The Countdown to Photo Season is On

High school football season begins in a month. Prep football is the single most popular subject for photo reprints. Time to prepare for success. Here's what papers that sell a lot of reprints do:

• Train readers to visit the gallery by uploading right after photos are shot all this month (and all the time)
• Run house ads. Readers need to know that your gallery is full of photos waiting for purchase.
• Take lots of pictures. Not just the starting players scoring points but the bench, the coach, the cheerleaders, excited fans all make for compelling photos that sell.

More ideas to come.

News Flash: Marie Curie Was Wrong

"I was taught that the way of progress was neither swift nor easy."

Marie Curie

Announcing the Anywhere OneStep Uploader.

MyNewsPhotos has long been known for having the easiest method of uploading photos to on line photo galleries, the OneStep Uploader. Folders of full resolution photos were simply dropped on the OneStep Uploader icon on a computer desktop and we did the rest. The software reads the name of the folder, creates an album by the same name in the on line gallery and populates it automatically. But the uploader software had to be installed. Now the Anywhere OneStep Uploader just needs an internet connection. Nothing to install. 
See it here:
http://www.instantimagegallery.com/pubimages/upload/upload.html
Sorry Marie but it represents great progress and is swift and easy for every newspaper.

Cyan Is Not a Country. Getting the color right.

Digital photography is great but it suffers from many of the same color problems and its film based ancestor.
Light sources have different color temperatures and cause inaccurate color in our photos. What colors? How do fix them?

Cyan, seen as blue-green in photos. Add red to fix the the print. Underwater photos and some artificial light sources cause this.

Magenta, looks reddish, pink in photos,. Add green to correct the print.

Yellow, looks yellow, makes sky look dull. Add blue to fix it.

Red, looks orange in print. Add cyan to correct it. Incandescent light is the usual culprit.

Green, looks green in print. Add magenta to fix it. Fluorescent light is the usual source.

Blue, looks purplish in print. Wrong settings on the camera can cause this. Underexposure in shade and snow pictures have this tone often too. Add yellow to fix it.

At MyNewsPhotos we manually color correct every image we print in the lab so you can skip this with all the photos to be added to your gallery and know that readers will still get great pictures.

Your Newspaper's Name is Valuable. Treat it that way.

In any community, big or small, the local newspaper's name is recognized and trusted by many.
That is powerful.
That is valuable.
That is your brand.
For many papers their brand is their most valuable asset and yet often doesn't show on the balance sheet.

Treat your brand well. Put your brand on your offerings. You wouldn't buy a billboard and put someone else's name on it.  Why do it on the web?  Many papers across the country use online photo gallery services with the name of the hosting company plastered all over it. Who's brand is being built in that relationship?
At MyNewsPhotos the "white wrapper" approach that uses our technology and expertise in software and photo printing to build YOUR brand.  Your paper's name on the top of every page. Your name on the thank-you email. Your name on the sales order sent with the photo products.

Your brand is the one that is important to your readers. You've earned that.

Bring Out Your Inner Brick Mason

Build Something but Keep Your Hands Clean.
Masons have a job that offers a special satisfaction. Each day they turn a pile of brick, some sand, water and cement in to something that can be clearly seen at the end of the day and may stand for hundreds of years.
The fifth generation of newspaper photo reprint software is being built right now. This is the only software that has been built from the ground up for newspapers to display and sell photo reprints. We'd like for you to enjoy some of the mason's satisfaction and help build it by writing to us and making suggestions for improving MyNewsPhotos version 5.0. You can reach me at Allen@MyNewsPhotos.com or your MNP Region Manager. 100's of newspapers have helped make us what we are so far and we thank every one of them. Please join them and help us build something good and strong but without the calluses or heavy lifting.
Thank you for considering it.

Habits Aren't Just for Nuns

We humans are ruled by our habits. From the way we brush our teeth to the way we read the paper to the way we surf the web. The happy anticipation of opening the fresh newspaper or visiting the paper's home page. It's Pavlovian how we respond to certain stimuli, but that response must be learned. How does our brain learn it? Repetition. Why is this important? We all want our readers to form a web surfing habit of visiting our paper's web site and looking at our photos. To cultivate this habit in them the content must be fresh with every visit. That's why the MyNewsPhotos gallery software places the newest content first and that is why uploading with every new edition separates the successful, money-making papers from those that ...well... find uploading a chore to be delayed. Which side is your paper on? Fresh Content=Fresh Excitement=Results.

The Public's Preferred Pages Preserved for Posterity

Your newspaper's pages are valuable. Some are so valuable to certain readers they want them preserved for years as museum quality reproductions.
Let's help those readers out and open a new revenue stream. How? Contact your MyNewsPhoto Region Manager and ask them to turn on the Full Page Reprint wizard. Once they throw the switch a link will appear in your photo gallery that will allow readers to order their favorite pages of your paper reproduced on archival quality materials with bright white paper and rich colors not possible using newsprint and ink. Perhaps best of all IT REQUIRES NO WORK ON YOUR PART UNTIL AN ORDER IS PLACED. Once an order is placed an email is automatically generated and sent to whomever you have designated at your paper asking them to send the appropiate pfd file to us at the lab. To keep readers from ordering pages that are unavailable the wizard tells the reader just how far back pages are available.
So the next time you publish a story about a sports championship, a local business, a featured althlete or artist just know that someone will want to preserve it. Let's help them out.