TLC - The Love of Christ Children's Home... because every baby deserves a family When Romy Antrobus contacted us with a request to discount our photo calendars which they want to sell to raise funds for TLC, we didn't think twice to donate the calendars. We consider it a privilege to help in this little way. Thea Jarvis and her family are truly heavenly creatures walking and working amongst us. I was touched very deeply when reading Thea and Pippa's blogs. Captured in every single word are traces of a love and sincerity which very few people in this world possess. My own words do not come close enough to describing the work these lovely people do with our children, so I've borrowed their own words in order to get the message across. "Each person in our family was meant to be there, and each one is loved. Whether born or adopted into the family, each person is beautifully unique and treasured." ...read more The Jarvis family cares for babies affected ...

How to get your Photobook/Calendar/Card out of iPhoto for printing To create the correctly imposed PDF in iPhoto:  Step 1: R emove Page Numbering (In iPhoto - deselect Page Number in Settings) Step 2:  Right-click or (ctrl)-click in the grey area outside the actual book in iPhoto and select " Print Book As PDF " Another small window will pop-up while the pdf is being generated. Once it's done you will have a PDF file of your book with the cover imposed front & back and then your inside pages.  This PDF should be uploaded on the RapidStudio website. NOTE:   If you have designed your dust cover (the cover with the flaps on the front and back cover that fold over the cover of your book), and you would like it printed, you need to choose the "dust cover" option when doing your quote.  If the dust cover option is not chosen, the cover with the flaps will be ignored and you will receive a normal hard cover photo book (with a personalised cover). ...

You'd think that over the years fraud would become more difficult to commit and easier to curb, but it doesn't always seem to be the case. Credit card fraud is still a very big issue all over the world and entering your credit card information on a website could prove to be very dangerous. That is why RapidStudio has partnered with a trusted payments processing service company called PayFast . Using PayFast to pay for your orders online is 100% safe.  Shop Without Disclosing Your Financial Information With PayFast you can pay merchants (such as RapidStudio) without giving them your financial information. The protection of your financial information is their business and they employ sophisticated security to ensure the security and integrity thereof. So, by using PayFast you send money, not your financial information . Pay with EFT... Instantly With PayFast , you can pay for your goods online via your bank's Internet Banking without any of the hassles. ...

In response to a question asked on our Facebook Wall, I have written a short tutorial on how to redeem your discount voucher with RapidStudio. Using a Gift Voucher or Promo Code works exactly the same. Step 1 :  Add a photo product to your shopping cart by ordering it through the software or via the website. Step 2 :  In the shopping cart there is a "Discount Voucher / Promo Code" box.  Enter your voucher number or promo code into this box and click the "Use Voucher" or "Use Promo Code" button. Below the box where you've entered the number you will see a message: "Voucher (XXXX..) accepted." or "Voucher (XXXX..) has expired" or "Voucher (XXXX..) is invalid". If the voucher is valid, your discount will reflect on the right within the shopping cart totals. If your voucher has expired , whether it can be renewed or not will depend on what type of voucher it is.  If you have won the voucher in a compet...

We've recently had the pleasure in dealing with an organisation called Bottomup . Helene Rousseau from Bottomup created a Soft Cover Photo Book with pictures taken during the year of 2011 at the schools where they are involved.   RapidStudio printed the copies for them at no charge to show our appreciation for the commendable work they do with the learners in our schools.   Click here to view the photo book. Read on to find out a little more about the organisation, the work they do and how you could get involved. Their Vision : "To instill a sense of pride, belonging and identity within learners at existing disadvantaged primary schools and to empower them with foundational skills for a better future." They are involved with many projects at a couple of primary schools - including Physical Education, Life Orientation, Creative Arts, Literacy Support and Personal Development .  Browsing through their website or talking to one of the people involved, makes you excit...

Use Your Flash Most of us love taking pictures and there's always a camera at any event or family gathering. But sometimes we wish that we knew how to make a good portrait photo that doesn't resemble some shoddy happy snappy. Gerrie from OpenImage Photography was kind enough to give us a few tips on how to take the perfect portrait. 1. Use Your Flash When shooting during the day in bright sun light, it's always better to use your flash. Don’t think because it’s so bright outside that you don’t need to use your flash. In fact, the bright sunlight creates shadows in the eye socket. You need just that extra bit of flash to remove that shadow. Zoom IN 2. Zoom IN Don't stand too close to your subject and zoom out to get the full photo.  Rather take a few steps back and zoom IN.  This will ensure that your photo is in proportion.  If you stand too close, your subject might be out of proportion ie. their head might be smaller than their feet, or their hands might b...

In a few steps we will explain how to use your own image as a background in your photobook and add some effects to it. Step 1 :  Drag the image you want to place as a background to the edge of the page on the workspace and drop it there.  You will see (before you let go of the mouse button) that the page is greyed (img. bg-8) out with the wording ("right side background", "left side background" or "whole page background"). bg-8 This is all you need to do to add a picture to your background, but just to make it a little more interesting we're going to explain how to add some effects to your background. Step 2:  Add opacity to your background image.  Right click on your background and choose "Set Opacity" (img. bg-9). Now play with the slider to make your image more and less opaque (img. bg-10).  bg-10 bg-9 Step 3:  Click on the "Color" button (img. bg-11a) to change the colour overlay of your image. ...

Instead of flipping through your photo book and applying the same background page by page, there is an easier and much quicker way of doing this.  To make it easy to understand we've added a few screenshots below. Step 1:  Apply a background to a page in your photobook.  Then right click on the page background and choose "Copy Background". bg-1 Step 2:  Right click on that same page background and choose "Paste special on all pages | Background" (or use the short-cut Ctrl+G). bg-2 Now all the pages (corresponding to the side of the spread you copied) will have the same background.   In this case all the pages on the left will be green. bg-3 Step 3:   Now you have one of two options.  You can either simply right click on the other page background of the same spread and choose "Paste special on all pages | Background" (img. bg-4) to make every single page in your album exactly the same  (img.5).   ...

We get a lot of people asking us the same question time and time again: "Can I give you my pictures and then you design the photobook for me?" And the answer?  "We've already done it." :) Simplicity Scrapbook Our designers are constantly creating new photobook designs which we publish on our website (or on the disk) as Sample Albums. These templates are complete photo books where the design has been applied from the cover right through to the very last page.  So, all you really need to do, is to choose your photographs and decide on which pages you want to place them. Now why would you want to pay someone else to design or lay out your photo book if you can do it yourself for absolutely nothing. All the sample albums displayed on this blog (any many many more) can be downloaded from our website on the "Free Software" page. How to apply a template that we have designed for you: Firstly you need to have the Rapi...

"Tips from a Techie" - "RapidStudio Tech Blog" has now changed it's name to a more friendly "RapidStudio Blog" We're hoping to see more articles published here on a wider variety of topics all relevent to RapidStudio, the all new RapidProLab and anything photobook. NEW and OLD header you can access the blog by visiting http://blog.rapidstudio.co.za If you'd like email notification whenever we post new items, please fill in your email address under "follow by email" at the bottom of the page.

We often receive photo books that have pictures with people's faces or sometimes text across the spine. How do I design around the spine? Hard cover Photobooks are bound in such a way that there is a narrow valley between the left and right pages of a spread where the sheets of paper are bound in the spine. This means that any image area or text that overlaps the centre of a spread will obscured by this valley, a small portion of the image area might even be lost. To avoid customer dissatisfaction we try to notify customers whenever we notice something important is cut off in the spine, and ask them how they would like to proceed. This not only creates delays in the production process while we track down the customer and clarify how they would like us to fix it. Although we try to pick up these problems, RapidStudio can`t be held responsible to correct this problem every time. To prevent this from happening, please place your images (or important areas of your images, like...