Dear all, Welcome to the May 2007 newsletter, our regular update on developments at Third Light and news about changes and improvements made to the IMS product. This month marks the release of IMS v5.5, the last in this family before work begins on IMS v6.0. Please follow the instructions at the end of this email if you prefer not to receive our newsletters. Canada's Largest Newspaper Group Launches IMS Galleries The Toronto Star has opened a new photo and page sales site powered by Third Light's IMS system at: http://www.torstarphotos.com/ The Toronto Star is Canada's largest daily newspaper, reaching over 2.2 million readers each week. From an archive of almost one million images, covering local, national and international events for the past 100 years, Torstar Syndication Services offers reprints and rights-managed licenses for more than 32,000 Toronto Star photographs, using Third Light's IMS Corporate Appliance systems on site in Toronto. For further details, please download our A4 brochure about the IMS installation and business model. Our congratulations to the staff of Torstar Syndication Services on the successful launch of the new web site! New Collection Builder / Lightbox Tool NEW IMS has been upgraded with a powerful new tool, which offers a broad range of benefits to any IMS manager wishing to group photos together. The new system is called the Collection Builder, and can found in the administration console when viewing an album, Smart Folder or search results. The Collection Builder uses drag-and-drop. To try it out, open any album and click (and hold) your mouse button over a thumbnail. Now drag the thumbnail across to the yellow lightbox on the left of the screen, and release your mouse button. The thumbnail will drop into the lightbox. You can continue adding images and, if you log out and log back in again, the lightbox will still be where you left it. Collections can also be saved, making it possible to create permanent albums of related images which you can share with your customers (using the normal permissions system in IMS). Simply click the "Save as Collection" button in the lightbox. Collections can be viewed on the Manage Albums page and have a distinctive orange colour, to help you differentiate them from Smart Folders and normal Albums. They can be assigned to users or groups from the Manage Users page, or by clicking the new "blue tick" icon on the Manage Albums page. Image Expiration Tools NEW IMS includes a new tool to control the use of images which have a time-limited lifetime (for example, images licenced from a library for a specific duration). - The Picture Editor allows an optional expiry date to be specified. Multiple images can be edited simultaneously using the bulk editing tools, as normal. - When the expiry date is approached, IMS will email the site support email address with a list of images that are about to expire. - When the expiry date has been reached (or has passed) IMS will block downloads and sales of the expired images, and will include a prominent message under the image (in Console Mode). Feature updates and improvements 1) The minimum resolution for all print products, below which IMS will 'block' orders, is now 1 megapixel. This reduces the chance that preview image sizes will be printed and shipped inadvertently, especially for very small print sizes. 2) IMS now allows the order that products appear in price plans to be sorted, using up/down arrow tools when a price plan is being created or edited. The same functionality exists in the Licence Plan editor for lightboxes. 3) The IPTC "Special Instructions" field now appears in the Console view, if set. This allows notes about restricted use or other important information to be flagged clearly to users. 4) IMS now correctly imports IPTC meta data from TIFF images. 5) The latest release of the IMS Desktop Uploader (for Windows) has been released. This release of the uploader matches IMS v5.5, and incorporates many improvements including performance upgrades and bug fixes which improve the stability and reliability of the tool. From 1 May, previous versions of the upload tool will require you to upgrade to this version (and old versions will cease to function). Please use the prompt to upgrade. Note: If, after upgrading to the latest upload tool, you are still prompted to upgrade, you have probably installed the previous version for your user only, and the latest version for all users of the PC. We recommend you manually uninstall the uploader and reinstall from the latest sources to resolve this. 6) Permissions can now be accessed from the Manage Albums page. The distinctive yellow album with a "blue tick" icon was previously only available from the Manage Users page, but can now be used from the Manage Albums page for increased convenience. 7) "Save and View" has been added to the Edit Picture form, supplementing the existing "Save and Next" button. Reminders IMS v4.2 was discontinued last summer, at which point we announced the end-of-life policy. IMS v4.2 sites will be automatically upgraded to IMS v5 on 1 August 2007. However, you can upgrade to IMS v5 free of charge at any time and enjoy all the benefits of the latest product. Please click the link in your v4 admin console to request a v5 upgrade, or go directly to: http://www.thirdlight.com/upgrade.tlx Reasons to upgrade: As well as new features, IMS v5 contains the latest bug fixes and offers the improved printing and ecommerce features, which replaced PrintButton in 2006. Upgrading to IMS v5 does not require you to upload your photos again - it is a seamless upgrade that only takes a few minutes to complete. Feedback Every feature of IMS is based on your ideas and feedback. We keep a thorough record of all feedback and aim to implement the features that are most requested as part of our development plans. Simply reply to this email to send us your comments. For support questions, please use the Help menu support tool, as this allows us to track your queries and answer questions more efficiently. With regards, Third Light Ltd. http://www.thirdlight.com/