MyCanvas books and collages

Ham1 · October 31, 2008

Hey everyone,

I wanted to start a thread here to start getting your input to our newest Book and Collage maker MyCanvas. smugmug.mycanvas.com :clap:clap

Currently they are running pretty amazing special for all SmugMug customers, just go to your "buy" button on any SmugMug gallery. Click on "Create a book" or "Create a Collage" and you will see MyCanvas there. You have GOT to check out their Premium books!! :ivar:ivar

I am looking for feedback, thoughts, suggestions, complaints etc. I am going to get one or two of the MyCanvas people to join Dgrin and support their service just like Blurb does.

We love our partners!!

Thanks,
Markham

Ann McRae · October 31, 2008

w00t! Holy guacamole, Ham! What a great looking vendor!

Ham1 wrote:

Hey everyone,

I wanted to start a thread here to start getting your input to our newest Book and Collage maker MyCanvas. smugmug.mycanvas.com clap

Currently they are running pretty amazing special for all SmugMug customers, just go to your "buy" button on any SmugMug gallery. Click on "Create a book" or "Create a Collage" and you will see MyCanvas there. You have GOT to check out their Premium books!! :ivar:ivar

I am looking for feedback, thoughts, suggestions, complaints etc. I am going to get one or two of the MyCanvas people to join Dgrin and support their service just like Blurb does.

We love our partners!!

Thanks,
Markham

Ham1 · October 31, 2008

Ann McRae wrote:

w00t! Holy guacamole, Ham! What a great looking vendor!

Yep, they look great, their products rock and they are very custom oriented.

Elaine · October 31, 2008

I just threw together a collage to try them out, and it was FUN!!! What a cool product! Thanks, Smuggy!

JPCanvas · November 1, 2008

Hello from MyCanvas
Thanks for the intro Ham and hello SmugMugers! My name's John and I'm lucky enough to be leading the team at MyCanvas. We're very excited to be bringing you our product and hope you'll find the service to be fun and the quality to be outstanding. We're proud of what we've got to offer but we're always looking to improve. So send us your comments, suggestions, questions, complaints, whatever... and we'll continue to make it a great experience.

Thanks,
JP

aktse · November 2, 2008

JPCanvas wrote:

Thanks for the intro Ham and hello SmugMugers! My name's John and I'm lucky enough to be leading the team at MyCanvas. We're very excited to be bringing you our product and hope you'll find the service to be fun and the quality to be outstanding. We're proud of what we've got to offer but we're always looking to improve. So send us your comments, suggestions, questions, complaints, whatever... and we'll continue to make it a great experience.

Thanks,
JP

Instead of using blurb for this project, I decided to use your company instead for a special birthday gift for a friend. MyCanvas seems to provide a very nice product and I wanted to give you a chance.

For my friend's birthday, she decided to rented the Monterey Bay Aquarium to mark the milestone of reaching half century and being a breast cancer survivor.

I photographed the event.

I'm slightly regretting the decision of using myCanvas since I've been having tons of issues.

The software keeps on crashing on me (XP box with 4gb RAM, using FF); it's as if my project is too big (40-50 pages of a book). Also, some of the photos never load when the page is selected, etc. and I can't tell what photos I selected. The photos show up in the thumbnails, but sometimes, won't appear when the page is selected.

Is it my connection speed? What type of system do I need? I see application constantly connecting to the myCanvas servers. Do I need to be on a T1 line? Do I need to use IE? Different version of flash?

Also, what size of photo does the mycanvas pulls? On some pages, it's complaining that my photo size is too small.

Basically, it's been painful and very, very, very slow. I had the birthday girl's sister here with me working on a layout/story book of the event this evening we just gave up after a few hours. We didn't stop working since the project did save itself when the application crashes. If I didn't save itself, we would have given up.

Instead, we ended up hand drawing the storybook on paper due to the speed and crashing issues.

I'm currently debating if should go back to blurb, or try mpix or whcc.

Any suggestions?

JPCanvas · November 2, 2008

aktse, sorry about any inconvenience you may be having. We took a look and we’re not seeing any performance issues right now, but that’s not to say we may not have had any. There was a period last night where we were re-syncing some servers due to Day Light Savings time that may have affected performance. Normally, as long as you have a fast connection (cable, dsl, etc...) you should be fine. Number of pages shouldn't be an issue either; we allow some books to be printed up to 250 pages. We also work the same on IE, FF and Safari as well as PCs and MAC. Nonetheless, we’ll continue to investigate and make sure there isn't some lingering problem. BTW, what version of Flash are you using?

With regards to the size of the photo, we pull a medium size one from SmugMug when you place it on a page and for most cases this looks great on the screen. If, however, the dimensions of your photo on the page are large we automatically grab the larger size from SmugMug which takes a few seconds longer and until that larger one is grabbed you would see the medium size one on the page. Please note that regardless of what size you’re viewing on the screen we always pull the highest resolution image from SmugMug when we go to print your book.

Also you wrote “I can't tell what photos I selected”. This is a feature we're working on. We’ll indicate which photo has already been used in a project with a check mark or something similar. We’ll let you know when this and other new features are being released with our blog and newsletter.

Thanks for the feedback and as mentioned we’ll keep a close eye on this. Please check out the service again and let us know if you continue to have problems.

aktse · November 2, 2008

JPCanvas wrote:

aktse, sorry about any inconvenience you may be having. We took a look and we’re not seeing any performance issues right now, but that’s not to say we may not have had any. There was a period last night where we were re-syncing some servers due to Day Light Savings time that may have affected performance. Normally, as long as you have a fast connection (cable, dsl, etc...) you should be fine....

With regards to the size of the photo, we pull a medium size one from SmugMug when you place it on a page and for most cases this looks great on the screen. If, however, the dimensions of your photo on the page are large we automatically grab the larger size from SmugMug which takes a few seconds longer and until that larger one is grabbed you would see the medium size one on the page. ...

Also you wrote “I can't tell what photos I selected”...

The performance and crashing issues might been due to the re-syncing of the server, but it was extremely frustrating since it crashed FF a few times.

I'm using 10,0,12,36.

And I could not figure out which photos I was using because the page slide would go blank on me as well as the main photo as well.

However, I'm still having resolution size warnings. Does this mean the copy that is grabbed is too small or the original is too small? I doubt that my original is too small, but I can check the sizes.

I'll let you know if I have more problems.

JPCanvas · November 3, 2008

Getting the resolution size warning is definitely odd; we'll take a look into that. Do you know what size the originals are? Are they full bleed images on your page?

Ham1 · November 3, 2008

aktse wrote:

However, I'm still having resolution size warnings. Does this mean the copy that is grabbed is too small or the original is too small? I doubt that my original is too small, but I can check the sizes.

I'll let you know if I have more problems.

Can you point us to the SmugMug gallery you are using? I would like to verify the size of your photos as well.

Markham

Grumpy_one · November 3, 2008

Small thumbnails
Any way to enlarge the thumbnails? I'm going blind picking the photo's. I haven't had any issues with resolution or previous mentioned. Having previously checked photos that were used would be a big plus. I started to do one that Costco offer, nowhere the freedom you offer, but....I do like the cover with the square hole in the middle to view a photo that doesn't cost 349.00 dollars. I picked the nubuck for a cover, is it really that expensive? Is this a misprint? One other thing, any way to sort the thumbnails? That would be great as well. Thanks, Dave

Ham1 · November 3, 2008

Grumpy_one wrote:

Any way to enlarge the thumbnails? I'm going blind picking the photo's. I haven't had any issues with resolution or previous mentioned. Having previously checked photos that were used would be a big plus. I started to do one that Costco offer, nowhere the freedom you offer, but....I do like the cover with the square hole in the middle to view a photo that doesn't cost 349.00 dollars. I picked the nubuck for a cover, is it really that expensive? Is this a misprint? One other thing, any way to sort the thumbnails? That would be great as well. Thanks, Dave

Hey Grumpy,

That is not a misprint. They are really high end books. We are however still accepting input on the price since this is so new. So I will accept this as a "a little too expensive" vote from you.

Sorting thumbs is a good suggestion. JP you note that?

Grumpy_one · November 3, 2008

Ham1 wrote:

Hey Grumpy,

That is not a misprint. They are really high end books. We are however still accepting input on the price since this is so new. So I will accept this as a "a little too expensive" vote from you.

Sorting thumbs is a good suggestion. JP you note that?

How about a cheap one with the hole in it. And thumbnail size too. Thanks

Oh, and a cudos here for being able to use your own photo for a background. So make an image in PS, upload it, and make it a background, that is great. Not sure if you can make this work, but a "recent" folder for recently selected backgrounds for that session. Pain to look back if you forgot the name.

JPCanvas · November 3, 2008

Ham - Sorting thumbnails is on the list to get done.<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /><o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
Grumpy - We don't offer covers with a "cut-out", even the expensive one is not a cut-out, it's a debossed image placed on the cover. You can, however do anything you would like with regards to images on the cover with our custom covers on the 8x8 size book and those are a lot less expensive.<o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
I'm glad you like the background feature, I really like that one myself. A "recent" folder is a great suggestion. Increasing thumbnails is also something that has been discussed internally. Many of these types of features will role with time, just based on priorities. But getting feedback from customers like you definitely helps us prioritize. You can also give us direct feedback that will get logged quicker by using the "Feedback" link at the top of the Book Building Tool.<o:p></o:p>

aktse · November 3, 2008

I think most of my problems was due to the maintenance, but I think it's something that needs to be noted. At first, I thought everything was locally cached, but it seems that mostly everything is being grabbed from publicwebservices.mycanvas.com (thumbnails, sliders images, main pages, background, frames, etc.).

The auto-save works well.

The file size error occurs only on full page contain bleeding edge photo on a 11x8.5 book.

I did some screen captures, uploaded them and set the gallery to JPCanvas; I've added more of them and included the file size as well.

Date Modified 2008-09-02 20:58:28
Date Taken 2008-08-01 23:02:04
Camera Canon EOS 40D
Exposure Time 0.0666s (1/15)
Aperture f/3.5
ISO 1250
Focal Length 8mm (12.8mm in 35mm)
Photo Dimensions 1944 x 1296
File Name IMG_2975_V1.jpg
File Size 860.70 K
722161_dtc5o#353195409_NaLTv

The size warning only happens on full bleed images (have about five pages of them) and I have one page without any problems and that image is slightly larger, but not by much.

No warning:

Date Modified 2008-08-16 20:29:33
Date Taken 2008-08-01 19:04:24
Camera Canon EOS 40D
Exposure Time 0.0025s (1/400)
Aperture f/2.8
ISO 1600
Focal Length 55mm (88mm in 35mm)
Photo Dimensions 2928 x 2091
File Name IMG_2410.jpg
File Size 1.07 MB

I've been pulling from four different galleries, but the two examples photos can be found here: http://photos.apriltse.com/gallery/5722161_dtc5o#353195409_NaLTv

I do have one photo that might be too small due to my cropping. What's the minimize size that I would need?

Is there any other info that I can provide?

Grumpy_one · November 4, 2008

Background image
Is there any loss, resolution etc., when setting a photo as a background? And how long should I expect to wait to get a product back in the mail once submitted? Shooting for Xmas, thanks

Ham1 · November 4, 2008

aktse wrote:

I've been pulling from four different galleries, but the two examples photos can be found here: http://photos.apriltse.com/gallery/5722161_dtc5o#353195409_NaLTv

I do have one photo that might be too small due to my cropping. What's the minimize size that I would need?

Is there any other info that I can provide?

I don't know what the minimum size should be but I would think those images are very close depending on if you want a full bleed page or not.

aktse · November 4, 2008

Ham1 wrote:

I don't know what the minimum size should be but I would think those images are very close depending on if you want a full bleed page or not.

I knew they would be close, but wanted to know the limit. I'll probably go back, reprocess and do some re-cropping.

And according to one person at myCanvas -- the warning pops up if the printed size of the image would be less than 144 dpi

fotofool · November 6, 2008

Hi from MyCanvas
Hi everyone. My name is Kelvin and I'm the principal product manager for MyCanvas. I'm excited to be on board.

We think we have a great product offering and look forward to working with you and SmugMug to make it even better - thanks for your feedback and suggestions. Now to answer a few questions...

Aktse is correct, we display the image resolution warning icon when the effective print resolution for that image is 144 dpi or less. We have checked your images, aktse, and the warning is displaying correctly.

Grumpy - Using an image as a background will not affect the resolution or quality. When we render a book or poster for printing we pull from the highest resolution image available. Lead time for an order is 1 to 2 weeks unless you order a premium book which will take longer.

Kelvin

Grumpy_one · November 6, 2008

fotofool wrote:

Hi everyone. My name is Kelvin and I'm the principal product manager for MyCanvas. I'm excited to be on board.

We think we have a great product offering and look forward to working with you and SmugMug to make it even better - thanks to your feedback and suggestions. Now to answer a few questions...

Aktse is correct, we display the image resolution warning icon when the effective print resolution for that image is 144 dpi or less. We have checked your images, aktse, and the warning is displaying correctly.

Grumpy - Using an image as a background will not affect the resolution or quality. When we render a book or poster for printing we pull from the highest resolution image available. Lead time for an order is 1 to 2 weeks unless you order a premium book which will take longer.

Kelvin

Thanks Kelvin for the response. Great product so far. Dual monitor is the way to go with your software, still wish the thumbnails were adjustable. Is it me or did you guys add more content in "other content"? What other changes are you making as we speak? Thanks, Dave

One other question, I found some template pages the other day, can't find them now, I'm sure I'll find them by the time you get this, thanks. Nevermind, found it under "add more pages". Thanks anyway.

happy-imp · November 7, 2008

Can clients design books?
First off, I gotta say I think I'm gonna love these mycanvas books! I really like they way they look (from the pics, haven't received one yet).

But, unlike all the other merchandise you can buy, it seems (unless I'm being a total tard) that only the account holder can make the books. Is there any way that I can set up an account or authorize a client to access a certain gallery for creating a book? That would be REALLY cool to let my clients design their own books without having to give up original digital files.

Ben

sellis · November 8, 2008

That would be cool (letting customers design their own album)! I would love to offer my wedding clients that option. I upload the full-res files to SM so there would be no resolution issue.

One question I do have, it was mentioned that mycanvas pulls the medium sized image. Does it matter if you have them watermarked or is that only applied in the browser?

Looking forward to testing this out. I upload my album designs to SM, so I might be able to use this for parent albums if the dimensions match

How come we didn't get this as a news item? I stumbled upon it by accident when I was placing an order.

happy-imp wrote:

First off, I gotta say I think I'm gonna love these mycanvas books! I really like they way they look (from the pics, haven't received one yet).

But, unlike all the other merchandise you can buy, it seems (unless I'm being a total tard) that only the account holder can make the books. Is there any way that I can set up an account or authorize a client to access a certain gallery for creating a book? That would be REALLY cool to let my clients design their own books without having to give up original digital files.

Ben

Andy · November 8, 2008

sellis wrote:

How come we didn't get this as a news item? I stumbled upon it by accident when I was placing an order.

We'll see about that - but - but - but- you don't have our Release Notes in your feed reader?

Andy · November 8, 2008

happy-imp wrote:

First off, I gotta say I think I'm gonna love these mycanvas books! I really like they way they look (from the pics, haven't received one yet).

But, unlike all the other merchandise you can buy, it seems (unless I'm being a total tard) that only the account holder can make the books. Is there any way that I can set up an account or authorize a client to access a certain gallery for creating a book? That would be REALLY cool to let my clients design their own books without having to give up original digital files.

Ben

Hi, it's for logged-in account owners only for now - we'll see if one day this can be made available for visitors!

Grumpy_one · November 8, 2008

Thumbnails....arrrrgggg!
Ok, now I'm getting frustrated. The search function of the thumbnails is just wrong. What criteria is it looking for? It's not file name. I have to visually search 2-3 times over for one particular picture, and it's taking too much time and my eyes hurt. Please fix the search! Otherwise, still liking program. Cheers

edit 11-9-08: another frustrating occurrence is the thumbnails changing order after every refresh. So I have gone back to my photos in smugmug and added captions (numbers) to each photo and now I'm trying to reload the gallery, seems to be stuck on "import is still in progress". Cant import other galleries either. Must be a busy Sunday.

edit 11-10-08: ok, real problem now. I numbered the photos in smugmug by adding caption. I've tried to re-import the folder. It required several attempts being it didn't import all photos. Now it's in "import is still in progress" mode and I can't access my photos, not all of them came back from the refresh. I'm now stuck and can't move on to finish this project. I sent a message in "contact". I hope this gets resolved soon, I wanted this done today. I'm so close and now this. Thanks, Dave

Ham1 · November 8, 2008

sellis wrote:

One question I do have, it was mentioned that mycanvas pulls the medium sized image. Does it matter if you have them watermarked or is that only applied in the browser?

Yes, the MyCanvas tool pulls a Medium image as well as it starts to render the Original. All the photos show in the tool will adjust according to the size of the image well, but if your images are watermarked on SmugMug, then they will be shown as watermarked in the MyCanvas tool.

NOTE: MyCanvas will always pull the original to print so the watermarks will not show in the books.

Markham

Grumpy_one · November 10, 2008

See above
See above, thanks

edit: ok small relief, I copied the project and all photos are there and numbered. While I can't import further photos, I can now work with what I had. My original project still has "0" photos in the folder in "import already in progress" mode when ever I refresh. If I didn't find this work around, I'd probably dump this project and start a new one with another site. I hope you find a solution to this problem. Thanks, Dave

Grumpy_one · November 10, 2008

Another problem...
Yeesh, not sure of why this is happening, but I can't see the photo's in "manage pages", just the backgrounds. Having to guess what's on the pages. Tried refreshing (F5), still the same. What gives? Thanks, Dave

RogersDA · November 10, 2008

I have noticed a few bugs on mycanvas.
1. You should be prompted for a project name immediately so that you can quickly identify different projects that you may have not completed.

2. Most of my public galleries did not show when the import screen, even though I was logged in and choose "buy book" from a public gallery.

aktse · November 10, 2008

Grumpy_one wrote:

Yeesh, not sure of why this is happening, but I can't see the photo's in "manage pages", just the backgrounds. Having to guess what's on the pages. Tried refreshing (F5), still the same. What gives? Thanks, Dave

Are you seeing something like this? If there was a background, it would be showing, but this is a full bleed page and it only shows the sample text (and thumbnail was missing too).

I also got a bunch of missing thumbnails from time to time as well.

I'm been in contact with the myCanvas people through e-mail. For the photos missing in the slider thumbnails, this is the answer:

Here's a long winded explanation on how we save page thumbnails so you can avoid the same problem. We save the thumbnail each time we save a page and we only save a page when a change has been made and a user either navigates to another page or hits the save link. The problem is that sometimes the page thumbnails haven't completely drawn when a page is saved. When this is the case and a user selects a page the thumbnail for that page is redrawn so it looks correct. However, unless a change is made on the page and it is saved, the thumbnail will not be rewritten and the next time the project is opened the partially drawn thumbnail will be displayed.

Solution - when you make changes to a page be sure to not switch to another page or force a page save until the page thumbnail is fully drawn. In the meantime we need to make a code change to not save the page and thumbnail until the thumbnail is fully drawn.

I don't know if the same applies to the main page view as well, but it might be.

I haven't touched my project in a while (no time), but i was having issues since I couldn't tell what images I used, the thumbnail sliders images would vanish, and my main image would also disappear on me as well. It makes things a bit difficult when you can't tell what image was used

.

The crashing problem that I first had was due to the maintenance and haven't happened again.

If you're having issues, take screen captures. It will really help myCanvas fix things... They're are very interested in getting to the root of any issues.

Grumpy_one · November 10, 2008

aktse wrote:

Are you seeing something like this? If there was a background, it would be showing, but this is a full bleed page and it only shows the sample text (and thumbnail was missing too).

I also got a bunch of missing thumbnails from time to time as well.

I'm been in contact with the myCanvas people through e-mail. For the photos missing in the slider thumbnails, this is the answer:

I don't know if the same applies to the main page view as well, but it might be.

I haven't touched my project in a while (no time), but i was having issues since I couldn't tell what images I used, the thumbnail sliders images would vanish, and my main image would also disappear on me as well. It makes things a bit difficult when you can't tell what image was used .

The crashing problem that I first had was due to the maintenance and haven't happened again.

If you're having issues, take screen captures. It will really help myCanvas fix things... They're are very interested in getting to the root of any issues.

Ya, I'm having the same issues when making changes. Can't see the pics in the page thumbnail. I'm in the tweaking mode now, I've managed some workaround's as far as thumbnail usage. I've numbered all photos in smugmug using "add caption", that seems to work well, I just use search option in MyCanvas while using smugmug as a thumbnail viewer. I'm working on a dual screen at work at it seems to work well. When I go home and try the same thing on a single screen I'm sure I'll get fustrated again. I plan to see this project through, I have too much time invested into right now. I've sent msg's through their contact page, haven't recieved a response yet. Little dissapointed. I still like the artistic freedoom. Cheers

MyCanvas books and collages

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