Frequently Asked Questions

Now that, my friend, is one very loaded question indeed!

Here's the Reader's Digest version: PickPic ProofPro is an online proofing experience designed to give you, the photographer, an insane level of control over the online proofing experience extended to your clients. That includes the ability to manage galleries comprised of low-resolution "web-friendly" images and securely accept orders online for the product offerings of your choice. As an extension of those capabilities, it's an absolute snap to offer various discounts and promotions to further drive sales.

A fully-functional demo of ProofPro's gallery and shopping experience is available here. Please keep in mind that some features have been disabled or may not be available due to the nature of a live simulation.

You configure all aspects of your account from within the ProofPro Web Manager, a browser-based content management system that's just as easy to use and feature-rich as the galleries your clients browse.

Let's face it: Part of the fun of having this much power at your fingertips is the coolness factor in your clients believing that their proofing experience is something you had custom-built. Therefore, we do not place our branding anywhere that your clients can see, except on certain error screens. No "Powered by PickPic" footers, and no active links back to our site. Why would we want to spoil the fun?

(As a side note, when your clients check out and the system switches into secure mode, URLs will change from your own personalized domain to something like "yourphotographystudio.pickpic.net". That's because we're providing you access to our own SSL certificate for use as a ProofPro subscriber.)

ProofPro has been designed to take full advantage of the technologies included within so-called modern web browsers. Like with other web sites delivering cutting-edge features, it is possible that there could be various compatibility issues that affect a very small percentage of your clients, particularly if they're visiting your site with an older web browser.

The ProofPro gallery and shopping experience is regularly tested within the following web browsers:

*Due to its technical limitations, Internet Explorer 7 lacks some ProofPro features, such as image comparison, gallery page resizing, and gallery administrators.

Because each and every ProofPro account goes out the door configured and fully-designed to match your own branding, a trial version is not available.

Absolutely — though please keep in mind that ProofPro is currently only available in English-speaking territories. To answer that question though, at last count we have clients in Australia, Canada, Greece, Ireland, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Panama, Saudi Arabia, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.

For our non-U.S. friends, we've put together a nice set of features to accommodate their distinctive needs. So U.K. shoppers, for example, will be able to enter a "town" instead of "city," view time and date formats in a familiar way, and take comfort in words peppered throughout like "colour," "favourites," and "expiry."

Additionally, ProofPro's gallery and shopping experience has been designed to support non-English languages in the future.

In the future, we may need certain features or upgrades tested beyond the PickPic bullpen. We'll always ask you if you're interested, and we'll never pass off to you something that might knowingly compromise the security of your installation.

Yes, we do. Your hosting includes unlimited low-resolution image uploads (unlimited being images that have been prepped as 1200 pixels longest edge at 72 pixels-per-inch).

Not currently, though ProofPro does support the ability to create prints and products that are based on those offered by WHCC. Your account, in fact, will be pre-populated with WHCC products, including descriptive information and images that you can use as-is or modify to your liking.

Currently, ProofPro does not offer automatic product fulfillment capabilities through WHCC or any other lab. This allows you the flexibility of using the lab or vendor of your choice. When an order comes in, you'll receive notification via e-mail and be able to access full order details online in the ProofPro Web Manager.

Provided with your ProofPro subscription is PickPic Photo-ma-tron for Photoshop. Photo-ma-tron is designed to help with image preparation during the order fulfillment process. It can locate the original high-res image files on your hard drive and create lab versions that are resized, cropped, toned, and bordered. Once it's finished, you can then submit the images to your lab or other vendor using their preferred method.

We're always on the lookout for sweet new features that can simplify or enhance the ProofPro experience. Shuffle on over to the Contact Us page and submit a feature request. Do it quick before you forget! And make sure you specify under "Subject" that it's a feature suggestion.

Um... so how long have you been trapped in 2003, my friend?

ProofPro was designed to simplify your life — not feed your sick masochistic tendencies! The system automatically generates all toning and border previews on-the-fly.

Yup. In addition to the eight default tones and six default borders offered by ProofPro, you can certainly create your own! You also have full control over exactly which tones and borders you wish to offer on a print size-by-print size basis.

If you've been around the web block a few times (and, quite frankly, who hasn't?), you've probably figured out by now that protecting images online is a hard nut to crack. The web simply wasn't designed with image protection in mind. That said, we've certainly disabled the usual suspects: dragging and right-clicking. We've also taken some pretty revolutionary steps to protect the source image if your client is a smarty-pants and scours the code for its URL.

In the end though, a simple screenshot is impossible to prevent on both Mac and Windows, so you might want to augment ProofPro's built-in protection features by adding a persistent watermark to your images — a step that ProofPro can certainly assist you with as well.

Yes, ProofPro is designed to work with your own merchant account and supports realtime payment processing via popular payment gateways like Authorize.net, Elavon, PayJunction, SkipJack, WorldPay, and others. If you're curious as to whether we support the gateway associated with your particular merchant account, just contact us for the answer.

The answer to that depends on the specifics of your particular merchant account. ProofPro can be configured to accept the most common credit cards, but you'll want to check with your merchant account provider to confirm which ones are supported by your account.

Yes, ProofPro does support PayPal's Website Payments Standard option — though we still highly recommend considering a regular merchant account and payment processing gateway since that generally does not require buyers to completely exit the 1-screen ProofPro checkout process to complete the transaction (which unfortunately is the case with PayPal). We've also found that it can be more assuring to your clients when they're kept within your site throughout the entire checkout process.

ProofPro is available as a monthly subscription plan. For more info on what all is included in your subscription, please visit our PickPic ProofPro page.

We accept Visa, MasterCard, and American Express.

ProofPro accounts are generally designed and released within three business days.

No, ProofPro is a subscription-only service.

As a monthly subscriber, you won't have access to ProofPro's source code.

Unlike proofing services such as SmugMug and Pictage, you won't pay commissions to us on a per-order basis. That's because you use your own merchant account (or PayPal) in conjunction with ProofPro to process payments. As a result, we don't have to skim off as much as 18% every time you receive an order.

Additionally, you are not bound to fulfill orders through any one lab or vendor. ProofPro proudly maintains the spirit of its predecessors by granting you total flexibility in fulfilling orders yourself. That committment will remain in place, even when optional WHCC integration arrives.

Of course, we would recommend a third party, specifically PickPic ProofPro. But beyond the most obvious reason (duh, you're at pickpic.com), there are other considerations to think about.

The resources needed for continual development and support of an online proofing system on the magnitude of ProofPro is expensive business. It's a very serious commitment on the part of a developer to offer this kind of service and pledge to carry it forward with feature updates and bug fixes.

Most web designers will not have those resources, nor will they possess the experience needed to manage such a massive endeavor. (And believe us, massive doesn't even begin to describe it.)

And then there's the very serious question of whether or not it's wise to rely on your web designer for something as mission-critical like proofing, especially should you hire a new designer in the future. Will you get the same level of support for your proofing as you did when you were a design client? Or will the designer relegate you to their low-priority list? We'd like to think they'd be ethical about it, but our experience on this front has not been the most encouraging.

ProofPro doesn't run from your own computer, instead working its magic from a web hosting server.

The epicenter for managing your ProofPro account is the ProofPro Web Manager, a browser-based content management system that's designed to give you full control over your galleries, orders, clients, and pricing.

The following web browsers are compatible with the ProofPro Web Manager:

If you're using PickPic Photo-ma-tron for Photoshop to create image galleries or prep your high-resolution images for lab submission, you'll need Adobe Photoshop CS3, CS4, or CS5.

We'll provide you with our ProofPro Desktop application, which will facilitate the upload of your image galleries with handy-dandy drag-and-drop ease.

As a current PickPic 3 user, we're offering special migration discounts on your first year of ProofPro. For exact pricing, visit the Sign Up page and choose the appropriate option from the pulldown menu.