Technology Archives - Page 24 of 42

Nostalgia and personalization top holiday decor trends for 2016

The holidays are all about enjoying the company of friends and family, and if you’re celebrating together from the comfort of your own home, there are a few creative ways to make your home feel even more festive and inviting. Spread holiday cheer from the moment your guests walk in the door with unique and personalized holiday décor items from London Drugs Photolab.

Christmas Ornaments – Christmas Ornaments are what make every Christmas tree unique. Often, ornaments are passed down through the generations, and many tell our family stories, from ‘First Year Married’ to ‘Baby’s First Christmas’. You can customize your very own Christmas ornaments to share your favourite memories. Choose from our extensive selection of ornaments, made from aluminum, pewter, crystal and ceramic – all of which come in a wide variety of shapes. Add a personal photo and some text to create a special keepsake you can hang on the tree for years to come.

Canvas Gallery Wraps & Aluminum Panels – Just as you change the pillows and other décor in your home for the holidays, why not switch up your artwork, too? Get creative and have your own personal holiday photos printed on a Canvas Gallery Wrap or Aluminum Panel. Deck the halls with a fine art print of your family’s annual Christmas photo, or if you consider yourself skilled with a camera, why not take one of your own wintery landscape photos and have it printed?

Our Canvas Gallery Wraps are hand stretched onto deep wooden frames for easily placement or hanging, and are printed using specialty pigmented inks with archival qualities, so your holiday photos can be displayed as works of art.

We now also offer our high-gloss Aluminum Panels in a larger format, up to 40 x 60, which makes them great for creating your very own holiday wall décor. Thanks to their mounting, the vivid images appear almost three-dimensional, seemingly jumping off the wall.

Personalized Placemats – A lot of time during the holidays is spent around the dinner table, so why not add your own personal holiday touches to your tablespace? Customize placemats using our Photolab to match your Christmas theme: our experts recommend using a photo of last year’s Christmas tree, the gingerbread house your kids made, or even a snapshot of the snowman you built. You can even personalize with text (a simple ‘Merry Christmas’ works great).

Photo Coasters – If you’re planning on entertaining, it’s the details that will really impress your guests. Instead of pulling out your usual old coasters for guests to use, customize your own holiday coasters with some personal photos and the help of our Photolab. Make them all the more festive with some text: “Eat, Drink and be Merry!”, for example.

Get started with any of these fun and festive décor ideas at our new Photolab website or by visiting any London Drugs location.

Holiday Order Deadlines

A great selection of products are available for same day or next day pickup, up to Saturday, December 24 including Enlargements, Canvas Gallery Wraps, Express Books, Photographic Calendars and Mugs. See a photolab expert for details.

Be sure to place your orders for the below products before the listed dates to ensure Christmas delivery:

Photobooks, Calendars and Traditional Greeting Cards: Wednesday, December 14

Creative Products: Wednesday, December 14

Crystals: Tuesday, December 13

Crystallize-it 3D Photo Crystals: Tuesday, December 13

Bobbleheads: Monday, November 14

Yes Video: Friday, November 25

Click here for information about order deadlines.

Aluminum metal panels offer durability, clarity and a unique way to display photography

Choosing the right surface to display your photos on is just as important as capturing the right moment on your camera. More and more photographers are opting to print on aluminum panels due to their durability, resistance to fading, and their glass-like luminous quality. The London Drugs Photolab has been printing photos on aluminum metal panels since 2014, and has recently added larger sizes to the range of printing options.

Photographer, Larry Hilderman has printed several of his photos on aluminum at London Drugs, and offers some insight about why he uses the medium to showcase and sell his photography.

I have worked in the photographic industry for 35 years on the technical side. Starting with friends and family, and then growing through word of mouth, I have been fortunate to sell images to clients across Canada. As a landscape photographer, I have had great success using aluminum panels to showcase my work. The smooth glossy surface of the panel shows great detail of the photograph. Colour gamut is not diminished with good saturation, the image has “pop” that has been very well received.

Aluminum panels have a sharper look to them as opposed to paper or canvas prints, they have “depth” that is not normally seen on other media. This enhances the colour and contrast without looking artificial. This is best suited to subjects with more saturated colours – but I have had black & white images printed on aluminum that also looked beautiful. It must be the apparent contrast that enhances the image.

As a bonus, the image is extremely durable and resistant to moisture which allows it to be displayed in high traffic areas and places with high humidity. I have had many requests for these panels and hope to sell more in the future!

Above: Selected images from photographer Larry Hilderman, whose aluminum prints are currently featured in the Local Inspirations Artist Gallery at select Calgary Photolabs.

See more of Larry’s work at: http://larryhilderman.myportfolio.com/

Don’t Get Rid of Your Digital Devices

By now you’ve heard of the negative effects of spending extended periods of time in front of digital devices such as smartphones, computers, TVs and tablets. Lengthy screen time has many detrimental effects on our health. It can disturb our sleep pattern by messing up our circadian rhythm, cause digital eye strain, dry eyes, eye fatigue, neck pain, headaches… the list goes on.

Better photos = better calendar

The Photolab is here to help you create both
Many posts here on the Photoblog involve showing our readers how to create beautiful, quality products that are ultimately produced by the Photolab. Pretty much all that is required on your end is a little time and a few photos. However, whenever we show you how to create these things and describe how amazing the end product will look, we always make the same assumption: that you have at your disposal an array of quality digital photos that would look beautiful on any given Photolab print or product. And while I’d be willing to bet that is the case for most Photoblog readers, I’m sure there are also some of you who feel you are lacking enough quality photos to create certain products. There may even be some readers who lack the photography know-how to take the kind of photos you want. In fact, in certain cases I would even count myself among you! Truth be told, sometimes while writing these tutorial posts on how to create certain prints or products, I look through my own photo libraries and get frustrated by the lack of quality photos I can use when taking screenshots of the Photolab kiosk or website. Yup, I admit it: a great number of my photos are too crummy even for demonstration purposes.

Calendars are a good example of a product that can be both beautiful and easy to create via the Photolab tool of your choice, but finding the perfect photo for 12 different months can be challenging for anyone. That’s why we’ve resolved in this post to help make it a little easier for you to capture those ideal shots, in-season, right at the moment when the photo-op presents itself:

Introducing the Photolab Quick Advice Cards
12 seasonally appropriate tips for taking photos that can make your Photolab calendar (or any Photolab product for that matter) look more polished—even, dare I say—professional-calibre. Simply click the link to open the PDF, print it, cut on the dotted lines so they’ll fit neatly and conveniently into your camera bag, and use at will. Obvious advice: print them on card stock or by the London Drugs Photolab on Photo paper so they’re more durable. Just follow the advice on these cards and soon you’ll have a stockpile of images so incredible, so printable, you’ll wish there were 64 months in a year.

Creating a customized Photolab calendar

Customized calendars are one of the most popular items the Photolab has to offer. And why not? Their merits—specifically their customizability and their immense sentimental value, especially as gifts but even for oneself—have been covered frequently in past Photoblog posts like these.
However, since the last post about them the Photolab has rolled out its magical new website and in-store kiosks, making their creation easier and even more customizable than ever before. And if you doubt this claim for even a moment, I invite you to read at your leisure the demonstration that follows—

How to create a customized photo calendar
using the Photolab in-store kiosk:

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Begin by selecting Creative Orders, and then Agree to the Terms & Conditions on the next screen.

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Then choose where you want to get your photos from. This time, I chose to log in and access the ones I’ve uploaded to my Photolab account.

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Next I select Calendars from the Products page.

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On the Calendar page you can choose your calendar type, your binding…you can even choose a single page or a desktop. I’ve selected the traditional style of calendar, because I happen to be a traditional guy.

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In fact, I went even more traditional and selected the standard 8.5×11” calendar. As you can see, I’ve got nine styles available in this size to choose from.

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From the menu on the left I can also choose to start my calendar in October, November or December, or I can just choose the full 2017 calendar year.

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You can place your photos manually one-by-one, or you can select the autofill option. Usually when I post a demo like this, I choose the manual option so I can take you through it; but since I’ve gone that route so often, this time I’m going with autofill—you know, just to balance things out a bit.

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When you select autofill, it pre-loads photos from your album into the calendar template, and then you can proceed to edit them.

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From the top left of the screen you can choose your layout; you can also select whether you want to edit the calendar in page view, spread view or as a grid of thumbnails.

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Not only can you edit or add text to your photos, but you can also add and edit text in each of the individual date boxes on each page, for every month. Now you can give Grandma’s birthday the same official recognition as a national holiday!

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Once you’re finished with all your tweaks and edits, you can save the project to your account or add it to your shopping cart. As you can see, volume discounts are clearly pointed out. Then choose your shipping or in-store pickup preferences, and you’re done!

But the helpful advice doesn’t end there, dear readers! One thing the Photoblog hasn’t addressed much is the fact that however you want to make your Photolab calendar, great photos will make it that much better—except what do you do if you happen to have a dearth of quality photos? The solution is in this month’s companion post, which contains a helpful way to keep some handy DIY photography tips right close by whenever those perfect photo-ops present themselves.

5 Ways to Enjoy Wireless Audio Wherever You Go

wireless speaker london drugs

Tired of tangled headphone cords? Want to move parties to the patio seamlessly? Need mood music for moonlight picnics? How about mountaintop tunes for your next big group hike? All this and more is now easier with the growth in wireless audio.

Despite the vinyl resurgence, most audiophiles also enjoy digital and streaming music. So it’s fitting that the related tech is advancing steadily.

Here are some of the best wireless audio options at London Drugs: READ MORE

The Best Tablets for Back-to-School 2016

Last week, our LD Experts covered the best school laptops of 2016. But what if you want a device that’s more practical for schoolwork than a smartphone, but lighter and generally cheaper than a laptop?

Of course, you’ll be interested in tablets. These days, that also includes convertibles or hybrids – with hideable or detachable keyboards. That way, they function as either a laptop or a tablet, as needed.

But which are your best options? As always, that depends on your needs and also your budget. Here are some of the best tablet options for 2016.

Nostalgia and personalization top holiday decor trends for 2016

Aluminum metal panels offer durability, clarity and a unique way to display photography

Don’t Get Rid of Your Digital Devices

Better photos = better calendar

Creating a customized Photolab calendar

5 Ways to Enjoy Wireless Audio Wherever You Go

The Best Tablets for Back-to-School 2016

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Nostalgia and personalization top holiday decor trends for 2016

Aluminum metal panels offer durability, clarity and a unique way to display photography

Don’t Get Rid of Your Digital Devices

Better photos = better calendar

Creating a customized Photolab calendar

5 Ways to Enjoy Wireless Audio Wherever You Go

The Best Tablets for Back-to-School 2016

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