We are happy to introduce a new fulfillment partner to the Zenfolio e-commerce platform. Please welcome Imagine Your Photos gift fulfillment company based in Miami, Florida. The IYP Photo Products company delivers the highest quality photo merchandising by using the latest imaging and transfer technologies on a variety of surfaces. You can find out more about the company and their products here. The new products are available immediately to ship anywhere in the world, and we will be adding more products from them over time.
If you are an existing Zenfolio customer, and would like to make available the new IYP Photo Products, you will need to enable them under the Print Ordering or add them to your price list.
One of the best services the Mpix lab offers is the Color Correction service. An actual trained and experienced technician analyzes each image and makes subtle adjustments to ensure the best color reproduction, sharpness, and density. And the best part is that this service is included free of charge.
We have always offered this service from Mpix but it had to be explicitly selected in the Cart. We were so impressed with the results that it is going to be turned ON by default now. For those who do not care for it, you can still disable it in the Cart and in your price lists.
We are adding three new value products from Mpix. The three value sizes are 3.5”x5”, 4”x5”, and 4”x6” printed on Kodak Professional Endura E-Surface Color paper. The best part is that these prints are only 19 cents each. The new products can only be ordered with no color correction applied.
This release also includes several new features and a number of bug fixes. Here is the list:
With this release we have significantly increased our storage and transaction capacity. A lot of work has been done behind the scenes to ensure smooth growth and scalability.
Please visit the newly released User Forums and bookmark them. With your help, we hope to make them a valuable source of information and a place where we can exchange ideas.
Zenfolio Team Blog will help us better communicate our thoughts and ideas about the service, as well as generate discussions around photography subjects in general. Please visit often and leave comments.
Many Zenfolio Premium subscribers have been asking about this important feature: you can now select an option to approve orders placed for your photos before they are sent for fulfillment to a Zenfolio partner lab. That means that you can review and make changes to orders before they are printed.
Here is how it works:
To select the option to have your orders approved first, open a price list from the SELLING>Price List page, and make the choice at the top. Don't forget to Save. This is also where you can edit the message displayed to your customers about the potential fulfillment delay.
We have also updated the upload protocol to make it more robust and resilient to file upload interruptions caused by fluctuations in Internet connection quality.
After a short break from getting the Premium plan released, we are back in the saddle. By popular demand, you can now give a gift of Zenfolio at any subscription level. Simply pay for a subscription and then send an e-mail with activation code to that special someone. Your billing information will not be saved in the gift account, and you get full referral discount (total value of $10). You can also use your account balance to pay.
Something else we have been working on for a while is a more streamlined Shopping Cart checkout. Registration is no longer required when buying prints and other photo products. While there are advantages to opening a free account during the checkout, the default option is to continue with a Guest checkout.
We have also improved Cart pages by removing information that was not needed, and by adding Ordering FAQ with answers to the most common questions that may arise during ordering.
Building up on the available Zenfolio Public API, we have two new upload tools available.
A small but useful addition is the ability to read the IPTC Copyright field from uploaded photos, and copy it into the photo Copyright field on Zenfolio. This happens automatically when you upload original photos.
Lastly, a small update to the way the Cart link is displayed at the top of Visitor pages. The Cart link is now displayed only if something was added to it.
As many of you know, we have been hard at work on a new Premium subscription plan, and it is finally here. Big thank you goes to our Beta testers who provided the feedback and helped us put the polish on.
The Premium plan lets you create a fully-functional Web store with customizable look-and-feel and flexible price lists. Here are the highlights:
The price lists can be assigned to individual photos or entire galleries. This process is completely transparent to clients, who experience the ease and simplicity of ordering prints and other products, and receive a package delivered directly from the lab.
In addition to fulfilling products through Zenfolio partner labs, photographers have a choice of creating and fulfilling their own custom products. Zenfolio Premium subscribers can offer products fulfilled through any lab of their choice, or they can print photos themselves.
Create and assign custom watermarks with full control over placement and opacity. Supported watermark file formats include JPEG, TIFF, GIF, and PNG with transparency. Original uploaded photos are not watermarked so they can be used for ordering prints.
For additional visitor page customization, you can replace Zenfolio logo and links with your own name to make it look more personalized (available under Customize Visitor View). This powerful option makes the site look yours with a click of a button. Combine that with using your own domain name and you have a branded Web store with all the benefits of Zenfolio under your name.
You can create your own coupons including percent-off and amount-based discounts with expiration dates, specified number of uses, and order minimums.
Review and download detailed sales reports compatible with any spreadsheet program. Reports include Orders, Products, Customers, Coupons, and Photos based on any time period and sorted any way you want.
Zenfolio Premium plan subscribers can upload files up to 24MB each to support super large print sizes. And, of course, there is no storage or bandwidth limit.
The Zenfolio Premium subscription plan is priced at USD$100 per year. Until December 31, 2007, current and new users can sign up for the Zenfolio Premium plan at the special discounted price of USD$80 per year. This special price will stay with you for as long as you remain a subscriber.
For orders fulfilled through the Zenfolio partner labs, there is a service fee of 12% which includes credit card transaction fees and customer service. For custom orders fulfilled and charged by photographers directly, the service fee is 6%.
All current Zenfolio users, including Basic and Unlimited subscribers, will have access to all the Premium features until November 30, 2007. This allows you to try before deciding to upgrade. NOTE: if you do not upgrade by November 30, the Premium features will be automatically removed from your account along with any related items you create during the trial, e.g. watermarks, price lists, custom products.
This is a small update as we get ready for the rollout of a new Premium subscription level.
The Premium subscription plan will include more professional features such as offering products for sale at custom prices, creating and applying watermarks, and a complete front end to order fulfillment. It should be available as soon as we are finished hunting down bugs.
In the meantime, current users can enjoy these new features:
They are really worth checking out:
It is now a lot easier to control which galleries and photos are allowed to be printed, as well as to manage which Zenfolio partner lab should be doing the fulfillment. If you are not into making your photos available for printing, just select your Home page in the Organizer and confirm that "Do not allow print ordering" option is selected.
You can now access Slideshow directly from the Edit View while working on organizing your photos (this is for you, fishpix).
Lastly, we have increased the file size limit for uploads to 12MB per file to accommodate the latest swell in camera sensor sizes.
Small update was released today. The main additions are:
Additional bug fixes and small improvements are also part of this update. Here is the complete list:
This latest release includes almost exclusively the features and enhancements requested by our users. Some of the requests were so popular that we were getting questions about them daily.
Here are the highlights of the new features:
For a complete list of updated items read the release notes.
Public Zenfolio API is made available for third-party development of software applications, plug-ins, utilities, and tools interfacing with the Zenfolio service.
The Zenfolio API provides outside developers with the same features and functionality of the Zenfolio platform used internally for our own development. The Zenfolio API is platform-independent and is based on open standards. It can be used from any programming language on any platform as long as it supports sending and receiving HTTP requests.
The following Help chapter provides detailed information describing the Zenfolio API.
As the first example of using the Zenfolio API, David Holmes has written a plug-in for Apple Aperture. The ApertureToZenfolio plug-in allows for uploading of photos to Zenfolio directly from with the Aperture application.
This is something we have all been waiting for: the ability to order prints and photo products directly from Zenfolio. It is here now, and, boy, is it exciting!
Zenfolio team has been hard at work for months integrating with not just one, but two very different photofinishing labs. And the underlying e-commerce platform allows us to add more labs in the future including different geographies.
Zenfolio is very excited to have full integration with EZ Prints and Mpix. Read more about these partner labs under Prints & Products.
And be assured that with this foundation in place, we are working on extending the E-commerce platform to allow photographers to set their own custom pricing and sell for profit in the near future.
This is a major release marking our first anniversary of going live with the service exactly one year ago. The following features and enhancements are immediately available:
Built from the ground up for photographers, this is the most powerful and streamlined shopping cart of its kind. The Cart features such innovations as ordering products from multiple vendors, applying additional services such as mounting and framing, and performing precision cropping using advanced cropping tools. The end result is a smooth checkout flow making purchasing a continuous and elegant extension of viewing photos.
Purchasing a print or a photo product begins with an Add to Cart menu on a photo page and takes a user through the vendor and product selection in easy to follow steps. The Add to Cart interface is fully integrated with visitor pages matching them in Theme and style.
A robust cropping tool is available as part of Cart configuration. Cropping options include:
Introduced three new themes:
Preferences: Email Notifications: you are now in control of e-mail messages you receive from Zenfolio. You can select what types of communications you would like to receive and opt out of the ones you don't.
For a complete list of changes please refer to the release notes.
As Microsoft is nearing the release of a major upgrade to their most popular Web browser, Zenfolio site is now fully compatible with Internet Explorer 7.
The official Web browsers supported by the Zenfolio site are:
Other Web browsers may work but are not actively tested.
This update addresses Slideshow usability and fixes several issues.
A few people have pointed out that the captions in the Slideshow were too intrusive and covered up sizable portion of images. We have addressed the issue by introducing mouse-over captions with subtle notification.
Transitions, or fades, can now be disabled for those who do not fancy them. And we have labeled the playback speed controller to make it easier to find and use.
The front page is now cleaner and easier to read. We have added new work from some outstanding featured photographers. We are very proud to have such talented and enthusiastic users.
The Overview page was redesigned completely, and we have added a lot of screenshots. It now looks more polished and presents information in a more organized fashion.
The Tour was updated with the newest features.
There are also a number of fixes, for a complete list please refer to the release notes.
This turned out to be one big release with major new functionality and enhancements addressing user feedback.
Collections can be used to save links to photos from you and other Zenfolio users. You can now reference the same photo in several Collections without having to upload the photo many times. Collections are also great for saving together photos from several Zenfolio users taken at the same event or location. Or for collecting in one place your favorite photos on a specific subject. There are many ways to use Collections so be creative!
As opposed to Galleries, Collections hold only links to the photos but not the actual files. And if you wish, you can specify to not allow your photographs to be added to Collections by others.
Registered Visitors can save photographs from other Zenfolio users in Collections, and show them on their own Home page with a custom address. Registration takes less than a minute and subscription is completely free.
This was a highly requested feature that we are certain will make your galleries look even more custom. If you have your own domain name registered you can now setup the CNAME record for it to point to your Zenfolio account. It will become the address to your Home page and all the links to your photo pages and galleries will begin with it. If you are an Unlimited plan subscriber, check Preferences for more details.
By popular demand we are bringing out larger 120px thumbnails in addition to the existing ones. The new thumbnails have more than double the size of the original thumbnails. By default, smaller thumbnails are displayed for lower screen resolutions, and larger thumbnails are displayed for higher screen resolutions achieving the best presentation experience across all screen resolutions. Users can override this default in either direction on a per gallery basis.
Complete overhaul of current page layouts resulted in more functional pages and more customization options. All current themes received visual enhancements and improvements.
Other new features include:
For a complete list of changes please refer to the release notes.
Numerous enhancements and new features released.
You give us feedback and we keep making Zenfolio better. This update includes many usability improvements, bug fixes, and new features. The following is an outline of main changes:
For a complete list of changes please refer to the release notes.
Zenfolio service is now open to subscribers.
Big “thank you” to our Beta users and the hard working team at Zenfolio for finishing everything in time for the launch.
Zenfolio service now features complete photo management and organization functionality including galleries and groups. Six beautiful Themes combined with page Layouts create truly impactful and elegant presentations.
The service also features industry-leading access control management applied from the Home page level down to individual photographs including options to password-protect, limit access to a list of users, and making items private as well as public.
We are particularly proud of the image processing quality we were able to achieve. The uploaded full size photographs are converted to display images in six different sizes using the best quality resizing algorithms available. The resulting images preserve the fidelity of the originals when displayed across all screen sizes.
And last but not least is the Search & Browse functionality. Powerful queries search descriptions, including keywords, categories, titles, and captions returning results in your choice of galleries or photographs. The Browse option gives visitors access to the Most Popular, Recent, and subject-matching galleries and photos with a single mouse click.
We are now officially in Beta with a limited feature set and a lot of enthusiasm from the users. We really appreciate everyone’s suggestions and feedback, more features and functionality will be rolling out in the coming months.