Photo Merchandise Gone Wild!

Photo Merchandise Gone Wild!

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We’re not about to proclaim the venerable 4×6-inch print is dead… it’s not, it’s probably just napping.

Okay, that being said, have you seen some of the new photo merchandise products that a wide variety of imaging retailers (bricks and clicks) and print providers are offering to both pro and consumer customers? It’s amazing stuff and the technology that is helping produce these items is equally amazing.

Digital print technology continues to evolve and new formulas for inks are constantly improving as well. As advancements in both of these markets continue, the ability to print on a wider variety of substrates and surfaces naturally becomes part of the mix as well. As a result, we are currently being treated to the prefect storm in the photo merchandise market as the incredible range of product offerings seemingly has no end.

We gathered just a few of the more unique and just plain cool offerings we’ve either tested out or been made aware of lately through our consumer website—www.your-digital-life.com. If you feel you’re not equipped or properly staffed to offer some of this stuff, many of these companies are actively looking for retail partners, and outsourcing has always had its advantages.

If you are properly equipped and staffed…then what are you waiting for? Some of this stuff is as hot as a firecracker and will take your customers’ memories to places they never dreamed were possible.

New Site Brings Personalized Photo Touch to Weddings

Nothing provokes a frenzy of emotion (and spending) like a wedding. A new website—PersonalizedForWeddings—seeks to harness both by turning consumer wedding photos into wedding-themed gifts. It encompasses both pre-and-post wedding products, including save the date photo magnets, announcements and invitations up to photos on canvas and wedding albums. They even offer the ability to make a personalized photo skin for the iPod or digital music player.

The site can pull pictures from social networking sites like Facebook, SmugMug, Flickr or Picasa in addition to those users upload themselves.

Of course, one can make most of these products on a number of other photo sites, like Shutterfly or Kodak Gallery. Where Personalized For Weddings differs is that the focus is solely on weddings and so the visitor can knock out all their personalized wedding photo needs in one centralized place.

Making Photos Sizzle With Prints on Aluminum
For your customers looking for a unique piece of wall art, consider what SizzlPix! is doing. The company transforms digital images into a lightweight, aluminum piece of decor (a “SizzlPix!”) with a high gloss, scratch-proof and waterproof coating. SizzlPix! can be had in sizes from 18-inches up to 45-inches with introductory prices ranging from $199 to $699. The price includes a wall hanger but they can also be framed (a choice of an aluminum, floating or shadow box frame).

The customer can use their own photos or choose from the company’s own gallery of images and artwork. For those not satisfied with either option, SizzlPix will go out and do some custom photography to get just the right image and make the print.
Interestingly, SizzlPix! Offers her customers the chance to make a little money too. Every month, the company examines the images it’s transformed into SizzlPix and selects a winning photo. If the customer grants them permission to offer that image in their gallery, they’ll earn a royalty on it anytime someone orders a copy.

Facepots: Turning Photos Into Planters

Here’s a neat photo project your customers can have some fun trying their hand at: “facepot” courtesy of the Russian marketing firm Good! This isn’t a product available for purchase but, as Sarah Trover observes, it could be a fun project for the enterprising do-it-yourselfer. Trover suggests using a product like Modge Podge, which is a glue and a sealer all in one, to secure a favorite photo to a planter. One well-executed headshot (or a well-cropped portrait) would do the trick. Depending on the size of the pot you’re using, a 4 x 6-inch photo print should suffice. This is simply a clever idea that’s worth either suggesting or offering your customers and there are lots of variations on this theme…no?.

Easy to Create Mosaic From MOO

We recently told you about the cool double-sided postcards from the folks at MOO. Well, they have added an even cooler product since then, the MOO Mosaic Frame, a very slick way to display a large number of their MOO Mini cards (those small 2 ¾ x 1 ¼ –inch photo cards you can design on the site.

Their Mosaic Frame is approximately 10×16 inches and can house up to 20 of the Mini Cards. For $39.95 they send the customer the frame plus 20 holders for the Mini Cards and a clear plastic covering to screw in over the frame after the consumer has arranged the cards to their liking. The cards can be placed in the frame either vertically or horizontally in whatever order strikes a fancy. The finished mosaic can either be hung on wall or stood up to be displayed on a shelf or table.

The listed price does not include the Mini Cards but 100 of those, featuring the user’s favorite images, can be had for around $20. Again, nothing mind-boggling here—essentially just prints being offered in a unique size with the additional mosaic frame taking it one very creative step further.

Animoto Amazes
The video creation service Animoto, that we recently reviewed and mention in our Editor’s Snapshot this month recently announced that they are launching a significantly enhanced version of this wonderful service. The new Animoto utilizes a brand new render engine allowing for the creation of 720p HD videos and 10x faster video rendering. They have also announced a completely redesigned website designed, as they explain, for a smoother video creation and distribution experience. The videos essentially mash a users’ photos and video together into very slick three-minute slideshow put to music.

Animoto’s 720p HD-quality video and 360p web-quality video will initially only be available on the most popular video style, the Animoto Original, but will soon be available across all video styles over the coming months.

With regard to the changes to the website, it now includes an aesthetic redesign of the video creation interface along with the addition of numerous back-end features that will make the Animoto program easier to use.

While all that is great to hear, if you aren’t aware of what these guys are doing with this incredible service it’s clearly time to hang the For Sale sign on the cave you’re operating out of and break out the golf clubs as it’s also time to call it a career. The Animoto process is sheer, bloody magic, and once you experience it we’ll let you figure it all out from there.

New Tool Makes Personalizing a Photo Easy and Quick
Imagine simply adding names or words to a photo and then blending them naturally to a wall or sign within the picture so it all looks part of the original image. This has always been possible but only through hours of Photoshop work not to mention a fairly high skill level with the program.

Xerox recently announced that they have reduced the process to a matter of loading an image into a software program and selecting where you want the text to appear and simply typing it in. The software quickly does the rest.

Xerox calls the software Simple Personalized Imaging (SPI) and explains, “The magic is in the technology, which automatically adjusts the perspective and angles, resulting in personalized text that appears to be an integral part of the image,” said Raja Bala, Xerox principal scientist and leader of the SPI effort. “We wanted to make personalized imaging so easy that any casual user could get the final image looking as if the text naturally belonged there.”

SPI is essentially an image personalization software program aimed at the growing customizable photofinishing market that personalizes calendars, greeting cards, and photo books by inserting text messages into images.

Fotobabble’s Talking Facebook App
We recently told you about Fotobabble’s talking photo cards and more recently the company has released a new Facebook app that lets users upload a photo, record a message and share the talking photo without leaving Facebook.

While the app should be a big hit with consumer Facebookers, we think plenty of businesses, marketing agencies and the like will want to take a closer look at this app as well for launching social media marketing campaigns leveraging the combo power of image/voice.

Okay, we know, a photo is supposedly worth a thousand words—and we wholeheartedly agree with that sentiment—but the ability to add a spoken sentence or two to FB photo posts might be kinda fun…no?

Photos on Adult Beverage Labels
We’ll preface this next item by urging everyone to drink responsibly (see Charlie Sheen) and perhaps the makers of Twisted Tea, a hard iced tea drink, will keep that thought in mind with their Be a Little Twisted promo. The Cincinnati, Ohio-based brewer is asking consumers to submit images of themselves that also feature their product and the winning images could wind up on the next shipment of Twisted Tea bottles.

For the record, contest rules include that the submitted images depict people at least 25 years old and should not depict the act of drinking. A complete list of rules and regulations for image submissions can be found here. It’s the kind of promo idea that might just work at retail as well. Isn’t this how Lindsay Lohan got her start?

Images on Glass

Looking for a really cool way to help your customers clean up some of their digital imaging clutter? A relatively new site offers a very unique print-on-glass service that produces stunning results at not-so-stunning prices, i.e. very affordable.

The process of taking the digital images and turning them into a prints on glass involves an interesting technique that starts as basic raw materials: sheets of glass and stacks of foam board. The image that’s uploaded to their site is printed directly on the sheet of glass. Forgive the brain trust at FractureMe if they are bit secretive about the entire process as there may be a few Slugworthesque characters lurking around out there looking to poach ideas.

After the printed glass plate emerges from a machine they have dubbed “Lavender,” the team adds the foam backing to give the glass print some protection and allow for mounting to a wall or displaying on a desk. They call the finished product a “fracture.”

The FractureMe.com site also offers a variety of borders that can be added to the image or the customer can simply request a borderless option. Various shapes (landscape, square, portrait) sizes are available as well with a 5×7-inch Fracture priced at $8 up to an 11×14-inch size that will cost $35.

Pro Photos as Home Décor
For those of you with customers interested in decorating their homes with the works of great professional photographers you might want to take a closer look at a company called PrinterArt.

This company offers up a web-based collection of fine art photography and, by request, will group a variety of pieces that they feel work well together as a combined print. They tell us that their experienced staff of curators, “have created a highly selective gallery for the home decor market.”

Every image in the collection is sold in a limited edition and produced in a modern gallery-grade display format, mounted either on aluminum dibond and finished with acrylic, printed on canvas, or as fine art prints on archival paper for custom framing.

PrintedArt also allows customers to print their own images in the same professional quality as their fine art collection.

The photos pictured here, Rebecca Akporiaye’s “Australian Pelicans,” Lee Rentz’s cleverly composed mountain landscape, and Al Vanderlyn’s dense, mysterious trees, “inspire an appreciation of the beauty that exists in the natural world, and present a seamless theme for display in any home or office,” the PrintedArt curators explain. An interesting option for the growing DIFM (do-it-for-me) crowd.

Facebook Photo Books

Ritz & Wolf Camera & Image stores throughout the United States are now offering Facebook integration for customers using APM photo kiosks from Lucidiom Inc., Vienna, Va. Lucidiom’s Facebook Connect for APM now allows full two-way communication between the APM kiosk and the customer’s Facebook account. Lucidiom says Facebook Connect increases retailer profit by tying photo retailers into the largest Internet audience in the world.

“Facebook boasts more than 500 million user accounts and an estimated worth that puts it in the top three Internet companies in the U.S. and Lucidiom Facebook Connect for APM provides photo retailers an inroad into that world population they might otherwise never access,” said Steve Giordano Jr., president of Lucidiom.

Giordano noted that Lucidiom’s Facebook Connect for APM increases retailer profit avenues in three ways by: capturing additional orders at the APM kiosk by allowing customers to access their Facebook photos, charging customers a convenience fee for the Facebook upload service and reaping additional online business from reprints ordered through social networking. Lucidiom’s Facebook Connect for APM is now available for APM v7.5.

Kodak’s latest kiosks also offer a service called Social Photo Album Creator for Facebook which allows consumers to easily combine photos from the popular social networking site with friends and family and then allow them to produce one album of all this content together.

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