Hi - at Jims suggestion, we've starting a little questions and answers forum right here on GSTF's for anyone to use if they have a question, product or technical related, with regards our online personalised photo gift business - Fabulous Photo Gifts.

http://www.fabulousphotogifts.co.uk - personalised photo gifts
http://purple13.blogspot.com - the Fab' Photo's Blog

We look forward to being of assistance.

Jonathan and Mandy.

hey Purple... jonathan and Mandy...

I am thinking of something towards the middle of the year for Nan.... do you have anything small that would suit a dressing table style

Hi Aussie - welcome!
I'm guessing here you don't have a mousemat in mind!!

Well we do have a new gift idea that sounds like it might fit the bill - the deluxe photo panels. The small and medium ones come with an 'easel stand', the panels themselves are 6mm thick so stand really well. The image is printed directly onto the high gloss surface and really do give an amazing depth of colour and vibrancy - we were well impressed when we saw the test print results.

The small and medium can stand either portrait or landscape and we're just about to add a portrait only version especially for 'head and shoulder' shots as the board has a curved top.

Here's a link - http://www.fabulousphotogifts.co.uk/index.php?ref=deluxe_photo

Hope that helps Aussie. Look forward to hearing from you.

Thanks mate it does..... sound like it could be the trick.... I want to put a nice photo of Moppet for great Grandmother and something personal is the way to go... her birthday is in July.... how much notice do you need...???

Hi Aussie - sounds great.

We normally only send to UK - with overseas orders, what we do is get the actual weight of your order (packaged) and then get a quote for postage to that country and thats how much we ask you to extra (via paypal but we're hoping to have our own banks payment system by then).

Takes 2 to 3 days (as a rush job - we say allow 5 to 7 on website) for inks to dry and cool down etc before we can package and deliver UK orders but i suspect the real time decider here is postage times between uk and australia - we'd have to find out but prob best to say earlier the better.

Of course if, like jim and em, you know someone in UK visiting, then we can happily send to them for you.

No worries... Paypal is all good.... i used to do printing know what you mean about the inks...

When I know what and how I will give you a yell and we can work it out from there.... probably around June.....

Heh Jonathan this is a great idea. This is a good place to plug Fab Photos - hope you get some trade!

Sounds like you already are from AC!

:-)

Hi Mike - Thanks! It was all Jims idea but it seemed like a good one - it would be nice to just offer photography and scanning tips with photo gifts in mind as we progress. - Jonathan

Hi Aussie - No probs! If you think of anything else in the meantime, just shout.
(great april fools prank by the way!)

thanks mate..
It was a joint effort hubby worked on that one with me.... he used to a libarian.... yep my hippy a libarian.... lol

Tip of the week:

Beware of using mobile phone pictures to personalise photo gifts with. Whilst the top end photo mobile phones might capture a big enough image in terms of file size and dpi, most do not. Always check your image at 'print size' if you're not sure or drop us a line prior to ordering.

We recently received a 3.5k image for a 1000 piece photo jigsaw - at print size, it was big enough to cover a single piece. Obviously we had to contact the customer and ask if they had another photo.

Beware though that some photo gift companies may not review all submissions by hand and their automated processes might mean you get back exactly what you sent, whatever the quality.

The Fabulous Photo Gifts Team.

Ta for the tip...

Any news of the ' post a video' intiative yet?

AND

Anything decent for Fab photos from the business brekkie meeting?

hi jim and em'

we're still gearing up the email-out to all our past customers to let them know of our 'tv channel' - i'm getting to grips with my new mac' (after years of windows - its a long process but worth it) and we hope to be sending within the next two weeks.

Re - breakfast club - nothing more to report - but time is so precious to small businesses so i'm confident the couple of really good contacts made will bare fruit in the future - thanks for asking.

Hello again.

Just wanted to let everyone know that we just launched the 2008 incarnation of the Fabulous Photo Gifts website (we like to have a spring clean once a year).

New features include a new updated banner - still staying true to our original 'jigsaw piece' motif and a new instant gift finder side navigation panel visible from all pages.

Other more subtle changes include an updated FAQ's and How to Order pages. We'll be updating the News Articles pages shortly with a ticker-tape style previewer of the last 5 blog posts.

This ties in with our earlier work this week to spread our blog further by using Feedburner.

Hope you like the new site design - any problems, give us a shout or leave a comment here and i'll get straight back to you.

Problems getting your image to upload?

Well I'm writing this post not because we get a lot of failed photo uploads or a lot of customers querying that their image didn't upload, but very occasionally we do get a phone call from a customer that's been pulling their hair out before calling us. Hopefully these few tips and tricks may help you (and save your hair).

(They're also good web / file husbandry as well).

When an image won't upload try:
1) Opening your image and re-saving it. Sometimes, that's all it takes. Perhaps a file corrupted or the path to it was faulty.

2) Check for upper case letters in your file name. It's good practice to save all files in lower case (little letters).

3) Check for spaces in your file name. Again, it's good practice to not use spaces in your file names e.g my dog.jpg. Instead use my_dog.jpg - use the underscore (usually shift+ the 'dash' button - next to the +/= button).

4) If you work in other file extensions, particularly those that support layers (like photoshop files .psd), even though you saved your image as a .jpg at maximum quality, sometimes, the layers still get saved so it isn't a true flat image .jpg. Try flattening your photoshop file first and then save as .jpg. This should solve the problem.

Just a few tips there that might get you out of trouble and not just when you're ordering a Fabulous Photo Gift. Spaces in file names or a mixture of upper case and lower case characters are not best practice. In our experience, file corruption on your hard drive is rarely an issue and would need a lot of bad segments for it to become a real problem.

Also check your remote/back up discs or hard drives are not suffering from poor storage or constant copying and moving of files. Disk defragment is a clever and useful utility on windows' computers for solving such issues.

Jonathan - Fabulous Photo Gifts.

I am curious about one thing. What is the cheapest item in your collection? Please pardon me, but I really want to know..

Hi Nursarahanya - Good question and no - we don't mind you asking at all.

we have two joint favourites - our personalised 'bottle t-shirt' and a 'teddy bear keyring both priced at £4.99 +delivery.

The Bottle T-shirt is personalised with your own photo and fits most standard wine bottles. It even comes with a litle suction cup hanger so you can hang it from a window etc once the bottle's empty (which doesn't usually take long!). Here's the link:
http://www.fabulousphotogifts.co.uk/index.php?ref=bottle_tshirt

The Teddy Bear keyring is a cheerful little chap in a white t-shirt that can be ordered with a choice of printed slogans - Happy Birthday, I Love You etc. Due to the printable area size, we don't offer this little guy for your own photo adding. here's the link:
http://www.fabulousphotogifts.co.uk/index.php?ref=teddy_keyring

As I say, both priced at £4.99 + post and pack. ( We do have bulk prices available on all items ) Hope that helps.
Jonathan.

That is sure helpful but I am just curious to know because I like these kind of personalised gifts..

It's coming very soon - the first survey of all the photographs sent in to personalise a photo gift with here at Fabulous Photo Gifts - we'll be revealing (after an exhaustive counting session) the top to the bottom of the types of photographs uploaded - will it be children, babies (a seperate category) holidays or pets? that gets the coveted top spot as our countdown begins.

Coming this Bank Holiday (or earlier if the Bacardi holds out).

We'll be blogging soon so feel free to join in the fun with your own suggestions for number 1 - we'll post a list of categories very shortly.

An in-frequent query but valid all the same - because so many people now use mobile phone cameras to catch those 'special photographic moments' - the resulting file size is usually too small to do anything with - especially if you're thinking of using it on a personalised photo gift.

However, all is not lost!

if you've got some creative image software (which most computers or cameras come with now), you can achieve quite a lot. We've written a useful guide to getting creative with small file sizes and what to look out for over on our blog -
http://purple13.blogspot.com/2008/05/great-photo-shame-about-file-size.html

Just a note to let you all know that our Pet Photo Competition runs till the end of June 2008.

Personalise any gift order with a pet/animal picture and we'll pick the 'best' one and the winner will receive their pet picture on a stunning Deluxe Photo Panel (small with desk easel).

We've had loads of qualifying orders already - it's going to be a tough choice.

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