I'm always trying to improve my digital download store and provide the best possible experience for my customers (within my limited skills!) To that end I've made a few changes to the store and added a few new features.
All in Site News
Milestones & Journeys
Over the past week I've reached two very important milestones, both here on the blog and in my photography journey. First of all, my new e-book on processing X-Trans files in Iridient Developer has become the fastest selling book that I've released to date! Secondly, my humble little blog has passed the million viewer mark!
A Thank You, An Apology, and An Update
I’m totally blown away by the response to my X-Trans lightroom guide that I published earlier in the week. the response has been amazing, and some of you have sent some lovely kind words of support. It’s the highest volume of traffic my store has seen and it’s been hard just to keep up. So, a sincere thank you to everyone. I really am blown away by the response.
An Autumn Update
I wanted to share a quick update on some ongoing projects, and some other things that have been going on.Lots of people have been asking me questions, which I've only gotten around to answering a few, and I've promised some updates on various things, so here's a quick roundup of what's going on.
I'm on Apple News
If you've updated to iOS 9 and you're using the new Apple News app, you can now get this blog's content in Apple News. For the moment Apple News is only officially available in a very few select countries, but I'm assuming it will roll out to more soon. There's a very simple work around to get the application if you want ti though. You simply need to set your iPad's region to USA and Language to US English, and reboot your iPad (or iPhone). Once you do that you will see the news App.
Photo Wander
I’ve started a little experiment that I wanted to share with you. I’m working on some tutorials on how to photoblog, and as part of my research I’ve been trying out various platforms. One service that was missing from my repertoire was a wordpress.com blog. Unlike a self hosted Wordpress installation, a wordpress.com blog is fully hosted, and is kind of more like Tumblr. I was curious to see how the platform worked, and how it differed from a self hosted Wordpress install, so I set up a blog to test it out. The blog in question is called Photo Wander
Some Recent Lightroom Tips from the Lightroom Diary
If you’re a Lightroom user and you haven’t checked out my companion site “The Lightroom Diary” recently, then you may have missed some of the quick tips I’ve been posting. I’ve been adding some new material to the Lightroom focussed blog lately including some tips and tricks for all levels, from beginners to non-beginners. Here are some of the ones that I’ve posted recently that you might want to check out:
Updates and Changes
If you're a regular visitor here, you may have noticed a few changes on the site over the last little while, and also, you've probably noticed that it's been a while since I've posted an update. There's been a lot going on lately, and there's been a lot of technical issues that I've had to deal with on the site, so let me explain.
Download Store Re-Design & Preset Updates
Just a quick update on my Digital Download store. I’ve given it a fairly substantial re-design, including a new theme, and I’ve tidied up some of the organisation and menus, hopefully making it easier to find stuff. The download store contains my Lightroom presets, some presets for Photoshop too, as well as some textures for sale.
Comments System Updated
I’ve changed the comments system on the blog from the default Squarespace one to Disqus. There are a few reasons for doing this, both for my convenience and for the readers.
My new iPhone Photography Blog
I’ve been wanting to start some sort of blog to showcase some of my iPhone photography on an ongoing basis for some time, when I realised that I already had the perfect platform sitting idle. I’ve had a Tumblr blog that I haven’t really been doing much lately, and it’s set up to a fairly decent domain name too, thephotographygeek.com. Not only that but I’be already been sort of using it for iPhone photography, as I’ve been automatically sharing my Instagram pictures on it for a while now. After a little bit of tidying up over the last little while, and with a fresh coat of virtual paint, it’s now been transformed into an iPhone photography blog.
Some Updates
Spring is normally a quiet time for me with design work, but this year, I've been swamped, so my photography blog has taken a bit of a back seat. I want to do both, but unfortunately I just haven't been keeping up. I'm in the process of re-designing my long idle design portfolio and website too, so when I keep mentioning the design work I'm doing, I'll finally be able to refer you to what I'm talking about. I'm actually working on some interesting projects, but I can't talk about them now.
Anyway, I haven't been totally abandoning the photography side of things. I've been doing some bits and pieces that you may find of interest.
March Sale of Lightroom Presets and Other Items from the Download Store
To celebrate the start of spring I’m giving discounts on everything on the digital download store including all my Lightroom presets and ACR Presets and Texture Box one. I had mentioned this briefly in a previous post, and that it was for this week only, but I’ve decided to extend it for the whole month. To take advantage of this, all you need to do is use the following coupon code at the checkout:
springishere
This will give you 20% off your total purchase. You can use it as often as you want for the month of March.
Some Blog and Website Reshuffling
Over the past few years I've accumulated quite a few different blogs and websites. As with many people in the same situation, I've had the best of intentions with these, promising myself to create my own little blogging empire, but usually they've been neglected after a while, as I've realised that my workflow was to great. Anyway, I've a few that had been going well, but I've neglected lately, and I've begun consolidating them.
Download Store Changes for the New Year
Because of the wonderful new EU Vat laws (yes, I'm being sarcastic) I've had to change the way the download store works. Basically the EU has decided to change the way VAT is charged for electronic download sales between EU countries. Up till now, when selling to another EU country you would charge vat based on the address of the seller, in my case Ireland. However, starting on the 1st of January, you now have to charge VAT based on the address of the buyer rather than the seller.
Some Bits and Pieces
I've been a bit remiss with posting here lately and I have a few ongoing subjects that I know I've promised which have been getting delayed. I'm still working on a detailed report on Capture One Pro 8 for Fuji users, but I've been swamped with work so it's taking a bit longer than I had anticipated. I am writing a first impressions report thought, and I'll have that up shortly. I'm going to be doing a lot of design and animation work for the next few months, so the blog might be a bit quieter than usual for a while, but I'll do my best to keep the updates coming. In the mean time, I do have some random bits and pieces of news to report, so in no particular order...
New Licenses and a new "How to buy" Section
Just a quick site update for Monday morning. As part of my ongoing effort to pacify my image archive and library, I've been simplifying the license structure for images available for sale through my archive. As modern standards continue to evolve in web design, some of the existing image sizes are no longer relevant. Most major libraries are now moving to a one size per license and so I've decided to do something similar.
