Light Blue: Photo
Business Management Software for Mac or PC.

• Single-user version - £251.06

(£295 incl. VAT).

• Multi-seat version - £251.06

(£295 incl. VAT) per seat.

Single-user or multi-seat?

If you're a single photographer or sole trader, you'll most likely want the single-user version. It's designed to be run as a standalone piece of software; you can't share the data file with anyone else.

The multi-seat version is for businesses with more than one member of staff. You can install it on several machines, all of which can access the data file, running on a host machine; changes made on one machine are visible to all other machines. A maximum of five simultaneous connections may be made to the data file at any one time. (The host machine counts as one.)

To purchase a multi-seat version simply add the Light Blue: Photo software to your basket and change the quantity to match the amount of seats required at the checkout.

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Customer Reviews

Jon said: "LightBlue Photo has been a god send for my business, before I was using a mish mash of spreadsheets, Post-it notes and more than a bit of luck in managing my accounts, customer relations and orders. Now Light Blue: Photo covers all of that and a lot more. From the initial enquiry right through to the web gallery it covers it all - and integration with Google calender means that even when I'm out I can carry all of my appointments in my phone. To me the most useful section has been the accounting options, showing me the exact amount of profit in each of my packages and reminding me of this every time I book a new client! I'd thoroughly reccommend this software to any photographer."

James said: "LightBlue software is the management equivalent of Photoshop. I've found it simply designed, easy to learn and use - it has a wealth of features to keep the business side of my photography running smoothly with the minimum of effort on my behalf. Cleverly put together to record all stages of contact and information with your clients, it has been an invaluable part of my business the last couple of years. I've used many other types of database systems set up for photographers as well as trying to track my business with several different spreadsheets and, before I found Light Blue: Photo, all the various systems left me scratching my head! Light Blue: Photo works and it works well."

Ian said: "About 3 years ago I really needed to get myself organized in the studio and searched for a software solution. I originally purchased another well known UK product, but very quickly became frustrated with many of the things it couldn't do especially as my business needs grew. I was about 12 months in and making do when Light Blue: Photo was released. WOW - what a breath of fresh air it was (and still is)!  Within 24 hours I was won over by the intuitive, simple-to-use, feature-rich application that is Light Blue: Photo. At that time the product was able to tick all of the boxes and more that my previous solution was never able to do."

Melanie said: "Light Blue: Photo has totally streamlined my business admin working practice. It does everything you could possibly wish with such ease.  I'm not quite sure how I managed without it!  A must have purchase for any pro photographer."

Award-winning business management software for photographers

If you are a professional photographer, you'll know that keeping track of clients, shoots, images, orders and expenses can be done with a load of spreadsheets, folders, bits of paper and a brain the size of a planet. However, we think there's a better way.

No matter what type of photography you specialize in, Light Blue: Photo is a flexible studio management system that lets you keep on top of shoots, orders and contacts. As well as bursting with clever things to help you to run a busy and successful business, Light Blue: Photo also makes it easy to manage your image files, publish them on the web and profit from them.

Features:

Track enquiries, bookings and shoots

Diaries get messy, spreadsheets are complicated. Light Blue: Photo makes it simple to check your availability and plan your work. If you're using Mac OS X Leopard or Snow Leopard, you can sync shoots, meetings and tasks with iCal (and from there with your iPhone or iPod Touch) and take them with you. Alternatively, publish your bookings to Google Calendar, then sync with mobile devices like the BlackBerry, or other calendars, like Outlook.

•  Keep track of your enquiries and meetings with clients.
•  View your events in a week- or month-to-view calendar layout.
•  Sync shoots, meetings and to-do items with iCal, iPhone or iPod Touch. (Requires Mac OS X 10.5 or later)
•  Publish shoots to Google Calendar, then sync with mobile devices (BlackBerry), or other calendars (Outlook).
•  Quickly see where you're going for a shoot with Google Maps links.

Be personal

Treating your clients as individuals makes all the difference. With Light Blue: Photo, you can create personalized communications, including single or mass emails and documents from templates. This means you can easily record all of your dealings with your clients, and access them at the touch of a button.

•  Find information quickly and easily.
•  Share addresses between contacts, and have multiple addresses for each contact.
•  Print envelopes or labels for contacts.
•  Record all of your dealings with clients and refer back to it when you need.
•  Send personalized emails to individual clients or to multiple recipients on your mailing list.
•  Store your commonly used brochures, letters and forms and emails within Light Blue: Photo.

Handle your finances with ease

Speed up the process of making money, and keep your business profitable. Light Blue: Photo makes it simple to add new orders, track payments, find outstanding debts, record expenditure or mileage and get an overview of your current position. You can also set up your own price lists so you can quickly add products relevant to orders.

•  Keep track of how much you've made.
•  Make it easy to add new items to an order.
•  Import orders from ProSelect, the market-leading sales tool for professional photographers.
•  Create an inventory of your equipment for insurance purposes.
•  Create your own invoice, quote and receipt templates.
•  Easily deal with multiple payments for the same order, or one payment covering several orders.
•  Apply VAT or sales tax to your orders with Light Blue: Photo's flexible tax features.

Manage your digital files

Your digital files are some of your most valuable assets, and it's likely that you'll have thousands (or hundreds of thousands) of them. Organizing them by hand is boring. Light Blue: Photo can organize the files on your hard drive and links image files to shoots, so they're neatly arranged and easy to find.

•  Create folders at the click of a button, import image file details and link them to shoots.
•  Sort your image files for a shoot into chronological order, even if you're using using more than one camera or photographer.
•  Keep track of an image file's details (including the date, time taken and file extensions).
•  View thumbnails of your pictures within Light Blue: Photo.
•  Be sure your files are safe: keep a note of when you backed up or archived a shoot.
•  Put an end to hunting through your folders to find images for a shoot - with just one click, extract all of the image files for an order to a neatly-organized folder on your desktop.

Publish your pictures online and profit from them

Light Blue: Photo makes it effortless to create attractive web galleries from sets of pictures, ready to upload to your website. Using Light Blue: Photo's galleries, there's also the option to make money from your pictures on your own website, without having to shell out for a separate shopping cart system. (You'll need a PayPal account for some of these features, but PayPal accounts are free.)

•  Use one of the sleek templates which come with Light Blue: Photo to generate attractive web galleries with just one click or, if you prefer, produce previews to upload to the gallery system you use.
•  Protect your images from unauthorized use - add your own watermark to your web galleries.
•  Make money from your own site without paying monthly fees or writing code - integrate your galleries with PayPal's industry-standard shopping cart system simply by entering your PayPal username into your copy of Light Blue: Photo.
•  Import your own web gallery templates to fit in with your site's design.

Do it your way

Light Blue: Photo is designed to be easy to customize, without additional fees. Changed your branding? No problem. You can update your logo or contact information or add new invoicing information in a few minutes. Adding new letter templates or brochures to send to clients is a piece of cake, and you can even make your own web gallery templates to match your website.

•  Light Blue: Photo will work with the date formats, paper sizes and currency you're used to.
•  Create your own workflows, shoot types and price lists.
•  Automatically updating drop-down lists that speed data entry.
•  Update your branding in seconds, without any additional fees - add your own header and footer images and personalized text to Light Blue: Photo's invoices.
•  Add your own custom templates, including brochures, letters, forms and emails.

Enjoy running your business

Let's face it: you have to spend time organising your shoots and keeping on top of what you're doing. We've designed Light Blue: Photo to be intuitive and pleasing to the eye, to put a little bit of joy back into the soulless world of admin. We've built it using FileMaker, the robust, industry-leading database engine, which means you can effortlessly manage your information.

•  We don't presume that just because you're a photographer, you run a Mac. We've made Light Blue: Photo cross-platform, so it'll run on Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7 or Mac OS X 4.11 and higher.
•  You don't have to slog your way through the documentation before you get started. If you're looking for some pointers, Light Blue have put together a series of video tutorials, and produced written versions in their own section of the manual which comes with the download. Of course, there's also a more detailed section of the user manual, which goes through everything you can do in Light Blue: Photo.

Don't just take our word for it

We could go on all day about how brilliant we think Light Blue: Photo is - but here is a selection of previous customers' comments...

•  "Light Blue: Photo ticks all the boxes with regards to what I want it to do, and there are no compromises. You can tell that it's been designed by working photographers." - Ian MacLachan, wedding photographer
•  "Light Blue: Photo is the management software equivalent of Photoshop. It's designed to give you everything you need and yet can do much much more; there's very little that you are left wanting for." - James Davidson, wedding photographer
•  "I just adore Light Blue: Photo - I'm going to recommend it to all my photographer friends! Thanks for developing such fabulous software to make my life easier!" - A Real User, by email
•  "Light Blue: Photo has transformed my normally chaotic office into a vastly improved workplace and it's the best investment I have made this year." - Charles Haines, photographer
•  "Really easy to use - so much better than anything I've tried before..." - Maria Murray, award-winning photographer
•  "Light Blue: Photo is fab, and the customer service is fast and friendly..." - A Real User, by email
•  "I firmly believe that success in business as a photographer is in large part down to your business skills, and I can really see how Light Blue: Photo can give you a little bit of an edge in being more business-like." - Zoe Richards, photographic trainer