We understand that our users are free agents with dozens, maybe hundreds, of programs to choose from. Some do some of the things Photojunction does. Others may interfere with Photojunction.

A word of caution

Keeping your workflow simple will save endless hassles. Before installing any program or utility, ask yourself, "Will help be there when I need it? What are the implications for the rest of my workflow?"

We strongly suggest: When in doubt, leave it out. Don't install anything without careful thought and a clear understanding of the impact on your workflow and your suppliers.

“Upstream” software

What do we mean by "Upstream" software? Software that occupies a place in your workflow BEFORE the Photojunction stage. 

When we described the typical Photojunction workflow, we mentioned that the first three steps could be undertaken with other software (eg DAM software – iView, for example – or RAW processors like Lightroom or Aperture). Those three steps were...

• Importing and organising your images.

• Presenting the images to your clients.

• Building image “collections” with your clients.

Using Photojunction's Image Folder view, you can make use of the work you do in third-party software, but there are some very important points to remember:

• Before you import your images to Photojunction, make sure you apply any rotation tags that may been generated by your camera, or by other software. Otherwise you could end up with inappropriate rotations in your high-res exports.

•  If you can, finish work in the upstream software before you get started with Photojunction. After you've imported your images, Photojunction will generate warning messages if you move them or edit them externally. Otherwise you could be designing albums on the basis of missing or out-of-date images. However, calling your image editing software from WITHIN Photojunction keeps your PJ data up-to-date.

• You can't link your RAW files directly to Photojunction, as the software works with JPEGs or TIFFs. When you're ready to import the images to Photojunction, save a set of JPEGs from the RAW files and work with those.

• If you've sorted your images outside Photojunction you can import them in sub-folders, if you wish, and work with those in Photojunction instead of with the software's own Groups and Collections.

Editing your high-res files outside Photojunction

We've already made the point that you need to be careful editing your high-res files during the Photojunction workflow process, or you could end up with unexpected results when you create you high-res exports.

You need to take care AFTER you've created your high-res exports as well. At that stage the files will be back under your care and control, and you’ll probably want to work on them before printing from them – colour-correction, creative and corrective artwork etc.

But that's all you should do. Don’t rename or move the files, or Photojunction’s Send Order wizard won’t be able to find them. Don't change image dimensions, the position of images on layouts, resolution, file type etc, or you could introduce more problems, which PJ's internal error-checking won't even be able to detect.