All about PSPA

The Professional School Photographers Association (PSPA) has been defining the industry standard for photo CD’s in the yearbook industry for many years.  Obviously, our program is built to work based on this standard, so we’re dedicating today’s blog post to all things PSPA.

For a look at the PSPA website, click here.

We have posted all of our PSPA related help documents and tech notes to our support site.  Check them out here!  This page includes instructions for importing PSPA and non PSPA CD’s into our Yearbooks program as well.

 

 

Keeping up with the times – QR Codes in Yearbooks!

Our team was inspired this morning, after reading a story about a Texas high school bringing their yearbooks a leap forward using modern technology.

The changes sparked by new Apple mobile devices on campuses can already be seen in a long-cherished print product, the McAllen High School Yearbook. The first page of the 2012 edition sports a QR code — a kind of barcode that can be scanned with a cellphone, often to pick up website URLs.

Each QR code in the yearbook takes readers to a video of a different club or sports team, all shot with iPads distributed last year.

Check out the full story here!

So, interested in using this innovative idea for your own yearbook?  We thought so, so we put together a short tech note outlining the whole process, from shooting the video to adding the QR code to your yearbook.

Happy Halloween!! Got your Halloween clipart?

We want to wish all of you a great Halloween, and send a quick reminder to be extra careful when driving tonight!  The kids tonight are going to be focused on candy, and not road safety.  We all know how unpredictable they can become when they have sugar on their minds, so watch out!

Looking to spruce up your yearbook pages with some Halloween clipart?  Yearbooks Desktop allows you to import any clipart you find on the web.  Just download it, import it to your images section, and away you go!   Having trouble finding clipart?  Here are some suggestions:

Openclipart.org has a great selection of clipart.  Here is a sampling of their Halloween clipart selection!

CLKER.com – A clipart repository where all the images have been released by their author into the public domain. Similar to openclipart.org, CLKER offers a few extra choices to round things out. (Halloween clipart on CLKER)

Clipart.com claims to be the largest collection of royalty-free clipart offered by subscription on the Web.  They have a Halloween clipart section as well!

Have you found another great source for Halloween clipart?  We invite you to share it in the comments!

Start with Importing Students

One of the first steps we face when creating a digital Yearbook is to import the student information into the program.  Once the data is loaded in, creating and organizing your pages is fairly easy, so we’ve posted some tips to assist you with your import.

Usually, photographers will provide you with a PSPA Photo CD, which is a CD that contains all of your student’;s pictures, and an index file that has been set up based on the industry standard.  This is a very common format in the industry, so don’t be afraid to ask your photgrapher for PSPA output.

Once you have your PSPA CD, importing it into Yearbooks Desktop is fairly straight forward, as is outlined in these step by step instructions on our support site.  Once your data has been imported, the program makes it very easy to correct spelling errors, adjust classes, and add or remove individual students.

But what happens if your photographer can not provide you with a PSPA CD?  Don’t worry, Yearbooks Desktop can import non-industry standard CD’s as well.  Just follow this handy guide from our support site, and you’ll have your non-PSPA data loaded in no time.

Remember, our team has been importing data into Yearbooks Desktop for years, so if you run in to a snag anywhere along the way, contact our friendly support team.