charipack - modern photo solutions... modern photo solutions 2...

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MODERN PHOTO SOLUTIONS 1

Steph: Welcome to Modern Photo Solutions. I'm Steph Clay. I am here today with Chari Pack

who is the owner of PersnicketyPrints.com. Hi, Chari.

Chari: Hey, Steph. Thanks for having me.

Steph: Thank you so much for being here. I am really excited to visit with you today about all things printing and everything in between.

Chari: Always a good time with you, Steph. Always.

Steph: Thank you so much. Let's share with our listeners a little bit about you. You've always been a storyteller for ... You've been a storyteller for a really long time. Share with our listeners your process, your evolution of documenting and telling your own stories.

Chari: Wow. There's so much. I just feel like ... I'm 41 years old. Let's face it. I've lived a good span of time. Looking back, I feel like stories are really what mold us. I really admire people, in general, who become vulnerable and are willing to share their stories because it actually creates much more strength in others. Women who have all this pressure ... Anyway, I'm really big on storytelling. I've learned a lot through my life through other people's stories. We can have data and run statistics, do all these things, but I feel like I've learned the most from stories and from other people's trials and fears and failures and et cetera.

Steph: Absolutely. Yeah.

Chari: Don't you agree a little bit?

Steph: Yes, totally.

Chari: Life is hard enough. We don't need to have extra pressure. Let's help each other.

Steph: Yes.

Chari: Growing up, I'm oldest of 5 kids, but my mom was a big scrapbooker and we also were big into home videos. I love home videos. I love watching those as I was growing up and I really ... There are statistics that children that see the pictures of themselves or videos of themselves and usually they're always happy times because that's what we're taking pictures of, vacations or different things, it really helps build confidence. They feel their love. They remember that moment. Those feelings come back from that moment. As a child, I'd watch those and I didn't have an easy childhood.

We've all had trials, but as I look at all of those happy times, it really overrides the hard ones. Scrapbooking with my mom was paper scrapbooking my whole life and



then I got married and I had 3 boys. When I was a young mom ... I'm old now. When I was a young mom, you know these other women ... We still had comparing. We didn't have social media, but these other women had these big craft rooms and they'd have scrapbooking get-‐togethers and stuff. I'd go, but I never had the big craft room. It was really hard for me to get all my stuff out in our little townhouse or apartment and try to scrapbook with 3 little boys running around. Every time I tried to do a page, I'd have to get it all out and then put it all back.

The first baby always has the biggest book, the most pictures. As our family grew, I was struggling with ... Memories and photos and pictures are so important to me. However, you feel that pressure ... Not really a pressure, but just pressure you put on yourself, "Oh, I need to scrapbook these. I need to do this. I'm getting behind." One of my neighbors had a 12 by 12 digital layout and a book that her mom was making in Photoshop and this was in about 2008 when the switch of film to digital was going on. I saw this page and I'm like, "You're kidding me." Drop shadows were popping out and all these layers and embellishments. I'm like, "There's no way that's just digital." It looks like it's coming off the page. It's beautiful.

She really just did that on a computer and she's like, "Yeah." She didn't even have to take out paper and scissors. I'm like, "No way." That's how Persnickety began. I was determined to figure out how to do this because it was my really only solution at the time. I took Photoshop at the Community College here in Utah and taught myself Photoshop. Took classes. Learned online from YouTube videos and other things and just ... It's a learning curve, but I got faster and better and better at it and started making my digital layouts. It was great. It was awesome. We didn't have a lot of money, so I couldn't really invest in a laptop yet, but I would work on my computer at home when the kids were napping. I got stuff done and it felt so good and even better to be able to print them and to put them in a book and show my babies as they were growing all these great things that we did.

Well, then the printing site came out and I would print at different places. We don't need to mention them, but grocery stores or places that aren't a Pro Lab. I would get the prints back and I'd be like, "Oh, these are okay. I don't really understand why things were getting cut off and I don't understand why this is blurry, but let me ..." I would try to figure it out. That's how it all evolved is I found when I printed my layouts for $10 a page at a Pro Lab versus a grocery store, it was night and day. For somebody like me that was spending time and energy on something that was priceless to me, that was really precious, I wanted to make sure that it was done right and if it can look better, why not? Why not make it better?

However, that $10 price point was tough because I didn't want to make a whole scrapbook page and I couldn't afford to pay that much. I'll move a little quicker. Fast forward to 2010, well, 2009 I started a little company and failed. Not necessarily failed. I didn't know. I didn't understand the logistics behind building a business and



all the contracts. I started a little company just for the 12 by 12 print, just for scrapbooking, because I knew that there was a way that we could print Pro Lab quality at a cheaper price if we X'd out the middleman, all these things. I knew that there was a way as I learned the back end of things. I built that and then the logistics of the business fell through.

I wasn't going to quit. I started again and I created Persnickety Prints in 2010 and here we are today. I had a business partner and I ended up eventually buying him out. We don't need to get into that stuff, but I'm all by myself now and it's so rewarding to be able to feel like I can give to the customer exactly what they need without jumping through loopholes.

Steph: Yes. Your printing is really ... You know I'm a fan. I'm a fan of your printing. It is really good quality. You are so careful and the level of customer service that you give to all of your customers, it's not just me or somebody else whose name you recognize, it's all of your customers that get the same level of service and the same quality of prints.

Chari: For sure. We don't use SKUs or UPCs or numbers. We know our customers by name and that's what gets hard is as much as we're growing, we still want to keep that small customer service base because that's really important to me.

Steph: For sure. I do want to mention that and I've mentioned it in previous recordings as well that I did a review in 2010.

Chari: Yes. Steph brought us to the frontline.

Steph: Well, that's not why I bring it up. I bring it up ...

Chari: I didn't know you then.

Steph: I know.

Chari: Steph was the secret shopper.

Steph: I was. I did a comparison because I wanted to know ... I heard so many people talking about different printers and I wanted to know for me and then for all of my readers at that time on the Daily Diggity what printing was the very best and who had the best service and quality and everything. The only way you can know that is to send the exact same file to be printed at the different places.

Chari: Exactly. Right. Right. Apples to apples.

Steph: Yes. That's what I did. I did it with different print labs and did comparisons on the ease of use and the customer service and how fast the speed and then the quality as



well and just did comparisons. Persnickety Prints came out on top by far. It wasn't even just by a little bit. It was by far.

Chari: The funny thing is is the first little company I started was actually second. I beat myself which actually was the most fulfilling for me.

Steph: For sure. For sure. You got a great thing. I want to mention you have flat rate shipping, $5 flat rate shipping around the US and then you do ship internationally as well, right?

Chari: Yeah. It's getting crazy and pricey, but we still are hanging on to our international customers because they mean so much to us. That one right now is $12.50 flat rate.

Steph: Okay. Perfect. I wanted to talk a little bit today, you're mostly shooting with just your iPhone for photos?

Chari: Yeah. Yeah. One more thing ... Let me say one thing about printing, Steph. Sorry.

Steph: Okay. Yes. No. No. You're fine.

Chari: Persnickety Prints, we are passionate about silver halide printing. It's different. It's different from at home printing. It's different from any dry lab. A lot of grocery stores are turning into dry printing. A lot of people will wonder why we don't do bound photo books in-‐house like hardcover. We just focus on what we do well which is silver halide printing which is dark room printing, so Fuji dark room prints. We take your image. We convert it into a digital negative and then we print it as if it was film.

Steph: Yes. That's a really good point because there are a lot of different companies out there that are printing on card stock, different things. One of the things you told me to watch for is on the back if there's the Kodak paper or the Fuji paper. Then you know that it's the photo paper, photo quality.

Chari: Yeah. It's real photographic print. There's pros and cons. Some people do need a thicker ... For a project that they're doing a thicker card stock or something and they want something a little bit different, an ink based or toner based print which is fine. For memory keeping and pictures and scrapbooking and storytelling and things that we want to last, the archivalness is super important to me. We're a little restricted on what we can do with it though. We can't double side it. We can't make it a double sided book because of the way it's printed. Anyway, just a little side note.

Steph: It's a very good point. Very good. I'm glad you brought that up. Thank you.

Chari: There's not a lot of places that print silver halide anymore which is sad because it's expensive. If you don't have a high volume, it gets really expensive, but it sill is the



most archival way to print. That's where I get a little bit of anxiety because I just want to make sure that people realize that our stories we need to make sure that they're going to last. Anyway, okay.

Steph: Yes. If we're taking the time to tell them, we do want them to last and spending the money on them.

Chari: Right. If we're designing a layout, you want them to last too. Okay. Back to the cameras that we're using, yes, I have a couple DSLRs now. It's pretty sad that how often I get those out to shoot. Of course, they're always going to shoot and take a better picture, but let's be real. It's not really the camera that we always have with us.

Steph: Right. For sure. You're mostly shooting iPhone?

Chari: Mm-‐hmm (affirmative). Yup. I still have the 6 even though the 7 came out. I just haven't gotten around to going and checking that one out. I've shot with iPhone ever since they came out. It's not that iPhone is better than any Android phone by any means or any Android software phone. In fact, a lot of the Android phones are better, have better cameras than the iPhone. A lot of people still don't understand the development side on both, but the iPhone is just easier to develop for. The apps are a little bit better and they come faster. It's just what I know and so I've always just used the iPhone and it works for me.

Steph: I thought of this because you do quite a bit of traveling. When you travel, do you take your SLR anymore or are you just using your phone?

Chari: In fact, I just did a blog post on our blog about ... I took my 10 year old to Asia this summer. Those are one of those big trips like you want to have a nice camera. I'm like, "Nope. I'm going to shoot the whole thing on my phone. Edit everything in my phone and then I'm going to make a travel journal all from editing in my phone." Then I created and then I printed everything and inserted it into a studio Calico 6 by 8 album when I got home.

Steph: No, you can't bring that up and not tell us how you did it. What apps were you using?

Chari: The last 4 or 5 years, all these apps ... We're inundated with apps, right? It's funny. We started Persnickety Prints right before Instagram launched. The year before.

Steph: Really?

Chari: Yeah. I just remember people saying, "Why are you opening a photo lab? Nobody's printing." Now that everybody's a photographer, we want to print. We want to show off our work. However, Instagram is not the greatest thing to print from. Instagram compresses our images to 612 by 612 pixels and really we can't get anything bigger



than, I don't know, a 5 by 5 maybe, but would look decent. We can push a 12 by 12 and we have, but it depends on the picture when we compress inside of Instagram. As all these apps were coming out and people were using them and then printing, my job gets so hard because it's not like film where everything's restricted. We have all these variables now.

We have different apps exporting in different forms and different aspect ratios and different resolutions. Heaven forbid, we all have to go back to school and learn all of this stuff. We don't know what we're doing. All these apps come out. Really the apps that I've always stuck with and used are the ones that I've actually used and then gone and then printed from because I want to make sure that the quality is consistent and that we're able to spend time creating inside of that app and then not being restricted with the resolution. For this trip specifically, I used PicFrame and the Rhonna Designs app.

Steph: You did artwork and stuff like that in Rhonna Designs and then you used the PicFrame app. Is that what you said, right?

Chari: Yup. Just those 2.

Steph: To make collages, the 6 by 8 collages, and then you printed them.

Chari: Yup. It was fun. In Rhonna's app, she's got at the bottom ... I don't know if you're talking about her app anytime soon or have, but she has ... It's great because at the bottom she has the resolution of what you're making. I knew that I was going to do ... Before I went on this trip, I thought in my head, "Okay. How am I going to document this trip," because ... Especially when I go on a big trip like that where you're spending a lot of money and time and planning, you want to, I don't know, do a little bit more than your everyday pictures. I'll make a travel journal and then I'll also create 12 by 12's to add to my regular family album.

With my travel journal before I leave on a trip, I always think about what I'm going ... In fact, I ordered this one before I left just to make sure I knew all the sizes that I wanted to fill on those pockets. The reason why I love the pocket systems for traveling especially and even for everyday life I do, it's my favorite way to document life, is because I can add things, remove things and really insert tangible things, so maps and tickets and kid's stuff and all that stuff I can add to the pockets and I love that system.

Steph: Are you printing these and then cutting them up and putting them in pockets or you just leaving it as a 6 by 8?

Chari: Nope. Every size that is offered in any pocket system with any company we offer at Persnickety Prints.



Steph: Wow.

Chari: As I'm creating a collage, I would know in my head on the trip which is when you're

traveling, it's amazing to be able to just use your phone because ... Do you want to know how many hours to get to the Philippines? Like so many hours on a flight, but I literally had my whole album done before I got home.

Steph: Because you were working on it while you're flying.

Chari: Absolutely. Airplane mode.

Steph: Yes.

Chari: Yup. Working on that. Planes now, a lot of them have USB plugs because you start panicking when you're running out of battery on your phone.

Steph: That's right.

Chari: Luckily a lot of the planes now have plugs. Are you kidding me? I could just sit and scrapbook the whole flight and it's great because it's fresh and all that information, all those feelings are still with you and I'm just journaling right then and there on my phone which is crazy and it's amazing. Yes. In the Rhonna app, I did a lot of different stuff. With PicFrame, I would create the collage really quick and Rhonna does have a collage app as well, but I need to get a little bit more familiar with it. It's Rhonna Collage.

Steph: Rhonna Collage. Yeah.

Chari: Then I would drop in that collage knowing the dimensions in my head that it was going to be a 6 by 8 onto her 6 by 8 canvas and then I would add text at the bottom and little embellishments and things. Then I also knew that my album that I was creating had 3 by 4 pockets and 4 by 6 pockets, so I would design things with those in mind.

Steph: You were designing the collage first and then taking it into Rhonna and adding word art and some things like that and then saving it to your camera roll, so that you could print it when you got home.

Chari: Absolutely. I printed it on our app on my way home, so I had the prints. Prints ready to go right when I got home because if you're like me, if I don't get it done right then, I'll never do it.



Steph: I've done a vacation like that before. A big vacation like that. I had the book done by the time I got home and it was ready to print. I ordered prints right when I got home and it was amazing. It was the best feeling in the world because everything was ... Just like you said, all of my memories were fresh. It was all done. Within a week I had my book in my hands.

Chari: It's perfect because life ... Let's get real. We're gone for 2 weeks and everything piles up. The second you walk in the door from a trip, it's like a tornado just hit. It was nice to have that all done. Yes. Absolutely.

Steph: There are pictures of this on the Persnickety Prints blog. Right?

Chari: Mm-‐hmm (affirmative).

Steph: I'll link for it. I'll link for it in the ...

Chari: It's just a travel journal. Mm-‐hmm (affirmative). Yeah. For sure.

Steph: Perfect. That's wonderful. Thank you for sharing.

Chari: Those are the 2 apps I chose for that project. Rhonna's app is great because literally all the stuff ... She was one of the first designers that I actually bought downloads from when I started digitally scrapbooking with Photoshop on my computer. Now inside of her app it's like the same stuff and it's amazing that you can do all that just on your phone. Everything that she produces in that app will export ... You could print a 12 by 18 from it. I do a lot of 12 by 12's in there.

Steph: It's good high quality stuff. Rhonna knows what she's doing with all of this and what's wonderful about Rhonna is she was one of the first to enter into digital scrapbooking. One of the first designers and then one of the first to have an app as well to help us do all of this stuff in our pocket, on our phone on the go.

Chari: Yup. She's awesome.

Steph: All righty. I wanted to talk a little bit about ... Well, I almost want to talk about some of the other app stuff that you’ve done with your phone ... Because I know that you've done some other books and albums too. We'll have you back on another time to talk about all of the other cool things that you've done documenting wise.

Chari: I'm in the middle of teaching a whole SnapSeed series, that SnapSeed app can use for fusing things. We could talk about that another time if you'd like.

Steph: You have so much knowledge and so much experience.



Chari: Well, this is what I do.

Steph: I know. It's wonderful.

Chari: Ask me if I know how to cook.

Steph: That's not important. Who needs to eat. Right?

Chari: We'll just talk about apps.

Steph: All right. I was with you when you taught your SnapSeed class at Pinners in Arizona and one of the questions that came up from somebody was how the number of megapixels on her camera on her phone affected the print quality. I thought that was a really good question and I wasn't sure of the answer and so I thought I would have you talk about that a little bit.

Chari: Okay. This can get confusing, but the megapixels are used to measure the number of pixels in a sensor. If your camera sensor's like 24 megapixels, it's telling you how many pixels are used to measure in that sensor. It's the sensor that changes it. The new iPhone 7 has 12 megapixel camera. All the other iPhones are 8. You're going, "Okay. Well, bigger is better. Bigger is better," and this is where I'm hesitant to get the new 7. Not that bigger isn't better, but the bigger the file or the bigger we are taking pictures, the more pixels that we have sometimes can be a detriment. I'm not saying this to discourage anybody because bigger is usually better. It depends on what we're doing though.

That trip to the Philippines, I seriously probably took a thousands pictures. When you go through the mall or whatever and we're taking more pictures than before because they're digital. This is actually just my assumption is why that new iPhone 7 and probably a lot of the Android phones have to have such high gigabyte capacity. Do you know what I mean? The bigger the picture or the bigger the megapixel, is you're going to have to have more capacity to hold that. Whether it be on your phone or an SD card that you're using or wherever you're holding that image, it's a bigger file, bigger image, and so therefore you need a bigger size.

The new iPhone 7 goes all the way up to a 256 gigabyte phone or hard drive or capacity. Do I need that? Right now I'm working on a 128 gigabyte and I have 4,000 pictures on my camera roll and they're just fine. However, if I had 4,000 pictures shooting on it with 12 megabyte camera, then I'm going to probably max out faster. Does that make sense?

Steph: Yeah. Absolutely.



Chari: Back to your question and I don't know if I even got to that point yet because I was just thinking about that. She was asking in this class, "How big can we print?" There's so many variables really. If you're taking a print that you just snapped right from your native camera on your phone and say this is the iPhone 6, this is what I have, I can probably push it to a 16 by 20. 12 by 18 is going to be your full res, a little bit enlarged and I can pull up the pixels if you want me to, and how do I get that and how do I know. We can talk about that too. Do you want me to run through a little bit of math?

Steph: Sure. Yeah.

Chari: Okay. If you ever see numbers that say 1,100x800 dimensions, something like that, something X something, that is your pixels. That's what we always want to look for in a picture. It's hard to see that though. It's frustrating when you're on your camera roll and I bet, Steph, there's a way ... You probably know more than I do. I'm sure there's an app because I know that you've talked about in the past apps that read your metadata or that show your data.

Steph: Yes. I have one. Do you want to hear?

Chari: Yes. Tell me.

Steph: What app I like to use? I'm going to pull it up real quick. Image Size is the name of the app.

Chari: Sweet. I'm going to go download that.

Steph: I really like it because you can pull up any image and then it'll tell you the pixel dimensions.

Chari: If you know the steps taken or where that picture came from if somebody texted it to you or emailed it to you, there's a possibility it could be compressed, so you may want to check it out first. However, if you took it straight out of your camera, your native phone, you should be able to print a 12 by 18 just fine. A 12 by 12, yes, but remember there's going to be cropping because unless you're shooting with that 1 by 1 ratio, you're going to have cropping when we change print sizes. That's a whole nother conversation that we can get into here too.

Steph: Yes.

Chari: If you want to talk about resolution right now or how big can we print without it not looking sharp, that's the word resolution. What is the photo resolution or what size, how high can I go before it starts looking blurry or pixelated is the word. When we're thinking about resolution and we see those numbers, let's use a 10 by 10 to make it



simple. We have a picture that we're looking at on our phone and I'm just going to use square and a 10 by 10 just so we can make it simple math.

Steph: Because I'm not very good at math, so we do need to keep it simple.

Chari: A 4 by 6 we can talk about, but that's 2 different ratios and it might get confusing. Whatever size we're printing, but let's just say 10 by 10. Say I'm looking at a picture on my phone and I'm like, "Oh, this would be great on my wall and I have this frame and I wonder if it would fit," and so this frame is a 10 by 10, would it work? Somehow you need to find those pixels whether it be on that Image Size app, whether ... If you have the picture backed up somewhere which please tell me you do ... Steph will hopefully cover the backing up pictures because you guys, if your pictures are on your phone and you lose that thing, they're gone. Let's please back them up.

Wherever they're backed up whether it be Dropbox, whether it be Google, whether it be on your computer, in Persnickety Prints we offer free online storage, you should be able to see somehow the dimensions whether you're right clicking or reading image properties is where you want to look and that will tell you dimensions. In order to print the sharpest you can print, you want your prints to be at 300 dots per inch, so 300 dpi, 300 pixels per inch.

Steph: To get the sharpest print?

Chari: Yeah. No, you can push like 240 or 180, but just to be the max ... We don't need to be bigger than 300 is 300. Now whoever came up with this, I don't know, but that's what it is. 300 dots per inch is universal for most and there are different types of printers. Our Giclée printer actually is amazing and can take a small image and enlarge it and make it look amazing. With different printers, 300 is that golden number. If I want a 10 inch by 10 inch picture with this image, if I want a 10 inch by 10 inch print, what pixels or what dimensions do I need to have? I should probably write up a graphic and have you post this, so you can visualize it. What number do I want to see on those pixels or on that dimension image size to make sure that that's going to be somewhat sharp? What you would do is times 300 by the inch.

Steph: 10 by 300?

Chari: Mm-‐hmm (affirmative). 3,000 by 3,000 is a perfect 10 by 10. Now that's high. That's a pretty high ... Now you've heard of enlargements before, right? Enlargements happen all the time. We print enlargements all day long. There's a difference between a picture that's a thumbnail size or a size that's been compressed on Facebook or this kind of a picture. A thumbnail would be probably 128 by 128 which is tiny. When we're talking enlargements, at Persnickety we usually don't like to enlarge anything or we'll call a customer or notify them if we're tripling the size. If this was 1,000 by 1,000



for a 10 by 10, it might work because depending on the picture again and what data is in there, it might work.

2,000, 3,000's the max. If your picture's at 2,800 by 2,800 and you want to print a 10 by 10, it will print right. Just to stay on that 300 dpi law, that's how you figure it out.

Steph: People will understand and have a comparison, Instagram ... When we post photos to Instagram and then it saves it to our Instagram folder on our phone, what size are those?

Chari: I haven't check actually to be honest in the last couple of years. I have been told that if it saves to that folder, then it's higher and I can just check right now really quick actually while we're talking. However, this is the other hard thing is when you're looking at pictures on your phone, how in the world can you even tell what it is? That's the hard part. With out service, we give you low resolution warnings so that you can see because back to the pixels, 300 is for print, 72 is for any screen.

Steph: Yes.

Chari: When you're looking at a picture on a screen, it's going to look sharp because it's 72 is all that that requires, but a print requires 300. Technology is amazing, Steph. We know that. In teaching SnapSeed and iPhone RV classes, we are moving so fast I cannot even keep up. I do. It's so hard. Every app changes, so much changing.

Steph: In the blink of an eye and just one app can change the whole landscape of the photo industry really because I think that's what Instagram did when it was released. It changed things significantly.

Chari: Mm-‐hmm (affirmative). Absolutely. There's new ones coming out everyday. It's like, "Well, which one do I attach to or do I even give a try or do I stay in my comfort zone." There's so many apps and it's just moving quickly. There's so many use you can use them and so much we can do on our phones. I wonder sometimes how we even survived without them.

Steph: I've got a photo that I just pulled in from Instagram folder and it's not exactly square because I left it a little bit rectangle. It's 3,600 by 4,000.

Chari: Yeah. Me too. That's awesome.

Steph: That's really quite a lot higher than it used to be because it used to be ...

Chari: That's original. That's the thing is Instagram started this way and they probably received feedback and now they're probably dumping that original back onto our camera roll with the filer if we used one.



Steph: With the edits.

Chari: Right. Taking it straight from Instagram or doing a screenshot, you would be amazed

at what we get in for print, isn't going to work.

Steph: Screenshots are usually really low resolution.

Chari: Yup. Those will be. This is interesting. Yes, coming from that Instagram folder as long as it's that one ... This is the bad thing is you're in your camera roll and you know how when you ... Depending on your settings, again there's so many variables, if you've posted to Instagram, depending on how your settings are, you're going to have that same picture saved onto your camera roll. Sometimes you have a side by side in your camera roll. This one was the original, this one was my Instagram one. Well, if you pull that Instagram one from the camera roll, that one's going to be low.

Steph: I just pulled up another one that was a screenshot kind of a thing that I posted on Instagram a long time ago and it's 640 by 640 which is really low.

Chari: Yes.

Steph: That Image Size app comes in really handy if you want to do any printing.

Chari: Mm-‐hmm (affirmative). We don't want to make it so complicated. It sounds like, "Oh, I don't want to print anything. This is way too confusing." Really it's not. We try so hard. At Persnickety, we print everything in-‐house, everything, so that we can look at everything and help our customers. Once you get the hang of it a couple of times as with anything, it's going to become second nature to you.

Steph: For sure. It does for sure. At first it was a little bit difficult for me because math is difficult for me.

Chari: Mm-‐hmm (affirmative). Me too.

Steph: One of the things that I truly, truly love about your site is that I do get that warning if it's going to be a problem. When I upload my photos, if it's going to be a problem, I get that warning and then I know that I need to change things or readjust or whatever.

Chari: I'm always working with our developers. Because we do everything in-‐house all of our printing, we outsource the online shopping cart whereas some of the bigger online printing companies, they focus on the shopping cart and development and then they outsource the printing. We're opposite. However, that's where a lot of our roadblocks come in is I want something and I want it quick and I want things fixed. I'm always



having to wait for developers, but we try to make it really easy where you can really upload your entire camera roll to our site. If you're using pocket albums, you could choose 3 by 4, 4 by 4, 6 by 8, all on our site without ever having to edit a thing.

You don't have to resize it or anything, but we'll give you a popup crop option. You'd choose crop option number 2 that you want to crop them all and you'll go in and crop everyone to that size for the pocket and then you checkout. To make it even more simple is we do all the cropping for you and show you what it's going to look like.

Steph: One of the other things that that reminded me of also is that you have editing tools right on your site as well. People can actually add text to photos and a lot of other ...

Chari: It's the new Creative Cloud editor. I don't know if you're familiar with it, but a lot of apps are using it. It's on our app and it's on our online platform too. Adding text, yes, you can totally do that. You can edit it, add text. Because I'm so OCD about editing, I would use something else. It's basic. It's super basic.

Steph: Let's talk about editing for a couple of minutes. Tell me about maybe a couple of your favorite editing apps because I know that you use ... Because each app has its different strengths.

Chari: Mm-‐hmm (affirmative). Absolutely.

Steph: You use them for different reasons. Maybe share with us a couple of your favorites and what situations you use them for.

Chari: Those are good questions. It's funny. Every app is there for a different use. There's a lot of apps that do similar things to each other and then there's the all in ones. Then sometimes we just get ... Sadly I need to start getting out there and testing new ones like you probably have, Steph, is because we just start getting comfortable and we don't try new ones which is bad. Let's see. I'm looking at my phone. Maybe you should share.

Steph: I want to talk a little bit because I know one of the ... I know the 2 I think that you use the most.

Chari: Okay. Tell me. Tell me.

Steph: Because I think you've mentioned them before. I wanted to talk about PicTapGo a little bit. Is that one of the ones that you use?

Chari: Yeah. I like PicTapGo. You know how it started. Did you ever use RadLab?



Steph: Yes. That's what I wanted to talk about was the back story because I've been a RadLab user since 2005 I think, 2006, because they had Photoshop. RadLab developed Photoshop plugins and Lightroom plugins to help you with your ...

Chari: I have it. Yeah.

Steph: I know. I know. They were the bomb. Amazing. Then when phones came out, they developed this app.

Chari: PicTapGo. Anyway, yes. It's a weird name, but it's pic, tap it and go.

Steph: RadLab is a way better name. They should just go with that.

Chari: They should have just called it RadLab.

Steph: Yes.

Chari: I don't know what happened there. We need to call them.

Steph: Yes.

Chari: I like PicTapGo. Say you took a bunch of indoor photos of a birthday party. Same lighting. Everything's the same and you wanted to edit all of them. PicTapGo's nice for something like that where you are adjusting colors and saturations and clarity and just different things. You can add some cool filters in there. Black and whites are awesome in PicTapGo I think.

Steph: I agree.

Chari: Then you can go through and copy and paste that onto all of the photos which actually a lot of apps are doing now as well. It's fast. PicTapGo is fast. Maybe that's why they named it that because it's supposed to be a fast thing, so it doesn't take a ton of time. I like it for those things where I just need a quick fix and I'm not fine tuning the little details whereas something like SnapSeed you can really focus in on those pixels and change things and remove things and take out a piece of hair you don't want there. We could talk about one that I know a lot of people use, but nobody talks about.

Steph: Okay. Let's hear it.

Chari: Facetune. Have you ever used Facetune?

Steph: No.



Chari: This is liquefy all day long, girl.

Steph: Really?

Chari: Yeah. This makes me sad because I think if I was born or a teenager in this generation, it would be so hard. These poor girls. Facetune is one of those that you literally can make yourself look so cute. You can just doll up those selfies. You can take away wrinkles. You can make yourself look skinnier, fatter, bulgier, whatever. You can literally change everything that way and it's one that actually works really well and it doesn't look overdone.

Steph: Awesome.

Chari: Don't use it because then it's just fake.

Steph: Then people when they meet you they'll be like, "You look nothing like you do on Instagram."

Chari: You can smooth your skin. You can take out red eye. That one's a good one in there. You can patch which is actually really cool. You know in Photoshop how you can select pixels and then patch it onto something?

Steph: Yeah.

Chari: In Facetune you can do that. You can patch. Say you have a big scar on your forehead or something and you want to remove it, you can do that in Facetune.

Steph: One of the things that blew me away about SnapSeed when I was in that class with you is that you can ... The shadows. You can just select and highlight, just lighten up a face, lighten up these portions of your photo and you don't have to do the whole entire photo.

Chari: It's funny. I keep going back to this one picture I took in Mexico with my iPhone 4 by the way. Did you see that picture? You can show this on your site of the guys coming out with the fish.

Steph: Yes.

Chari: That one was a really good example of me trying to use PicTapGo and just being quick, but it lightens the entire picture whereas in SnapSeed, you can really just go into ... I wanted to enhance their faces, but not blow out the water or the sky. In SnapSeed you can go in and just tap on the pixels that you want to adjust. It's a good one for that.



Steph: Exactly. That's the perfect scenario because that's usually ... If someone's standing in

the shade, but then there's the sky or water behind them that's in the sun, it's a problem to try and get those lights, those levels correct. It's a great use of that app for sure.

Chari: Yup. It's a good one. You're right. It's different needs. Apps can help us with different needs and every photo's situational.

Steph: When you were working on your album when you went to Asia with your son, what was your photo editing workflow? Did you have a system?

Chari: That's a good question. Because I'm so OCD about losing my phone when you're especially around water and on a vacation with water, everyday after whatever we did ... I'm not even very careful with my phone. I used to have an OtterBox case. I didn't even use it. I just pull it out in the middle of the ocean and we're swimming with fish. Who knows I could have dropped it. Every night when I come back in, I actually back it up. In the Philippines, they did not have very good WiFi, so it was hard to back it up to a cloud. I just backed it up onto my computer everyday because I didn't want ... What if it was stolen or what ifs? Every night when we came in because I wasn't able to back up to a cloud yet, I did it to my computer.

Then in doing that I just made little folders of the ones I wanted to print and the ones that were done. If I had time that day to edit something and make something that I would make a print that I wanted to put into my album, I would stick it in its own folder.

Steph: Okay. That's perfect. Thank you so much for sharing that with us.

Chari: You don't want to always take your computer though everywhere you go. Right?

Steph: Right.

Chari: I just did a backpacking trip through British Columbia a month ago and they dropped us off in the back mountain with whatever we had on our back. We literally had no electricity, no nothing. We drank from glaciers and it was for 4 days and I had to bring my laptop. It was so bad. Nobody knew. It's light. It was like this anxiety like I have to back up my pictures. I have to have my laptop because we're not going to have WiFi. We had zero cell service. I had my phone to take pictures and it was another one of those trips where you can't pack around a DSLR and SD cards. I had my laptop and on day 2 I pulled it out and their jaws dropped because we were trying to be lightweight.

Steph: You're lugging that thing?



Chari: Yeah.

Steph: Okay. For your next trip, I have a solution for you that doesn't involve a laptop.

Chari: Tell me.

Steph: It's a SanDisk flash drive, USB drive flash, that has its own little WiFi inside of it and so you can back up your photos directly to that USB flash.

Chari: That's amazing, Steph. You always have the best tips.

Steph: Thank you. I love it.

Chari: It's so hard to keep up with these things.

Steph: I know.

Chari: I could probably find that on Amazon, right?

Steph: Yes. That's where I got mine. I got it for my husband because he kept running out of memory on his phone.

Chari: I hate that. Everyone knows that. This what I mean by the megapixels by backing up. It's okay to delete pictures off your camera roll because they're in 4 different places if you do it right.

Steph: Are you talking to me because that's ...

Chari: I'm talking to everyone in general.

Steph: I have my photos in 5 different places, but I never delete.

Chari: I do too. Yeah. I do too. They're so important. Right?

Steph: I'm a photo hoarder, but that's so that I can work on them. I can pull up any photo or memory whenever I want and work on them and document and it's all good.

Chari: Yup. We all have ADD now thanks to phone.

Steph: Okay. Let's talk a little bit as we wrap it up about the kinds of things you have going on at Persnickety Prints around this time of year because I know you have lots of holiday stuff, lots of gift ideas, calendars I know are a big thing.



Chari: Our calendars are awesome. We don't skimp. There's really thick paper. You can write on them. They're not the thin calendars, but they're a great gift. Actually they're buy one, get one half off right now until the end of November.

Steph: Wow.

Chari: Yes. Sorry. Not buy one, get one half off. Buy one, get one free. Hello?

Steph: What?

Chari: Yeah.

Steph: Through the end of November?

Chari: Mm-‐hmm (affirmative). November 30th. Then we get so crazy in December that we can't handle any discounts at all. That code is ... I want to say it's noted. Let me look it up really quick, but the calendars ... We have a lot of different fun calendars, not just your regular calendar. We have a 12 by 12, 8 1/2 by 11. We have the clipboard calendars that are cute and fun. We use an American Crafts 5 by 7 clipboard that comes with it. Those are fun because we designed it so that when the month is over, you can actually cut off the top picture and it slides into your pocket album.

Steph: Awesome.

Chari: Those ones are fun for that. Let me find that code. What else do we have? We have the Instagram calendar. It's like a 4 by 6 spiral bound. What else do we have on the calendars?

Steph: You have some bigger ones too, don't you?

Chari: Yeah. The 12 by 12, 8 1/2 by 11. We actually are just launching some flat calendars that go along with these hangers that we just came out with.

Steph: Are the hangers sold out?

Chari: Our manufacturer should get us some more. What is today, Friday? By Monday. They just went really fast, but it's cool to have your calendar hanging and it's the full year right there. We'll have a flat full year calendar coming up as well.

Steph: Okay. I pulled up your Instagram.

Chari: Good. That's a good idea. What is the code, Steph?

Steph: The code's noted just like you said.



Chari: Noted? Yay.

Steph: It says October 31st.

Chari: Yup. We just extended it.

Steph: Oh, you did? Okay.

Chari: I'll change it on there. Where is that? I'll change it.

Steph: It's a picture of the calendar.

Chari: I'll change it right now. We got it launched. It's October 15th and I don't want to

stress anybody out, so we extended it until the 31th.

Steph: That's so nice of you.

Chari: I know.

Steph: We can all get our Christmas presents done and have a great deal.

Chari: They're the best gifts because everybody at Christmas morning just looks your pictures and you can show them off. It's the gift that gives all year.

Steph: For sure. Yes. Absolutely. In the past I used to do calendars a lot then I stopped. I think I'm going to do some more this year.

Chari: They're just perfect for the grandma or somebody that just doesn't need anymore stuff.

Steph: What grandma doesn't love a calendar filled with the grandkids?

Chari: Exactly. I know. They're good.

Steph: It is so good. Okay. Everyone can find you at PersnicketyPrints.com. Right? Is there anything else? Any other good deals you want to tell us about? You've got some things going on over there.

Chari: Well, our cards are amazing. We are just launching our new holiday cards. There's tons of cards actually. If we're talking tech and phones and Instagram, we have a lot of card templates that are meant for Instagram, so they just have a bunch of little 4 by 4 squares. Unfortunately, they have to be built and ordered online because we're still using Flash for that. I don't know. Sometimes those creative gifts are hard to do



on your phone anyway because it's such a small screen, but not a lot to fit right there on that small screen. Insta posters are fun gift and they're square. We kept all the pictures small enough that if you are using your Instagram feed which you can feed right into you Persnickety Prints album, your feed shows up and you just drag and drop your pictures in there, they print really well.

Anything that says Insta on our website whether it's Insta calendar, Insta poster, Insta minibook, they are all meant to be used with just your Instagram feed, so that you don't feel like that's gone to waste if that's what you're using for your memory keeping.

Steph: Perfect. There are tons of things over there. Everyone needs to head over to PersnicketyPrints.com and look around, click around.

Chari: Email us if you have any questions.

Steph: For sure. For sure. Oh, wait. I also want to remind our listeners to ... If you're feeling phone, photo overwhelm or photo overwhelm in general, be sure to grab the free course at Modern Photo Solutions. All about taking you from phone photo overwhelm to photo fab. If you text the word, well, text, it's 2 words combined into one, text to photo fab to 44222 and then we will email you a link, so that you can grab that free course and get tapping away to photo fabulous.

Chari: Awesome, Steph. I can't wait to share that with my people.

Steph: Thank you.

Chari: Everyone needs it. Everybody.

Steph: I agree totally. It's fun. It'll help you figure out backing up and organization, but you know what? It's done automatically for you. That's what's so cool about Google Photos that I walk you through everything. I'm an iPhone user, Apple lover, but some things Google does better and I believe that this is one of the things. All righty. Thank you, Chari, so much for being here.

Chari: Thanks for having me.

Steph: I appreciate it a ton and we'll have you back again because it's so fun and you just know so much.

Chari: Well, we have so much to talk about always.

Steph: We do. We do. All right. Thank you and we will see you next time on Modern Photo Solutions.

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