FotoFusion – Yearbook

YearbookFusion is a software package specialized for yearbook layout. It streamlines the process of creating yearbooks, church directories and other database-driven album types.

Full PSPA Spport

Build dynamic data-driven panel pages with ease using bundled or custom presets. Import a PSPA CD and the database can be maintained within the software. Any changes are automatically reflected in the yearbook, for example, adding or removing students.

Rebranded


YearbookFusion can be rebranded with your own company logo, templates, clip arts, graphics and book sizes.

Complete Yearbook Pipeline


YearbookFusion projects can live in the cloud and be rendered directly to a publisher’s FTP server. Publishers also have the option to ‘restrict’ output settings and enforce DPI thresholds to ensure Yearbooks are always delivered to the expected specification.

An overview

  • Install a layout application with branding and page size defaults matching the publisher that provided the software
  • Create a multipage album project with all pages stored in a single file
  • Import a PSPA CD, building a database of students and faculty
  • Perform database operations, such as moving students from one grade to another
  • Create panel pages automatically
  • Customize the panel page ‘look’ (knocking out frames, reshaping the grid, etc)
  • Lay out the rest of the yearbook with candid pages, collage pages, etc
  • Upload the results to the publisher for printing

Business Advantages:

  • Locked templates matching publisher album specifications
  • One-click uploading to the publisher facility
  • Branding reflecting the publisher
  • Superior ease of use
  • Simple bulk licensing pricing and licensing

How to order:

Yearbook publishers purchase expiring annual licenses of FotoFusion from LumaPix and allocate them to schools.  Discounts are offered for volume, smaller schools, and in-house (as opposed to in-school) use.

  • Read how licensing works
  • Read how customization works
  • Call 1 (877) 923-8746 (877 YBFusion)
  • Or e-mail: YearbookSales@LumaPix.com
Download order forms

You will need to complete the following forms and fax them to: LumaPix at 1-866-658-5042. We would recommend consulting our section on customization by clicking here.

Purchase Terms
  • All software activations expire 1 year from initial activation by school.
  • Unused credits roll over to the next year.
  • Orders are independent; discounts do not accumulate.
  • Fixed-price 10-license blocks can be bought by credit card at any time.
  • 4% discount for prepayment by check for volume >10 units.
Sample PSPA Kit

We provide a PSPA Kit with sample images and new PSPA extensions. (These are the full extensions we would like, but PSPA 2010 includes department, which is a good start)

Click to download a PSPA KIT with LumaPix extensions (117mbs)

Download Screengrabs

Download Datasheets

Download Order Forms

Custom Templates
While FotoFusion enables completely custom yearbook layout, you may choose to offer your customers content specific to your company – reducing the potential for error and streamlining book creation for busy yearbook advisers.
Form Factors
  • A description of the form factor your album will take (bleed/safe areas, page dimensions, cover sheet size if applicable, etc)
  • Can specify a fixed DPI, different for cover and contained pages
  • Ensures that your schools can only design books to your exact standards

Pricing: Included with YearbookFusion free of charge.

Complete templates and clip art
  • LumaPix can work with you to design anything from clip art sets up to complete pre-designed yearbooks
  • The results will be unique to your company – your customers can access it but other customers cannot
  • Downloaded via the software, no CD required

Pricing: $40 USD/Hr – Scope and estimate is agreed in advance. Typically  40 hours including revisions.

Remote Storage Licenses

In order to buy licenses here you must be a registered publisher of YearbookFusion with LumaPix. If you are a school looking for YearbookFusion licenses or someone interested in becoming a registered YearbookFusion Publisher, please contact us.

Customizing your copies of YearbookFusion

YearbookFusion is intended for distribution to schools by publishers.  It offers several opportunities for customization:

  • Your company branding (logo in start-up Screen and company name in title bar)
  • Custom Form Factors matching your products
  • Custom templates (page layouts) reflecting your ‘look’
  • Custom clip art available only to your customers
Branding

The order form asks you to submit the following:

  • The name of your company as you would like it to appear in the application title bar
  • Your company logo, as an 359×59 pixel JPG image
Form Factors

A “Form Factor” is a set of parameters that describe the dimensions of a physical product, such as a specific 8.5×11″ hardcover album sold by your company. The product is broken into parts:

  • Cover sheet(s)
  • Album sides
  • Two-page spreads
  • Assorted other pages (e.g. cameo images)

Each page type is described with the following information:

  • Crop Width
  • Crop Height
  • Bleed (gutter, edge, top bottom) – expands the crop area
  • Safe (gutter, edge, top bottom – warns the user to avoid portions of the crop area
  • Spine width, front and black flap widths
  • Preferred Render resolution

The Order Form includes fields for you to describe your form factors. Simply submit this information to LumaPix and Form Factors matching your products will appear in copies of the software that you give out to end users.

Templates

Your customers (and only your customers) can access templates that you have asked LumaPix to publish. Templates can include:

  • Frames
  • Text
  • Custom fonts (selected from the LumaPix library)
  • Custom fonts (from your font library, if you have the right to distribute them)
  • Frames and Textures (your own, or from the LumaPix library)

The Order Form includes fields for you to describe the number of templates that you would like LumaPix to convert to work in YearbookFusion (if any).

Clip Art

Custom artwork from your collection can be published to your customers (and only your customers). Sample clip art includes:

  • PNG Embellishments
  • JPG Textures

The Order Form describes how to upload your clip art to LumaPix, where it will be published to your customers.

Upload to publisher

YearbookFusion communicates directly with your FTP server, allowing schools to submit finished projects directly to you.

The YearbookFusion order form includes the following fields, which will be used by all installed licenses of YearbookFusion that are associated with your RepID:

  • FTP server: Example: 123.123.123.123 / ftp.yourcompany.com
  • Port: Example: 21
  • User ID: Note: this user must have full control over the folder including the ability to create and enter subfolders
  • Password:
  • Default path: Example: “/ybf”
  • Preferred upload format for flattened projectsExample: JPG, PSD, PDF

Please ensure that you have provided LumaPix with this information.

Server Ping Overview:

When an end user is ready to upload a package to the publisher, they choose ‘upload to Publisher’ from the file menu. The following things take place:

  • The current project is archived (referenced materials are pulled into a single file)
  • A script on the publisher’s server is called, indicating that an upload is imminent
  • The upload takes place via FTP
  • A script on the publisher’s server is called, indicating that upload is complete

This communication gives the publisher’s back-end processes an opportunity to prepare for content – for example, to offer a storefront / accept credit cards / verify shipto details / etc.,

Responding to the ping is optional- publishers using a ‘hot folder’ approach can ignore the ping (and this example script).

Sample script:

A sample script is available for publisher IT staff to examine and modify.

It demonstrates how to interpret the incoming XML file, present a page offering some of those details, and act on the description of the incoming project.

Contents:

  • a sample XML file (representative of what is sent prior to upload)
  • a sample PHP script (intended to be replaced with publisher-specific actions)
  • a readme file

    • Click here to download the sample package (Zip)

    Marketing material for Yearbook Publishers

    The following materials are provided to YearbookFusion publishers. They are intended to be customized (e.g. with publisher branding) and distributed to schools.

    School Information Sheets:

    Click here to download (12 MB ZIP).These are intended to be distributed to schools by YearbookFusion publishers,after downloading and modifying them to include publisher branding.

    YearbookFusion Clip Art Collection
    Clipart

    Yearbook Fusion Clipart

    Covers

    Yearbook Fusion Covers

    Headers

    Yearbook Fusion Headers

    Papers

    Yearbook Fusion Papers

    Sample Marketing Posters

    If you have FotoFusion installed and activated; you can simply click a thumbail below to load the project in FotoFusion for further editing and customization. You can also download all output JPGs here (37 MB ZIP)

    YearbookFusion Demo
    • Download Quick Demo (4 Mins WMV – 38 MB ZIP)
    • Download Remote Storage Video (6 Mins WMV – 83 MB ZIP)

    These videos demonstrate the use of YearbookFusion to a prospect school.

    YearbookFusion Sample Output
    YearbookFusion Web Graphics

    The following graphics can be placed on publisher sites.

    Important: Link the graphic to your rep-specific link for download Yearbook Fusion, for example: http://www.lumapix.com?repid=YOUR_REP_ID


    LumaPix Graphics

    Licensing information for Yearbook Publishers

    Video Demonstrations

    • Rep Administration Demo
      Learn more about the administrative tools available to Yearbook Publishers
    • Licensing Overview
      A visual overview of how licensing works for YearbookFusion
     
    The Big Idea: Reps buy licenses from LumaPix and allocate them to end users, who can download and activate copies of the software that have been customized to the Rep’s specifications.
    One Setup. One Executable.
    LumaPix sells several variations of a single core product, called FotoFusion. These variants (YearbookFusion, Extreme and Enhanced), are tuned for yearbook publishers, wedding photographers, photography enthusiasts and scrapbookers respectively. When we refer to “FotoFusion” we are generically talking about the application engine underneath these various license types.

    All of these products are all the same core application running with different features turned on and off. Which version is running is determined by which license type was used to activate the program.

    There is one installer that contains all versions of the software, and which runs as a free trial by default.

    Free trials
    The process of getting FotoFusion running on a machine always starts with installing the free trial. If the customer has purchased a license, then they can activate the software (convert it to a full license) immediately; if not, they can leave FotoFusion running in trial mode (e.g. for evaluation purposes).

    When running in free trial mode, FotoFusion will watermark all output, disable uploads, and disable archiving.

    it’s a good thing to activate end users as soon as they have purchased a license. For example, an installation left as a free trial at a school will not know the name of the user’s school (because the school name is specified in the license that a publisher assigns to a school when allocating a license to them), and so any PSPA information imported into the free trial will need to be reassociated from a temporary placeholder school into the user’s actual school after activation. This happens automatically, but gives you a sense of why LumaPix recommends activating as soon as possible.

    Note that Reps have the option of making their FotoFusion installations insist on activation at first run (e.g. their software can’t run as free trials).

    Rep Associations
    The installer places a free trial of FotoFusion on a machine, together with information about who referred the software (the “Rep” – for example, a yearbook publishing company that is reselling YearbookFusion to schools). This association with the Rep is critical, as it affects the features available in the FotoFusion installation, including (for YearbookFusion licenses):

    • which branding is displayed in the interface
    • which FTP site will receive files that the end user uploads
    • which clip art or templates the customer should have access to
    • what support contact information should be exposed to the end user
    • the school’s name (used as a key to the database created by PSPA import)

    These options are configured by the Rep in the Rep Admin website, a self-serve online license administration tool provided by LumaPix.

    To build the association with the Rep, the installer package must be tagged with the ID of the rep that gave it out. This is done on-the-fly, by having the user download the setup package via a URL that includes the repID:

    The LumaPix server responds to this request with a setup file that has been customized for the rep (Acme in this example).

    Allocating a license
    Reps maintain a balance of license credits – one credit per customer. These licenses are purchased in bulk by the rep, and then allocated to end users.

    The reps work with the Rep Admin tool, a custom web site that provides license balance information, customization options, and the tools to allocate licenses to end users.

    When a rep allocates a license to an end user, they specify:

      • which type of license to allocate
      • what email ID to use to communicate with the end user
      • what name to use as the LumaPix user ID (usually equal to the email ID)
      • rep-specific customization options (see above)

    When the allocation happens,

      • The Rep’s available license count drops by one
      • The new userID is added to the LumaPix database, together with the Rep’s ID, license type, and other information
      • A ‘welcome’ email is sent to the email ID specified for the end user
    Activating a license
    Activating the software means converting a free trial into a fully-licensed version. This is usually done on-site by the end user.

    The user enters their LumaPix User ID, which they know from the welcome mail sent by the LumaPix server at the time the license was allocated.

    Their User ID is checked against the main LumaPix user database to determine what type of license that user has bought. The free trial then converts itself into the type of license that was allocated to it.

    The communication that makes this possible is online. It’s simplest to have the end user be online, then choose ‘activate/online’ from the FotoFusion help menu. Offline activation is possible but much more involved, as the user must manually copy information from a server to the offline machine.

    When a user ID is used to activate the software for the first time, the LumaPix server asks the user to choose a password. This password is saved at the server end. The next time the user activates the software with the same user ID, the server will ask the user to enter the existing password. Depending on the license type being activated, the server may allow this to happen more than once; an Extreme license can be activated twice (e.g. on a photographer’s PC and laptop) before alarm bells start going off at LumaPix; a YearbookFusion license can be used to activate up to 40 installations (each of which will share the same school name).

    How to get a school up and running with FotoFusion:
    Ensure that your license balance is positive

      • Log into the RepAdmin tool
      • Check your license balance

    Allocate a license of the software to a school:

      • Use the ‘allocate license’ menu to enter information for a school, as described below, and hit ‘submit’.
      • Your license balance will drop by one and the school will receive a mail with instructions on how to download the software

    Verify that all went well at the school:

      • When the school follows the link in the confirmation email, they will receive a version of the software that has been encoded specifically for you the publisher (your branding, your FTP upload information, etc).
      • The school activates the software with the userID that you specified in step 3
    License allocation options
    Example
    Field (Hover mouse for info)
    Customer Name Timothy White
    Email ID yearbook@central.edu
    User ID yearbook@central.edu
    License Type Prepaid
    Product YearbookFusion expiring license for >=400 student school
    Number of Licenses 1 license
    Street / City / State / Zip / Country / Phone 1 license
    Comments Allocated by Nancy Green
    Send Confirmation Email to Client Yes
    HTML and Newsletter No, No
    Expiration N/A
    School Name Central Secondary
    Internal Client ID C254
    Enable local output No
    Forget store password after each use Not Yet Implemented
    Enable Marketplace Not Yet Implemented
    To get a link to the latest version of the software
    Reps can choose to give out free trials of the FotoFusion software to prospects before allocating a license to them. This is a useful sales tool as it allows prospects to evaluate the software prior to making a commitment.
    Free trial users will not be able to render without watermarks, archive projects, or upload work to the publisher until they have a license allocated to them by the rep and activate their installation.

    It’s important that reps give out software that knows that it came from them – e.g. that the association with a particular RepID is in place (otherwise, the end user will not see the rep-specific version of the software – the rep’s branding will not be present, the upload to publisher will not be correctly configured, etc). For this reason, reps should NOT simply tell their prospects to download the software from the LumaPix website – they should tell prospects to download from a specially-formatted link that will tag the FotoFusion installer application with their RepID.

    To get this rep-specific link,

      • Go to the RepAdmin site
      • Click on ‘Download rep-specific version’

    The RepAdmin site will show a link that looks something like this:

    • Sample RepID link (Do not use):  http://site.lumapix.com?repid=ACME
    • The link is specific to a rep (ACME in this case) – following this link will download a version of YearbookFusion that has been stamped with that rep’s branding, that knows about that rep’s FTP site for upload, etc.
    • Use that link in your web site, email blasts, and other places where you instruct schools on downloading and installing their software.
    • Be aware that if you copy the file locally, it will get out of date as we update the build frequently. This can cause problems. If you want to do a CD distribution then by all means, follow your own link and burn the resulting installer to CDs that you give out – but try to keep your inventory levels as low as possible, as it doesn’t help anybody to have schools installing older versions of the software.