for photographers, making your admin simple so that you can focus on nurturing relationships with your clients and growing a successful business.

Use BF22 to save 30% off your first six months, subscribe before 28th November.

The offer includes:
✅ 30 day money-back guarantee (giving you a risk-free trial),
🧑‍💻 Free migration and setup support,
📷 Customer database & diary management,
📝 Forms, contracts & questionnaires,
📨 Smart email and text templates,
⚡️ Workflow automation,
🗓 Online scheduling,
⚙️ Integrations with Zapier, Zoom, Pic-Time, ShootProof & more,
💳 Invoicing, including online payments, payment plans and automatic reminders,
📈 Expense recording & financial reporting,
🚀 Powerful & fully customisable business dashboard.

Other ways photographers can save this Black Friday

We’ve also assembled a list of some great Black Friday offers and deals available from friends around the industry:

Fundy Designer

Don’t miss Fundy Designer’s biggest sale of the year to get the world’s leading design and IPS Suite most used by professional photographers. Everything you need to design and sell Albums, Wall Art Collections, Cards, Studio Magazines and more! Download the unlimited free trial today or click here to purchase! 

Sale: 40% Off Everything, $19 Upgrades

Dates: November 17th – 28th 2022

Link: https://www.fundydesigner.com/pricing/

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AfterShoot

Aftershoot started with the drive to make the lives of photographers easier through technology. As photographers and creatives ourselves, we know how valuable your time is. We believe you should be spending your time on things that matter to you most! Be it enjoying some time off with your loved ones, or working on growing your business – you’ve got the unicorns to help with automated CULLING, and soon EDITING as well. 

Promocode: CULLING40 (it’s automatically applied now)

Offer ends: Nov 30th at midnight

Website

Imagen-AI

Do you have a lot of galleries to edit this month?

Do you want them delivered before the December holidays?

We have the answer for you with Imagen, the fastest and most accurate AI-powered photo editing solution for Lightroom. And they have two amazing Black Friday offers for you.

Sign-up to Imagen with 1,500 free AI edits on your trial using this link.

If you subscribe by November 30th you can ALSO get 25% off all your AI edits during your first month as an Imagen subscriber. Just use the coupon code blackfriday at checkout.

Rawsie

Shoot in RAW? Rawsie allows reducing RAW file size by up to 80% preserving dynamic range, resolution and edits applied in your Lightroom catalogs. Think RAW image quality, but JPEG file size. Why bother? Rawsie would save you tons on new HDD or SSD and make your remote photo storage, cloud, Lightroom catalogs and editing so much faster.

Deal: 20% off your first year

Coupon name: BF22

Dates: November 22 – December 2, 2022

Link: https://rawsie.co/?utm_source=bf2022

Light Blue 2022.2 is a major update that expands the range of third-party apps that you can use with Light Blue.

Zapier

Zapier is a service that saves you time by connecting the apps and services that you use and automating them for you. Light Blue offers a set of triggers and actions that allow you to use it with thousands of other apps. With Light Blue at the centre of your business, you can use it for all of your day-to-day work while taking advantage of industry-leading apps and services in a totally automated fashion. You can also use Light Blue’s Zapier integration actions to send information to Light Blue.

Light Blue’s new Zapier integration is the most comprehensive in the photography industry, with triggers and actions that allow you to use Light Blue for all of your day-to-day work while taking advantage of industry-leading apps and services in a totally automated fashion.

“Invoices are now automatically sent from Light Blue to our accounting system, clients unsubscribing from our mailing system update Light Blue, and we can send bulk emails through our mailing system by tagging contacts in Light Blue! With the latest updates, all of these tasks just happen. Thank you Light Blue!” – Rose Stacey

Zoom

Linking your Zoom account to Light Blue makes scheduling online meetings with your clients even more convenient. You can now configure your online scheduling calendars to automatically create a Zoom meeting when a client makes a booking.

Pic-Time

Pic-Time offer beautiful client galleries and art galleries with smart sales features, so we’re delighted that you can now link your Pic-Time account to Light Blue. Doing so allows Pic-Time to send client orders to Light Blue’s Inbox, from where you can import them at the click of a button and keep all of your orders together in one place.

Square

Making things more convenient for your clients makes them love working with you even more, and the feedback that we get from photographers is that their clients love using Light Blue’s online scheduling, contract signing, and invoice payment services. Using an online payment option with any of those services helps you to get paid more quickly, so we’re pleased to be able to add Square to the list of online payment processors that you can use with Light Blue.

GotPhoto

Schools photographers using GotPhoto can now import batches of orders into Light Blue and automatically link them to the right shoot, enabling you to combine Light Blue’s planning and reporting tools with GotPhoto’s sales tools.

And more…

You can find out about the other new features and changes in this release in the Light Blue 2022.2 release notes.

Free upgrade for subscribers

Light Blue 2022.2 is a free upgrade for all of our subscribers. We’ve loved seeing how our prerelease testers have been using it to streamline their admin and make the most of the other apps they use in their business, so we’re keen to see what you do with it!

These trade awards are some of the most prestigious in the photography industry and voted for by thousands of professional photographers. In this category, Light Blue was up against giants of the photography industry such as Adobe’s Lightroom and Photoshop, so it’s an enormous achievement for such a specialised product to win.

We’re incredibly grateful to everyone who voted for us, and to our customers for placing their trust in us to look after such an important part of their business. It’s been a tough couple of years for the professional photography industry but we’ve come through it together and we were touched by all of the feedback we had at the show from everyone that we’ve helped during the pandemic.

We’re looking forward to an exciting year ahead, building upon our recent major updates with exciting new features and improvements that continue to help photographers grow their businesses and streamline their admin.

Light Blue’s new online scheduling calendars allow your clients to book shoots and appointments directly into your diary. You no longer need to send messages back and forth to find the perfect time, or rely on complicated integrations with third-party tools. 

We’re excited to announce launch of the latest version which is available as a free upgrade for all subscribers.

“Light Blue’s online scheduling automates another task that helps me focus on improving other aspects of my business, and makes the whole experience much more professional and seamless for my clients.” – Michael Love

Streamline enquiry management

Online scheduling simplifies the booking process for your clients whilst providing tight integration with Light Blue’s other powerful features such as contracts, forms, payments, and workflows (including automated emails and text messages), so you have all the important details together in one place.

“I can’t always reply to client’s calls and emails when they want to book me. Now they can check my availability and book without waiting for me to get back to them. It saves so much time for me and is a better experience for the client!” – Jane Jordan

Avoid double bookings

We know that you have to juggle all sorts of commitments so, as well as automatically blocking off times that clash with events in Light Blue, we’ve also made it possible to link your scheduling calendars to Google Calendar or calendar feeds that you can use to stop clients from making bookings that clash with your personal commitments.

Your availability is updated in real-time as you (and your clients!) schedule events in your diary, and it’s easy for you to set up weekly availability as well as ad-hoc availability for specific types of event.

“It’s a really good way to streamline booking in smaller sessions so you have to do very little, but from the client point of view it’s extremely efficient and straightforward. You can also set options to make sure you aren’t overwhelmed and ensure that your client has all the information they need to proceed without having to send a million emails. Plus, when you open Light Blue, everything you need is at your fingertips.” – Angela Ward-Brown

Free upgrade for subscribers

This has been a really popular feature request and something that we’ve been keen to implement for some time, so we are really pleased to have had such positive feedback from our testers and are delighted to offer this feature to our subscribers for no extra cost.

“Having CRM and scheduling in the same program saves a ton of time and money. Plus it saves all the headaches of trying to make two separate systems integrate.” – Julian Austin

Get started by updating to Light Blue 2022.1  and then adding a scheduling calendar via the Preferences window. Learn more about how to set up and use online scheduling calendars in our detailed help article.

You can find out about the many other new features and changes in this release in the Light Blue 2022.1 release notes.

2021 has been a rollercoaster year for many of us, but we’ve got a lot to look back on and celebrate. We hope you’re able to take some time to take a look back at and celebrate the positive things from your year, too! It’s certainly been a busy one for us and we want to share a few of the things that we’re particularly proud of.

Two new major releases, and another on the way 

We’re really proud to have released two major updates this year, with another just around the corner.

Light Blue 2021.1 delivered lots of improvements to the features that you use everyday, making your business processes simpler in many different ways.

“I LOVE something as simple as the little email and text buttons that make it even more straightforward to contact clients with ease. I am excited about the workflows as well. THANK YOU for making the effort to make this software more user friendly.” – Anita Watkins

Light Blue 2021.2 brought a substantial facelift to the Home screen, providing a flexible and customisable dashboard to give you a clear overview of your business. The update has made Light Blue’s already powerful reporting tools more accessible and even more useful than before.

“Being able to view my numbers on the home screen has been massive for me. Customising the Home screen too is invaluable as you can set up different layouts depending on what area you want to focus your attention.” – Jamie Bott

We’re currently putting the finishing touches to our next major release, which includes one of our most popular feature requests: an integrated online scheduling tool! We’re delighted to have prerelease testers already booking work with this fantastic new feature and plan to make it available to all of our subscribers in the new year. 

Back to in-person events

As well delivering lots of helpful new features, 2021 also saw the return of in-person events. It was wonderful to be able to meet and chat with you at events this year, and we’re looking forward to seeing you again next year!

Continued pandemic assistance

We know that the pandemic has continued to make life and business hard for so many people. Throughout the year, we’ve been checking in with customers who have been in receipt of the pandemic assistance that we’ve made available since March 2020 and extending that support where necessary. We’re here to help our customers to run successful businesses, so we’re glad to have been able to help in so many different ways during the pandemic.

Looking forward to 2022

As we head into the new year, we’re hopeful that life and business continues to return to normal for our customers. We’re looking forward to delivering many more exciting developments in 2022!

Wishing you all the very best,

Tom, Ian, and Dani

We’re still here to help over the festive season, but we’re also going to be taking a bit of a break so won’t be answering emails quite as quickly as normal between Christmas and New Year:

• We’ll be offering our usual support hours until 5pm UK time on Friday 24th December.
• There’ll be no email support during the public holidays on Monday 27th & Tuesday 28th December.
• We’ll be offering limited email support 29th-31st December.
• There’ll be no email support during the public holiday on Monday 3rd January.
• We’ll return to normal hours from Tuesday 4th January onwards.

Wishing you all the best,

Tom, Ian & Dani

We’re delighted to let you know that our next major update is in prerelease testing and includes one of our most popular feature requests: an online scheduling tool that allows your clients to book shoots and appointments directly into your diary. You no longer need to send messages back and forth to find the perfect time, or rely on complicated integrations with third-party tools.

Setting up our online scheduling tool is quick and easy, and you can choose which types of shoot or appointment are available online. Your availability is updated in real-time as you (and your clients!) schedule events in your diary, and it’s easy for you to set up weekly availability as well as ad-hoc availability for specific types of event.

Our new online scheduling features give you the option to include a customised booking form, contract, and booking fee when a client is scheduling a shoot, making the online booking process easier than ever. It’s also tightly integrated with Light Blue’s automation tools, so the reminder emails, text messages, and tasks from your workflows help you to deliver great a great service for your clients.

Want to start using our online scheduling calendars right now?

We’ve opened up testing to any of our subscribers that want to take part. So, if you’d like to start offering online booking to your clients, or you’re interested in replacing a third-party scheduling system with our own, tightly-integrated scheduling system, please get in touch and we’ll let you know how to get involved.

We’re delighted to announce the release of the latest version of our time-saving business software for photographers, which brings some some big improvements to Light Blue’s Home screen. Light Blue is used by a wide range of photography businesses, so in Light Blue 2021.2 we’ve built on our strong customisation options to help you to run your business the way that you want.

The tasks you do every day just got a little faster; you can see at a glance what the day, week, or month ahead holds in store; and you can do all of this while keeping an eye on the bigger picture and your long-term goals.

A clear overview of your business

Light Blue’s new Home screen gives you the flexibility to show the information that is most helpful and important to you. It’s based on a flexible layout of widgets that can be customised to show exactly what you need.

“Light Blue’s Home screen gives me a concise overview of my working life without needing to seek things out. I love being able to pull in frequently used websites like Facebook Messenger.” – Angela Ward-Brown

The new widgets include charts, lists of records, totals, your inbox, the task manager, and more. A full list of the widgets that are available on your Home screen can be found on our help pages.

“For me, being dyslexic can make systems difficult to grasp, but Light Blue is intuitive and flexible. The new Home screen features give me quicker access to information and allow me to see more at a glance.” – Harriet Buckingham

“Light Blue’s Home screen sums up my business in one simple snapshot. I am loving the comparison between this year’s and last year’s bookings and income. It’s like all the things I needed on the Home screen but didn’t realise I needed until now!” – Jenny Beckett

Keep on track to achieve your goals

Light Blue’s flexible querying and reporting tools are one of our key strengths, so this update places them front and centre. You can see all of the important things in one place: keep an eye on your monthly sales figures, how your marketing’s performing, and instantly see what needs your attention.

“Having charts on the home screen helps to keep me on track with achieving my goals.” – Sandra Ramp

Make smarter decisions by being better informed about how your business is performing. Having a simple overview of the important numbers in your business allows you to stay on track and focus on achieving your goals.

It puts you in a position to grow your business and book more work with your best clients.

Learn more about using Light Blue’s querying & reporting tools here.

“Knowing what I need to do next, what’s coming up, and where I am in relation to my target can all be seen in once glance. Light Blue makes my day-to-day running of the business much easier.” – Laura Wills

Customise Light Blue to your way of working

We understand that everyone likes to work in their own way, and certain things will be more important to you than others. That’s why your new home screen layouts are customisable to suit the way that your business runs and to show exactly the information that you need.

You can now customise Light Blue’s colour scheme to suit your branding, or choose a colour that you like the look of. We’ve provided a selection of colour themes as well as an option to set your own custom colours.

Discover how to customise your own home screen in this help article.

“I can be checking my task list, see the next weekends shoots, and see a live financial report without leaving the Home screen.” – Grahame Smith

“Light Blue is customised to my way of working… I can see straight away what I need to do each day for clients.” – Sue Kennedy

“I’ve got more useful info at a glance, both from inside & outside Light Blue. The biggest benefit of the new Home screen features to me is being able to monitor my Facebook page inbox so I can easily see when I’ve got new messages.” – Michael Love

Set up different layouts to focus on different areas of your business

You can set up as many Home screen layouts as you want and quickly swap between them when you need to see different information or have it presented in a different way.

“Being able to view my numbers on the home screen has been massive for me. Customising the Home screen too is invaluable as you can set up different layouts depending on what area you want to focus your attention.” – Jamie Bott

“Everyday tasks have just got that little bit faster – with everything you want at your fingertips it’s so much quicker to get the information you want. And the ability to have different layouts depending on what role you are doing is just perfect.” – Ant Treasurer

Learn to see your business differently

We’re hosting a free webinar to show you how you can use Light Blue’s new Home screen features to help you to get more out of your business. You’ll learn how to save time on regular tasks, get an overview of what’s coming up, review your business performance, and drive new work to your business.

We’re really excited to announce that we’ve given all of our beta testers access to a major update that brings some big improvements to Light Blue’s Home screen.

Light Blue’s new Home screen lets you see your business in a completely new way. You can now customise the Home screen by choosing a selection of widgets that give you unique and powerful ways of looking at your business as well as customising the look of Light Blue.

We’ll be sharing more information about Light Blue 2021.2’s new features when it becomes generally available. If you’re a Light Blue subscriber and would like to join the beta so that you can start using the new features, please send us an email!

Today marks the first anniversary of the UK entering lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic, so we wanted to mark the occasion by reiterating the support that we’ve been offering our customers. Although the situation is starting to improve in the UK now and many of our subscribers are going to be getting back to work over the next few months, we know that many photography businesses throughout the world are still facing enormous challenges and we will continue to do all that we can to help you.

We’re here to help people run a successful business, and one of the ways that we can do that is to reduce the cost of Light Blue for any of our customers who are in difficulty. Since 18 March 2020, we’ve been offering all of our existing and new subscribers 50% off their Light Blue subscriptions. If you need assistance but haven’t applied for our offer yet, you can do so by clicking here to log into your account. We’re happy to extend this assistance until the pandemic is under control, so if you’re not yet able to afford your full Light Blue subscription then send us an email and we’ll extend your 50% discount for another three months. We want you to be able to use our tools to bounce back from this!

We’re still here to help

This has been a challenging time for all of us in the photography industry, so we wanted to remind you that we’re here to help you make the most out of Light Blue so that it can support and aid your business. Now that things are starting to improve, we’re also here to help you bounce back and rebuild your business.

We’ve been helping business owners to make the most of the opportunities that come along, whether that’s nurturing your existing clients with automated messages, helping postponed shoots to reschedule with our online contract signing service, working out which clients you want to market to when things get back to normal, or using our contact forms and workflows to handle new enquiries. If there’s anything that we can do to help you use Light Blue to its full potential, please get in touch to let us know.

Spreading the word

We’re a tiny company, so we always appreciate it when customers ask us whether there’s anything that they can do to help us, too.

Telling other photographers about Light Blue and how we’ve helped your business always means a lot to us! If you know anyone who would benefit from using Light Blue, you can use our referral scheme to give them a discount and earn credit towards your own subscription too.

We’re excited to announce the immediate available of Light Blue 2021.1. This is a major update to our desktop app that improves lots of the features that you use every day.

Entering shoot details is faster

Adding a new shoot has been streamlined, with the “New Shoot” window efficiently guiding you through the process. Light Blue can also include the shoot type when it automatically generates a title for your shoots, making it easier to keep track of the different types of job you’re doing for your clients.

“I like the new way that workflows can be tied automatically to specific inquiries, saves having to go and choose the workflow I need at that time, saving me time” – Jean-Marc Robin

Dealing with form submissions is easier

When you’re dealing with form or API submissions, we’ve simplified the old “Import as New Record” and “Update an Existing Record” buttons to a single “Import” button that works out what you probably want to do with that incoming data. We’ve made it much easier to use contact form and API submissions to work with existing clients.

“I like how importing enquiries etc now checks for duplicate contacts.
Light Blue has always made our business more streamlined, and with every update… even more so.” – Grahame Smith

Crafting the perfect message to your clients is simpler

We’ve made it easier to create emails and text messages from a variety of places, and added more helpful tools that make it quicker than ever to communicate with your clients.

“I LOVE something as simple as the little email and text buttons that make it even more straightforward to contact clients with ease. I am excited about the workflows as well. THANK YOU for making the effort to make this software more user friendly.” – Anita Watkins

When you’re composing an email or a text message, a button in the toolbar makes it quick and easy to insert one of Light Blue’s powerful mail-merge tags. Mail-merge tags are a fantastic time-saver because they pull information into your emails from the record that you’re sending a message from, and having them available within the app saves you from having to look up the available tags from our knowledgebase.

“The latest version of Light Blue makes my admin even easier. My communication has been made far easier by no longer having to go back to the Light Blue website to find the tags to add fields into my e-mails to customers.
I spend less time doing admin and more time doing the things that help my business!” – Rich Dyson

We’ve also made it possible to insert an email template into an email that you’re composing. This allows you to set up templates that you can use as snippets and drop them into emails whenever they would save you time. 

If you realise that you’re composing the perfect response to a client’s query, you can now save that email as a template. This makes it easy to reuse whenever you find yourself dealing with a similar query or situation. 

Preferences & workflows are easier to understand

We’ve reorganised parts of the Preferences window to make some of Light Blue’s powerful customisation options easier to understand, and one of the biggest reorganisations makes workflows easier to set up and understand. 

“The improvements to workflows are great. The latest updates are making this so much easier for me.” – Georgina Reid

Workflows are a great tool for helping you to convert enquiries into bookings and deliver an excellent service to your clients, and the new workflow visualiser shows you how your default workflows will create tasks, appointments, emails, and text messages based on the key milestones of your shoots. You’ll find the workflow visualiser in the “Shoots” tab of the “General” preferences, and in the “Shoot Types” section where you can apply different workflows for any types of job that need to be handled in their own unique way.

Workflows now have a type, and if you use a lot of workflows then this makes sure that only appropriate workflows are shown when you’re selecting them. When you’re in the “Workflows” section of the Preferences window, you can also see where each workflow is being used and set it as a default without having to leave this section.

And much, much more…

This is definitely one of those releases that we’d recommend reading the release notes for, because it includes hundreds of small improvements. 

“I love the housekeeping button to tidy up stale enquiries etc. Suddenly my dashboard looks so much neater and manageable. All with the click of one button!” – Jenny Beckett

“It’s simple but I like that you’ve added the “preferences” button to the menu bar… it’s such a regularly used part of the software” – Bob Foyers

“The Light Blue team listens. If you think that something could be improved then they will look at it and let you know of any improvement and feed back to you immediately in the first instance and later if it is at all useful or just to update you. I also love the fact that they are only a small team. If you need Team LB then it will be there for you.” – Anthony Von Roretz

“I would not be able to keep track of my business without Light Blue. I really like the flexibility of Light Blue in terms of its layout and the fact that it can be so easily customised in both how it looks and also performs to suit everybody’s own business set up. It’s invaluable as an asset for my business.” – Graham Stockton

A free upgrade for all of our subscribers

Subscribers to Light Blue’s online services can update to Light Blue 2021.1 by using the ‘Check For Updates’ command within the Light Blue desktop app.

If you already have a Light Blue licence, but don’t subscribe to our online services, the best way of upgrading to version 2021.1 is to add a subscription. As well as being able to upgrade for free, subscribers have access to Light Blue’s most popular features, including our online contract signing service, forms, online invoices, and enhanced email and text messaging features.

Since March 2020, we’ve been offering to reduce the cost of Light Blue subscriptions by 50% for six months for any of our customers who have been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown. That help is still open to anyone who needs it: if you need assistance but haven’t applied for our offer yet, you can do so by clicking here to log into your account.

We’re still here to help

This is a challenging time for all of us in the photography industry, so we wanted to remind you that we’re here to help you make the most out of Light Blue so that it can support and aid your business.

We’ve been helping business owners to make the most of the opportunities that come along, whether that’s nurturing your existing clients with automated messages, helping postponed shoots to reschedule with our online contract signing service, working out which clients you want to market to when things get back to normal, or using our contact forms and workflows to handle new enquiries. If there’s anything that we can do to help you use Light Blue to its full potential, please get in touch to let us know.

Extended discounts

We hope that the photography industry is going to be able to recover as we get closer to Spring, but if you’re not yet able to afford your full Light Blue subscription then send us an email and we’ll extend your 50% discount for another three months. We want you to be able to use our tools to bounce back from this!

Spreading the word

We’re a tiny company, so we always appreciate it when customers ask us whether there’s anything that they can do to help us, too.

Telling other photographers about Light Blue and how we’ve helped your business always means a lot to us! If you know anyone who would benefit from using Light Blue, you can use our referral scheme to give them a discount and earn credit towards your own subscription too.

We’re here to help over the festive season, but we’re going to be taking a bit of a break and won’t be answering emails quite as quickly as normal between Christmas and New Year:

• We’ll be offering our normal email support hours until Wednesday 23 December.
• We’ll be offering limited email support on Thursday 24 December.
• There’ll be no email support available on the UK holiday of 25 December.
• We’ll be offering limited email support 28-31 December.
• There will be no email support available on the bank holiday of Friday 1 January.
• Normal email support will resume on Monday 4 January.

We’d like to take this opportunity to wish all of our customers a restful and enjoyable Christmas. 2020 has been a tough year and we hope next year will be much better for all of us. We’re here to help you make the most of the opportunities that 2021 will bring!