April 17, 2008

Passport Photo 2.0.0 creates child ID cards in addition to passport pictures

We've just released Passport Photo 2.0.0.

This release includes, in addition to printing passport pictures, the ability to print child ID tags.

These tags include your child's photo, your photos and any information you choose to include. They can be worn by the child when going to public places.

The child ID cards are credit-card sized, making them easy to carry with you, when not in use. They easily fit plastic badge holders that can be attached to kids' shirts.

This new features comes standard in Passport Photo 2.0.0 at no extra cost. You can print these cards with your own printer, or in a shop - like ordinary photos.

Existing users should upgrade (for free) by downloading the recent version.

March 29, 2008

Online passport photo validator

Most of the passport photos people take at home are just fine, and they don't have to be perfect in order to be accepted.

The most common problems we see, with photos that people send us to review have to do with lighting conditions, shadows and reflections. So, we created an online passport photo validator which lets you see how you photo compares with good and bad samples.

It's completely free and doesn't require anything, besides the photo you want to check. Give it a try and let us know what you think.

This utility will also be integrated in the upcoming release of Passport Photo (version 1.6.0).

November 8, 2007

Translators Wanted for New Website Translation Service

We're proud to release a new service by OnTheGoSystems. It's a translation service that allows translation of complete websites without any knowledge in HTML.

Webmasters can get their sites translated for a fraction of the cost of going through a translation agency.

Translators can get great projects and earn more.

How do we do it? We give both webmasters and translators the tools for managing complete website translations, extracting texts, translating and rebuilding the new website.

There are no sign-up or registration fees. We take a small commission per project (after the project is completed) and that's it.

The service is now open for registration of all translators. If you're a professional translator, with proven experience, go and sign up for a translator account.

To get you started quickly, you'll be able to download our translation software for free and get a small practice project.

We're looking for translators to and from all languages. The most popular are:

1. English
   
2. German
   
3. Spanish
   
4. French
   

To learn more, visit:
http://translators.icanlocalize.com

September 18, 2007

Finally, Shrink Pic with Vista Support

We know, it took us a while, but it's finally here.
The new update to Shrink Pic (version 1.4.1) runs fine under Windows Vista (and thanks to the folks at Microsoft who made it such an interesting experience for us).

You can grab it from our download page.

* Please note: To properly run, Shrink Pic must start with administrative capabilities. Depending on your security settings, it might ask you for permission just once, or every time you rebooot.

August 4, 2007

Photo Backup 2.6.0 released

We've just released a new version of Photo Backup.

This release includes fixes for old bugs and new features.

As of this version, Photo Backup manages your archive according to photo contents and not according to their name or path. This means that Photo Backup is now able to track your photos even if they move around the hard drive or are renamed.

When you edit a photo, it's contents changes and Photo Backup will consider it as new. It will create backup for every photo revision and you'll have access to all revision from the backup.

Gotchas!
When upgrading from previous versions, Photo Backup will might need to rescan some of your existing backup in order to complete the version update.
If you have any photos are were removed from the hard drive, Photo Backup will not show their thumbnails. You'll need to insert the DVDs with the backup of these photos and rescan them.

Contact us if you need any help.

My computer crashed, how do I restore the archive from Photo Backup?

Question: I've been using Photo Backup for a while and now my computer crashed. What do I do to restore things and keep doing my backup?

Answer:
I recommend that you download the recent version of Photo Backup from our download page. If you need to, you can have your purchase receipt automatically resent to your email address using the support page.

Start up Photo Backup. Use the startup wizard to create a new archive and tell it where your photos are. If your photos were deleted, don't worry, you'll get them from the backup DVDs.

You can save some time by manually selecting the folder where you've placed all your photos to avoid Photo Backup scanning your system to find that out.

After you've set up your archive from scratch, Photo Backup should report the number of photos you have and tell that they all need backup. Now, click on the 'Archive Setting' button on the toolbar and select the 'manage archive' tab. Insert your backup DVDs and select 'Scan existing backup' (once per DVD). Photo Backup should go through your backup and learn which files are already on archive. This process will take a while, as Photo Backup reads the photos from the DVDs and compares them to the photos on your hard drive.

At the end (after you've scanned both DVDs), Photo Backup will know which photos are already archived. It reports that on the top left of Photo Backup's window (Archive Info).

We strongly recommend that you maintain an index CD. To do this, click on 'Create index'. You can save the index to a CD or a DVD. This will help you avoid the rescan in the future as the archive information is also backed up on the index.

For any help, contact us.

May 4, 2007

Photo Backup 2.5.0

We've just made available Photo Backup 2.5.0. This version includes a number of critical fixes, as well as great new features.

New features

• Instant previews - Photo Backup will create display optimized versions of your photos and save them with the HTML index. This will let you view all photos from the index CD without having the originals. The size of these previews is about 50K-150K, so a very large number of previews can fit on a single CD/DVD.
  
• Ability to delete photos from the archive - if your archive includes photos that you no longer wish to track, you can remove them (select the photo(s), click on Edit->Remove from archive).
  
• Index burning has become much much faster and more reliable. Photo Backup now correctly handles HTML indexs of huge archives.

Some problems that are fixed in this revision:

• CD duplication - This was broken in the previous release.
  
• Added full burning options to index generation, CD duplication and print CDs.
  
• Automatic index refresh after burning.

Generally, this is a very recommended upgrade for all users. This release is still in Beta, but has gone through extensive testing. We will appreciate any feedback you can give.

Get it from our download page.

April 2, 2007

How can I make prints that will last for years?

We've get frequent questions about what kind of printers, paper and ink people should use to produce acceptable passport photos. I hope that this post might help...

Q: The passport office requires that my prints last for years and sustain high temperatures. Will prints I make at home meet these requirements?

Answer:
The quality of your prints depend more the ink and paper you use and less on the type of printer.
If you need to print your photos for your self, and not on a commercial basis, I recommend that you use Passport Photo to create JPEG files and have them printed in a shop, on regular photo paper. These prints will have very high quality and will surely be accepted.

For commercial printing, you should see what kind of paper you can purchase. Quality paper will come with specifications for the durability of the prints. Then, see what kind of ink you need to use with this paper, and select a printer that can handle this kind of ink.

Yours,
Amir

April 1, 2007

New features for the next Photo Backup release

Hi,

We're working on some new features for Photo Backup, our digital photo archive utility and wanted to hear your feedback and ideas.

If you're already using Photo Backup, you can just skip ahead, as I want to describe it briefly before going on.

About Photo Backup
Photo Backup is a photo archive utility for Windows. It keeps track of your digital photos and creates backup copies of them on CDs and DVDs. Photo Backup includes a scheduler that can automatically check for new photos and back them up when needed. It also creates a handy HTML index, which can be viewed without any software installed.

Photo Backup comes in two versions:

• Full version - meant for professional photographers and people who work with lots of digital photos.
  
• LE - a free version, with a few less functions. The LE version is usually just fine for home users.

The full version of Photo Backup creates thumbnails for virtually any kind of photo. It can process RAW photos of most digital cameras, PhotoShop PSD files and Adobe Digital Negative (DNG) files. It lets you manage several independent archives, allowing you to separate archives for different clients.

Photo Backup LE will archive all file types as well, but only creates thumbnails to JPEG and other standard photo types. It also only manages a single archive. Most home users never require more than this.

To learn more about Photo Backup, visit here:
http://www.onthegosoft.com/photo_backup.htm

Upcoming features for Photo Backup
So, we're now working on the next version of Photo Backup and have a few new features - suggested to us by kind users.

• Instant Photo Preview: Photo Backup will create reduced size versions of your photos, and will save them on your hard drive and index CD. These copies will take up about 50Kbyte/photo (typically, 1%-3% of their original size) and allow you to view your photos at 800x600 resolution. It's not enough to produce prints, but it's just fine for viewing your photos on a screen or projector. So, if you've got thousands of huge JPEG, PSD or RAW files cluttering your hard drive, you'll be able to create Instant Photo Previews with Photo Backup and view them instead of the originals. The originals are still safely kept on your backup DVDs, and can be retrieved when you need them. You'll be able to browse through the archive, with both thumbnails and Instant Previews much faster and easier. This feature, along with Photo Backup's ability to erase archived photos will help you free up disk space, and still view your photos.
  
  
• Archive to other hard drives: We want to make Photo Backup be able to archive your photos to other hard drives. This will include other drives in your computer, removable USB/Firewire drives, Flash drives or network mapped drives. Photo Backup will find these drives for you, even if their drive letter changes, and keep the archive synchronized on both your DVD collection and as many additional drives as you need.

Let us know what you think
So, now is the time to make your suggestions. We're always on the lookout for good ideas and since we're working on a new release, giving us feedback now will get these new features to you faster than ever.

You can get back to us using our online contact form.

I'd like to wish you happy holidays,
Amir Helzer
OnTheGoSoft

March 19, 2007

Passport Photo 1.5.2

A new version of Passport Photo is ready for download.
This release doesn't include any new features, and is intended as an upgrade for all Windows Vista users.

You can get it from our download page. As always, this upgrade is free for all registered users.

Enjoy,
Amir