I just got an email that says the calendar committee has made a decision to change the pictures from 3000 dpi to 200 dpi, which is a hugh difference. I would rather pay the extra money to have a nice picture of my bird in it. Has anyone else heard this?

Yep got the same email and now the pic I sent won't work.....but I already posted about this and it got pulled so there is some issues apparently going on with this....

I got an email too and it sounds like all the birds won't make it in the calender..Personally, I would rather pay a little more and have a nice calender..It never pays to cut corners..and I've always believed that it only cost a little more to go first class...JMHO!!!WHY would anyone take the quality down without getting input? Maybe I missed something..if this is the case, I won't be buying a calender..that's a HUGE difference in quality...

Rebecca

Please don't panic!

There must have been a typo involved! It was not 3,000 dpi > 200dpi, but 300 dpi > 200 dpi.

Why?
Previously, the calendar was to be printed in the old-fashioned way on a traditional printing press. There would have been a number of issue involved, including investment and print quality.

Investment
Someone would have had to pay up front for the printing of this calendar. Who? Who would be taking that financial risk to pay the printer? And how many do we print? 100 copies? 1,000? If we print too few, some people will be disappointed that they can't get a copy of the calendar. Too many and somebody stands to lose a great deal of money.

Print Quality
For traditional print, as Captjo pointed out in her message to many people, you need to work to an image resolution of 300 dpi. This involves some very large image files. As the photographers of the subjects of this calendar - our beloved QPs – are not professionals, many of the images would have had to be very small or they would have reproduced at very poor quality.

This new version of the calendar will address both of the above issues!
There is no investment involved. We are using digital print-on-demand, so nobody needs to pay a printer to print X number of copies and then hope to recoup that investment. If only one person buys the calendar, then nobody loses out. Nobody sits with 999 copies of the QP Calendar in their garage. If 1,500 people want to buy the calendar, then nobody is disappointed. You place an order, the calendar is printed and it is sent to you.

The print quality of digital print matches that of traditional print, but because of the way it works and the technology, you get the same result but from a slightly lower resolution, hence 200 dpi print resolution. As the image resolution needs to be rather less than before, the smaller images can be reproduced larger. No more postage-stamp-sized pix of your fids!

So, Simiesmom, don't panic! The calendar will be everything you had hoped for - and more! In fact, due to this different production method, the quality should now be greatly enhanced.

And Julies Jungle, we are asking everybody to send me their best images of their fids - as large as possible.

But everybody should please bear in mind that this is a high-quality publication, so fuzzy out of focus images or images that are just too small will not make it into the calendar.

I would also like to add that because the committee is going with a print on demand that doesn't require an upfront investment the more calendars sold the more profit.

Keeping in mind that not only will Qp.com quakers be in a calendar but the profits will be donated to an avian organization ..

I would like to take a moment to also thank the committee for all the hard work and the time that they have put into creating this calendar. It is not an easy task to undertake and they continue to move forward .. I don't doubt that this calendar will be high quality and worth what we pay for it ..

QuakerParrots.com signage is part of this production and we wouldn't want otherwise ..

If you have concerns please address them to committee members as per the thread that is pinned in this section.

Thank You!

"And Julies Jungle, we are asking everybody to send me their best images of their fids - as large as possible.

But everybody should please bear in mind that this is a high-quality publication, so fuzzy out of focus images or images that are just too small will not make it into the calendar."

So, wait, we need to resubmit our pictures?

Bearing in mind that this is a high-quality publication, yes. Before, you were asked to send in your images at 800 x 600 pixels. I would now like to have them as large as you possible can!

Many people have already sent their images to me. These people do not need to resubmit.

OK I am confused........which isn't hard to do....I did resubmit and was told they was to small..please tell me who to communicate with so I know if it works or not and the rights birds to me as I got 5....

So well the savings of doing a cheaper print be passed on to us?

Julie, please email the larger photos to CaptainQuark




First of all, it isn't a cheaper print. There just isn't a high upfront cost for the committee members to fork out and then have to worry about recouping it later.

The printers we researched all wanted an upfront investment (which was anywhere between $1,000.00 to $2,500.00) and we have no means of putting up that investment, nor estimating how many calendars we would need to fulfill the orders. This is the main reason why we chose to go with Cafepress.

The biggest thing to stress is that you will have HIGH QUALITY calendars. That is the bottom line. It wasn't hard for people to send in their photos once, so I'm sure you can all do it again

You will all be able to preview the calendar before you purchase it. If you don't like it, then don't purchase one All we are asking is for people who previously submitted photos to resend large, high quality photos if they still want their Quakers in the calendar.

If you have any questions about size requirements, photo quality, or whether the photo you have submitted to CQ is good enough, then please, please, send him an email. He will be more then happy to help you out

Lastly, please note that the only people on the forum calendar committee are the following:

Andie's Mom
Carrie~Anne
Ruffles Momma
DMMoulton
CaptainQuaker (who is designing the calendar)

That is it. If you receive a PM or email from someone other then these 5 people, then please disregard it, or forward it to one of us and we can then deal with it. This will just cause a lot less confusion for every one involved.

We want to thank you all for being patient. I know most of you are curious as to what is going on, but please know that the calendar committee is trying to make this as easy as possible and still give you the best, quality calendar that we possibly can.

Err, that should be CaptainQuark


Thanks, Zena

Let me also add that IF we do manage to get a good rate that of course it will definitely be passed on to the rest of the forum.

As Carrie Anne and CQ stated, The up front costs in going with a "commercial printer" was just WAY more than any of us felt we could do in good conscience with out risk of one of us personally taking a chance of losing a good deal of money, AND we would have had to pass the higher prices on to everyone else.

So we felt it was in everybodies best interest if we did it this way, the quality will be fine I'm sure so no need to worry there. And as Carrie said you will get a chance to preview the calendar before you order so if you don't like it you don't have to buy it. And no one will be out the "start up costs"

So please be patient just a little bit longer and everything will work out just as we had initially planned.

Thanks for your patience. And please if you have any other questions, feel free to contact any of us listed on the calendar committee.

Carrie~Anne
Andie's Mom
DMMoulton
Rufflesmomma
Captain Quark.

Well, the picture I had of Kiwi probably won't work now and after I sent it in, I resized it and didn't save the original, so I guess Kiwi is out. Not sure if I could get another in time.

Oh well.

Maybe the one you sent is o.k ..??? check with CQ......or get that camera out and take another of Mr Kiwi....

I would like to buy a calendar even if Shakespeare isn't in it,just because I love quakers so much.But I will feel bad if others that really want their birds in it don't get in because we aren't very good at taking pictures.I also got an email on the subject of the calendar and think it should be addressed that there are obviously some hard feelings about this whole thing

Love that photo of Shakespeare , hope you submitted a picture...

LOL - Majj, I was just looking at that picture of Shakespeare and thinking about how sweet he looks standing there.

If there are hard feelings about the calendar process then it should be dealt with in private via PM and between only the parties involved. This is not a general forum issue and we have a committee in place to deal with the calendar process.

The committee has been very forthcoming about the process and have been working very hard to produce a quality product. If anyone has concerns, issues or simply just questions then they should contact a committee member.

Thanks

Thanks,
I did submit a picture of him having a bath actually.I got the pm requesting a different size, so I sent it.
At least I think I did it right.I'm really not that great with the camera or the computer.I really hope that everyone that sent a picture gets in!

looking forward to having this Wonderful Calender done! And I want one too!

OK, just thought I'd let everyone know that the company we are using to print the calendars won't even begin printing them for 2009 until August or September, and as soon as they are available we will have a thread that will tell you how, when and where you can purchase them.

Remember folks this is our first year at doing this so we're still ironing out some of the wrinkles. I'm sure its going to a nice calendar that includes as many of the forum family's birds as we can.

So keep checking back and we'll definitely let it be known when they are ready.

Is there a way we can be notified if our pictures were accepted or not? I resubmitted mine when asked but I would like to know if they were received and if they were the right size. I didnt get an email back. Thanks!

We'll look into it and let you know.