ImagingUSA is just around the corner and we want to see you there. In fact, this will be NextProof’s first convention/tradeshow. We’ve done plenty as BIG Folio, but NextProof will have its own booth here.

We’d love to see you there–here’s a free pass to the ImagingUSA Expo. Print it out, visit, and come say “hello”. We may even have some t-shirts for you.

If you’re not a NextProof user, today is a great day to become one. Over at BIG Folio, we just released a new standard site with great NextProof integration.

We’re giving the site away free for the next 24 hours to anyone who signs up for a NextProof Pro or Max plan. We’re even extending the offer to free/standard account holders who upgrade.

Details here on the bf/stop. Don’t miss out.

We just rolled out a nifty little update for your galleries. When creating a new gallery, you can now include Black & White and Sepia options in the gallery.

When this is checked, the gallery will give visitors these options for any image/product. They’ll also get a nice little AJAX preview when selecting an option. You can see it in action here on one of my sample galleries.

If you have this turned on, any selected options will also be displayed in the order details (so pay attention).

In the future, we may expand this feature–allowing you to define your own options.

I was going to install some forum software on the site–to facilitate discussion and share upcoming gallery themes. Instead, I’ve decided to create a Facebook group (for the time being at least).

If you’re a Facebook user, join our group.

My profile is here as well.

We just reduced the Max plan to $99 a month. If you’re a Pro plan user and running out of space for high-res files, now’s a great time to upgrade.

Also, we’re getting very close to releasing some big updates. Most notably, custom gallery theming and international currency support are on the horizon.

Sneak peak: custom theming

Custom theming allows you to completely customize the layout and styling of your NextProof themes. It can be as simple as swapping out a button and changing a few colors; or as complex as rearranging the entire HTML structure of your galleries. Custom background pattern? Easy. Move the right-hand sidebar to the left? Sure. Make room for a bigger logo? No problem.

Here’s a custom theme I’ve been working on as a proof of concept

If you wanted to get real tricky, you could even …

• Embed a video
• Embed a chat widget
• Add additional links to your blog or Twitter updates

Heck, share or sell your own custom themes if you want. Knock yourself out. More information will be posted as we get closer to releasing this. We’ll also be adding plenty of documentation.

We were chatting about Aperture today and got on the subject of exporting and uploading via FTP directly from Aperture. After some quick googling, I came up with a couple interesting links.

Obviously the beauty here is that you could export versions and FTP to NextProof all in a single step.

ÜberUpload for Aperture

Cost: $24.95 (15 day free trial)

ÜberUpload looks like a nice export plug-in for Aperture. It has keychain support (i.e. it can store your FTP password) and allows you to create folders on the server. Looks pretty nice.

Lightroom FTP Sender (Windows)

Cost: Free

A small Windows utility for Lightroom. You select it as your post export action and the exported files will be uploaded via FTP.

Looking for some feedback

I’d love to hear some feedback from both LR and Aperture users. If any Aperture/NextProof users out there want to write up a review, let me know. I’ll buy you a copy of UberUpload.

If you hit the NextProof home page, you’ll see our first case-study video. It features Alex Fagundo of a Candidly Elegant Photography of Miami, FL. Alex was cool enough to let our camera guy follow him around on an engagement session and talk about using NextProof in his workflow.

Alex gets bonus points for using Aperture too.

We just pushed out a small but handy update for FTP uploading. After uploading images via FTP and then adding them to a gallery, you’ll now get a status message.

The status will tell you that the FTP import is either “Pending” (i.e. it’s queued up in the background) or “Processing” (i.e. images are being added to your gallery). If the import is processing, you’ll also see how many images are currently in the gallery.

The status updates automatically every 10 seconds (AJAX baby) and will notify you once the process is complete.

Recently, we’ve been having issues with order notifications getting delayed (primarily by @yahoo.com addresses). Currently, emails sent from the NextProof system come from nextproof@bigfolio.com and this seems to be part of the issue.

This week we’ll be changing the FROM address. Any emails from NextProof (order notifications, billing notices, etc.) will begin coming from system@nextproof.com.

We’ve taken great pains to ensure this address doesn’t get marked as spam (including SPF records and DomainKeys). Nonetheless, it’s a good idea to add this address to your contacts or email whitelist.

Also, none of this affects emails sent to your customers. Those are sent from your email address (in your account settings).

As promised, a new update has been deployed. Here’s a brief overview:

New features

• Products can now have a description and an image
• Merchandise (the “More Products” tab) is now displayed with an image and description
• You can now browse the favorites of all registered users via order details or the user’s profile

Bug fixes

• Fixed bug where deleting a product that was part of the default settings prevented new galleries from being created

What now?

Get rolling and create some product images and descriptions. Also, when emailing your customers, have them use the “Favorites” feature to create their album picks.