The PhotoDeck blog

We've just rolled out a new version of the section in the member admin space dedicated to the managing and customizing your website (the My website panel).

Now, the navigation is organized around the website's menu, making your workflow much more intuitive and efficient.

In addition, switching between the desktop and the mobile sites is also much easier, it's now a single click.

Similarly, for each gallery you'll find buttons to quickly switch between the gallery preview under My site and its management panel under My images.

The actual settings and the interface to customize the design of the desktop and mobile themes haven't changed, so we're confident you'll easily find your way around -- your feedback is always welcome!

To fully benefit from the new interface, please accept the prompt in your interface to update the website rendering engine.

NEW: Upload, deliver, sell RAW files

We've now made it possible to upload to your PhotoDeck account image files in the major RAW formats (DNG, CR2, CR3, CRW, NEF, NRW, ARW, ...)!

While this is mostly meant for commercial client proofing and delivery scenarios, RAW files can also be sold. You'll find a new pricing profile template in your admin space for that purpose.

Following our recent design and themes update, we've been hard at work expanding PhotoDeck's capabilities to make our members' life easier, and better support their business.

1- Custom quotations for images and services, easily

Until now, clients could request quotations for images and video clips from PhotoDeck websites. With this update, PhotoDeck members can themselves create and send new quotations, including for custom services (i.e. things not necessarily related to images), directly from their admin space.

For example, this makes it exceedingly easy to:

• have a client purchase and download a few specific images/clips without having to create a new gallery for him ;
• collect payment for anything, like booking or workshop fees.

The new Create a quotation button can be found under My Business / Orders / Quotations.

2- BETA: PhotoDeck for Teams

We've built the ability to add Team Members to PhotoDeck accounts, so that a member can delegate access to his admin space to different people with different credentials -- and different user rights.

This is a big one. PhotoDeck is used not only by independent photographers but also by teams and organizations, and this feature opens up new possibilities to them.

This options requires a BUSINESS account. It is free of charge during the BETA period, until the end of September. Please contact support to get it!

3- An additional website, easily and affordably

We've also added the possibility to create additional websites under a single PhotoDeck STANDARD or BUSINESS account, sharing the same storage and all features, at a much lower price than a new account.

Many members have distinct specialities, and using different websites helps maintain a focused branding!

This will also come in handy for those who want to try something different without compromising their main website, while keeping the extended feature set they're used to and limiting costs.

The additional website add-on can be found under your subscription management page. Note that we are unfortunately not able to consolidate several existing accounts into a single one and this can only be used for new websites.

For yet more harmonious and modern-looking websites

We're very excited to finally launch the design update we've been working on since last summer! It focuses on perfecting the polish and overall clean and modern look of PhotoDeck websites (those small details that can make a large difference), and realigning with some current trends.

Shortcut: How to benefit from this upgrade

Here are the main improvements available today as a free upgrade to all members:

Typography improvements

We've improved the consistency of the typography for headings and sub-headings across the top of pages, sub-gallery titles, custom text, etc... The updated themes make it easy to select a font and a color for all headings at once, and get more readable and visually pleasing pages.

Similarly, we've introduced a standardized size progression for the fonts used across your website, based on the Golden Ratio. When you change the main font size, all others will scale in a way that maintain those pleasing proportions.

We've also worked on the spacing between lines of text, also resulting in a cleaner, more modern look. The updated themes allow for fine-tuning of this spacing.

Vertical rhythm

The same line spacing used in typography now also serves as a basis for the spacing between paragraphs and elements on a page.

The objective is to create a vertical pattern that follows as regular a rhythm as possible, making it possible for the viewer's brain to more easily process and understand a page, again resulting in a more harmonious effect.

Hamburger navigation

All themes (except #7, with its already-collapsible menu) now feature a new layout for tablets, one that relies on the "Hamburger navigation" (named after the Menu icon) normally found on smartphones.

Designers sometimes use a Hamburger navigation layout even on desktop designs for a super-minimalist look. If that's up your alley, PhotoDeck themes now also let you apply that Hamburger navigation on all devices.

Buttons styling

Due to popular request, the size of buttons can now easily be changed in the themes' settings. But we've gone the extra mile and added more options that allow for completely new styles.

And much more...

It wouldn't make sense to list all what we've worked on, but you might also notice improvements for example in thumbnail mouse-over effects, icons' colors, automatically computed text colors, styling of form fields...

How to benefit from this upgrade

Part of these improvements will automatically appear next time you change a setting that affects all pages on your website, even if you don't update your theme to its new version. From line spacing changes down to the rendering of some icons, many small improvements will automatically make their way to your website.

But this upgrade will only take its full sense for members who update their themes, both mobile and desktop, to their latest version.

The first reason is that updating your themes will bring you access to customization settings related to the changes, either to benefit fully from them, or, you know, if there's something you don't like.

The second reason is that all layouts / themes have been pretty much rewritten from scratch. We've kept the main layout concept for each of them, so you probably won't notice dramatic changes, but again, many little things have been polished, modernized, squared-up... or in a few cases, fixed.

So, take a backup of your designs just in case, upgrade now, and let us know what you think!

A final note

We're not quite done yet. We still have a few little design-related things up our sleeves that didn't fit into this update (subtle animations anyone?), so do send us your feedback and stay tuned for more!

Until now, orders not delivered through PhotoDeck (like prints prepared by yourself) could only be marked in the admin space as DELIVERED. This also triggered a notification email to the customer.

It caused confusion in some cases, when the photographer marked orders as DELIVERED before the customers actually received them.

So we've added a new intermediate "SHIPPED" state, which allows our members to both:

• better communicate with their customers,

• and better manage their own orders and their status.

Until an order is marked as DELIVERED, it can now be marked as SHIPPED, with an optional message to the customer, ideal for example to add a shipping tracking number!

Orders fulfilled by WHCC via our integration are automatically marked as SHIPPED.

And like before, orders can also still be marked as DELIVERED, but the message to the customer is now optional.

Note: the new SHIPPED state is naturally optional. For some orders (e.g. services), it is preferable to mark directly as DELIVERED.