The PolyBlog

I’m considering going with metal prints in Canada to hang some photos

June 14 2020

I’ve seen the ads for so-called “metal prints” on lots of sites, and I’ve always thought, “Why?”. And then a woman on one of the astronomy groups showed what she’s doing with them — basically noting that they are “ultra thin”, she can use the adhesive hangers, get rounded corners, and they don’t stick out from the walls.

She’s hanging her astro photos in high traffic areas and they almost sit flush to the wall. Plus no frames to buy or put them in. Hmm…maybe that’s worth considering, see if I like them.

It’s the era of Covid, so everyone is advocating buying local, whereas for photo books, I’ve pretty much stuck with Shutterfly. The prices for these prints is not cheap, so there’s definitely going to be a quality factor bisecting the price factor. Let’s see what’s out there somewhere around the 8×10 size.

PosterJack.ca ~ $37

Like almost all online sites, their initial prices go one of two ways. Often, if you “join”, you get initial discounts. Which are “okay” level discounts, but not exceptional usually. 15-20% is the norm. But if you make an order, you start getting regular offers in your email, and Shutterfly often runs offers of 40-50% plus free shipping. Anything else seems like a markup as opposed to a smaller discount, but I digress.

PosterJack lists an 8×8 HD metal print at $40 (all prices will be in Cdn unless otherwise noted). And just by hanging out on the site for 5 minutes, it gave me a pop-up for 20% off. So $32. Like I said, not exactly cheap when a paper one through a place like Costco can get that down to a few dollars and some simple frames through Michaels go on sale regularly. Call it $15 and I’m being generous. An 8×8″ Classic White matte print will drop it to $27. They also have a Classic Silver, and with the discount, it would bring it down to about the same price as the Classic White’s existing discount, so $27.

Shipping looks like $10 now, and they’re 100% Canadian. Well, Torontonian, but close enough. 😉

BestCanvas.ca ~$25

They have a deal right now on 8×8″ for $10. Great price, and shipping would be $15 for the first item, free after that in the same order. They’re not Canadian, even though they have a Canadian domain, everything is shipped from the US. Worth a consideration.

Vistaprint.ca ~$22 (foam)

They actually don’t have metal prints, but they do have foam board. It too is light and would be fairly flush to the wall without needing a frame. Not exactly what I’m looking for, but the price is decent (11×17″ runs $20 marked down to $14). And about $8 for shipping.

Blacks.ca ~$40

I know, you’re thinking, “Black’s is still in business?”. Yes, not the old Black’s with stores in malls per se, but you can order online for processing. It lists the HD gloss options for $34.99 with some sort of “promo” to be applied at checkout. Free shipping if you spend over $50, and the discount looks like up to 25%, so would likely cost you two prints to get it. But it is all Canadian. About $13 for shipping.

Canvasndecor.ca ~ $41

They have two options — HD Gloss and Brushed Aluminum. The woman who inspired me to consider this noted that on her prints, particularly her astrophotography prints, she finds anything except the gloss tends to dampen the colours too much, almost washing them out. And she doesn’t find too much “shine” on the gloss since they sit flush.

They’re based in London, Ontario, and so shipping is standard ground shipping costs from there. A 8×10″ portrait starts at $28.99, but that is without any discounts applied. With the order, you can get a free 8×8″ extra metal print though, so that’s attractive. Often places like Shutterfly will include a free option where they’ll print a new product, you pay the shipping, and you get to try it out with obviously the company hoping you’ll buy more in the future. The front page suggests they have free metal prints which LOOKED like a similar offer, but no, it’s as an add-on to an order. Probably about $13 for shipping.

PhotobookCanada.ca ~$25-$37 (cheaper with a membership)

PBC is a lot closer to the standard offerings when ordering from pure photo sites. Their list price for an 8×8″ is a whopping $54.99, but oh look, there’s a 45% off coupon to bring it down to $30, everyone else’s standard price. And you can get another 10% off if you’re a special member i.e down to about $25 but you also get free shipping (their special memberships are like Amazon Prime memberships). And if you act now, operators are standing by, for a limited time blah blah blah. Not quite, but it feels like that using some of these sites. Of course, if I was planning to print a whole bunch of photos, free shipping is a nice perk to offset the membership upgrade. Otherwise, an 8×8″ print is about $12-13 to ship (standard).

However, as an aside, one of the benefits of going with a true photo printing site is that they know you may have something in mind other than a standard 1 print/1 image layout. So PBC has a BUNCH of layouts, all designed to help you do layouts quickly and easily. So “gifts for Mom” are an obvious popular choice, and they have layouts for 2-5 prints that can be arranged in a perfectly aligned collage with some writing over it saluting Moms. Or just nice layouts without any text.

CanvasChamp.ca ~$30

An 8×8″ is $17.72, which seems easy enough, and then your world explodes. They have options for single prints, wall displays, collages, split designs, mosaics, lyrics, digital painting, something called a bus roll, or putting quotes on metal.

The single print is what you expect. Wall displays? They have 24 different layouts so you can choose 3-10 pieces that after printing will all align properly into say a rectangle on your wall and look like it is perfectly designed to do that. Because it is. Not cheap obviously, printing say 10 separate metal prints, but the only place I’ve seen it as an option.

The photo collages are just layouts for multiple images in the same print but they have decent options. Split metal are designed as panels that hang in parallel (quite common) but goes way beyond that with 2-8 layouts that come a lot closer to the “wall display” layouts, but slightly different, and generally designed for a single image shared over all the pieces.The photo mosaic also works with a single image and has up to 21 “tiles” in various layouts (3×7, 4×5, etc.).

For the lyrics on metal, it is touted mostly as a “first year anniversary” gift (why? I don’t know, first year is “paper” but sure). The examples are some sort of sheet music default or a separate image (like a wedding photo) and then printing the lyrics to the first dance song over top. Awwww…okay, it’s not a completely stupid idea, and if you’re a guy looking for a “sweet” gift, sure.

Digital painting was a weird title, and what it actually does is offer you a bunch of standard filters you see in a lot of picture processing apps. You can take a “real” photo and make it an oil painting; or apply a charcoal filter to it to make it look like a charcoal drawing; or some sort of “knife” drawing; or a comic character. Now, just to be clear, YOU aren’t doing it, they are. You submit the photo, they work their techno magic and creativity. It’s a customized work of art, presumably. Are they likely using the same techniques of PhotoShop? You make the call!

I had no idea what a “bus roll” is, and it wasn’t until I saw the templates that I saw what they mean. On old buses, there literally was a bunch of destinations printed one above the other — so the driver would “roll” through the list changing the sign. Most of that has gone digital now, of course. This is similar, but the default is basically five lines of text, fully justified, above each other. Often you see this with signs that people have in bars, family rooms. “Excuse the mess, my children are making memories” or their template “This family runs on LOVE, laughter, and strong coffee”. For the first one, memories is almost always the last line and it’s the largest font going the full width of the image; for the second, LOVE is the word that stands out. Often the image has slightly different fonts, not just sizes, or some words are italicized. Some are even custom tweaked within a line. This isn’t that fancy for the default, but some of the templates are decent and add a LOT more options / lines to work with. Cool options. I have no idea what I’d use it for, but a cool option. Maybe a list of the planets with pictures of them around it? I could see someone using it to make a list of all of someone’s grandchildren.

The last option, quotes on metal, is pretty straightforward. It takes the previous “limitations” and throws them out the window. You upload a background image, pick your size, enter text, change fonts, etc. I was actually quite disappointed with it because there are no sample templates. Such an obvious place where people could benefit from some assistance in design. I know, I have done a lot of quote memes, and finding the right format / layout can be challenging if you want the combo to have impact.

So I said it was the last option, but I was wrong. While they don’t list it on the first page of metal prints, when you’re in the tool, you also get a WORD ART option. If you don’t remember what those are, it’s where you insert a whole bunch of words and the computer generates a picture with those words turned every which way and adjusted for size so that when you’re done, it looks like a jumble. Often the words are all about a single theme, and you put that theme in much bigger prose. For the “image”, it is usually a simple shape. The tool here offers butterflies, diamonds, hearts, hexagons, home symbol, pentagon or round. It’s not the most sophisticated tool, but it will handle about 10 lines up to 20 characterr each line.

I have little use for most of the options, but nice to know they exist. Assume $13 or so for shipping on a basic order.

PrintPartner.ca ~ $41-$52

An 8×8″ runs $39 and the page says “If you order, we’ll give you 30% off next time”, standard practice. So let’s call it $28 for future orders. They have matte or gloss. Nice, clean, simple. Standard shipping costs.

PhotoHop.ca – $58

OMG, there’s a photo printing place that has a frog as a logo? And it’s Canadian. As a PolyWogg, I have to take that as a sign, right?????

They have brushed or white aluminum (as well as plexiglass, interesting). Put in all my options, $40. $18 for shipping. Ouch. That is one expensive frog theme.

Henry’s.ca – $?

I saw that they had ordering options, but it isn’t something I would normally choose with Henry’s. Hardware yes, beyond that? Not sure. Their price list was a bit odd. They listed aluminum “panels” and metallic paper. Hmm.

Loblaws.ca – $?

Loblaws has a photo processing studio, as does places like Shoppers Drug Mart (and shocker, even before Loblaws bought SDM, it was the SAME studio company behind the scenes). And they’re all closed for COVID apparently. Odd. Even for shipping and pickups?

Shutterfly.com ~ $49

I already mentioned that I use Shutterfly for my photobooks, and so I’m eligible for a range of regular promo codes. A friend who uses them won’t even consider ordering unless it’s 50% off, which is what she considers their REAL normal price. I’m not QUITE that harsh, but I tend to agree.

As I mentioned with PhotoBook Canada, going with a real photo site explodes the options. If I click on a simple 8″x10″, there are 51 different layouts I can choose from there, with multiple photos or multiple prints arranged on a wall to fit together. If I go with Glossy, it starts at $65 with an “up to” 40% code down to $48.74. Umm, yeah, probably no. 40% would drop it to $39, and even then…but it has free shipping right now, and it is good quality. Still no. Maybe if they have a metal print sale. They’ve eliminated brushed aluminum from their options right now too. Interesting.

Costco.ca ~$29

I saved Costco for last because I’m likely to go with them. Most of the printing places aren’t going to vary widely in their metallic printing (at least according to some more knowledgeable reviews online), I don’t have big needs, and one of the huge costs is shipping. But I can pick up CostCo products locally. And I’m already a paid member. Not quite a fair comparison, I know.

Their smallest size is 11×14″, a bit bigger potentially than I might want as a default, but even then, the price is only $29. Yeah, basically the same printing price as most of the other places but for a larger print and no shipping cost to add on.

They have 9 different layouts, including collages and some with some extra formatting over top (although usually you can remove that at the design stage).

It’s not as fancy as some of the other options, but it looks decent enough at an okay price, and free shipping. I need to pick a couple of astro photos to work with, and then I might try a couple of the above sites. Stay tuned!

Rebuilding my site

June 12 2020

I’m in the process of rebuilding many of the posts and pages on my site, so I will be temporarily taking everything offline, and putting them back up as I reprocess them. Here is my current progress:

Status as of June 12:

1344 published, 20 drafts, 10 pending

Testing Ultimate Blocks on my WordPress site

June 4 2020

I’ve been testing all the big block collections, and it’s time for Ultimate Blocks. Not to be confused with Ultimate Addons, a different block collection.

Ultimate Blocks comes with 20 different blocks, let’s see if I want any of them in my personal collection:

Button — It says “improved” but since I didn’t see the original, hard to say. It has four different sizes, flex/fixed/full width, colours or transparent, rounded or square, etc. What doesn’t work for me is that it is just one button…if you wanted to put several side-by-side (like a horizontal menu), you’d have to wrap it in some other kind of box/container.
Call to Action — Title, text and a button, nothing unusual, but I do like the button is set up so that it overlaps the container (i.e. half-in, half-out). Not bad.
Click to Tweet — I suppose if you were trying to get a campaign going, you could write a default tweet and then click the button to share. But not something I would ever do — too close to a chain letter to me. If you want to re-tweet on Twitter, go crazy; pre-writing your tweet so it looks original? Not going to happen.
Content Filter — This is sort of a strange block, and uber powerful. You know how sometimes you go to a site and you click on a page, it gives you a whole bunch of categories, and as you click on them, the selection gets narrower and narrower? Like COMPUTERS, DESKTOPS, ALLINONES, etc.? Most sites do that with query lookups and results. This allows you to do it all in one page. So you can enter your categories, lots of content blocks that you assign to various categories, and voila(!), semi-instant sortable page with content that changes as you choose which categories/tags apply. Interesting, but I have no real need for it. Pretty impressive though for all that content in a single page if you didn’t have query functions available easily.
Content Toggle — Basically a single accordion, and with not much styling.
Countdown — I am really surprised almost no blocks have this. Sure, there are widgets available easily, but a simple countdown block would seem a no-brainer. You have Count-Up blocks? Why not Countdown ones for dates, times, etc.? You set the final date and time, add in your choice of largest and smallest units of time (weeks, days, hours, minutes, seconds), and choose a look/style of regular text, within circles or more like an odometer. All of them are pretty useful, to be honest. The only thing that surprises me is that I can’t style the text or the background or the numbers or the typography in general. You have a choice of black text on a standard background. I could wrap it inside something else, sure, but on its own? Bland. Functional, but bland. Oh, and you can enter text to appear when the magic time arrives! Nice.
Divider — A single line that I can control colour, thickness and a bit of spacing? Yawn.
Expand — Very similar to an accordion function, or as they call it, a content toggle, but with text that toggles the change, rather than an arrow.
How To — This is one that interested me, although I confess I want to adapt them to do recipes. It offers a title area, basic introduction, options for a video tutorial, duration (i.e., cooking time/prep time), required supplies (i.e., ingredients), required tools (i.e., pans, pots, etc.), separate steps with images / descriptions / tips, and even a final result option with a picture. It’s quite decent. But TBH, it is more about giving me ideas for what I want in my own recipe block layout than making me want to adapt this one.
Image Slider — It works okay, but as noted earlier, I have no need for such a block, since I use the NextGen Gallery, not the media library, to store my photos.
Post Grid — I have consistently said I have no need for such a block, and that holds, but this one has some nice simple options to let me choose which aspects of the preview shows (FI, title, date, author, excerpt, read more) and lets me put it in a vertical list if I want. I just don’t have a use for it.
Progress Bar — Holy snicker-doodles. Whoever designed this block is a relative genius. It is the simplest way to enter a progress bar that I have ever seen. Literally you add your “description” with basic styling if needed (although you could just put a paragraph block above it with full styling), choose whether you want a dial or a slide bar, adjust widths and colour of the bar, and then, wait for it, you literally just move a slider left and right for the percentage complete. It’s basic, but it is REALLY well done. I’m super-impressed.
Review — Well, this is another block that is quite unique. It has the option for a title of the review, you can add multiple features and rate them separately (1-5). And when you’re done, it will add an overall summary at the bottom! Sweet. It’s not the style of review I do, but it’s a nice format. And back some time ago, when I was reviewing individual episodes of TV shows and looking for a way to showcase them, this could have worked. My only complaint is the lack of more “descriptive” space to tell a story as part of the review. While each mini-block allows you as many lines as you want, the ability to style them is quite limited.
Social Share — The block, such as it is, is decent, with round or square buttons, and options for FB, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Reddit and Tumblr. I don’t have need for any of them, as I already have tools for the site, but if I was looking, I like the ability to change the size of the icons here. If you want, you can even colorize all of them to match your theme, which is, umm, interesting.
Star Rating — This is a pretty basic block … you choose how many stars and their colour, that’s about it.
Styled Box — Again, they take a unique approach to the boxes, giving you a sub-choice of a Notification box, a Feature box (with images), a number box, or simply a box with a border. None are spectacular, but the number box isn’t very common, so nice to see an alternate version.
Styled List — I had hoped for something funky for bullets and numbers, but it’s really just an icon list.
Tabbed Content — Yep, they’re tabs all right. Nothing exciting.
Table of Contents — As I only had a couple of other ones to try, I was happy to see another possibility. Alas, it’s only real feature was the ability to have multiple columns.
Testimonial — Pretty basic setup, picture to the left (rounded), testimonial text and a name + company, with basic styling for colour.

Wow, this is a really tough call to make for retention or deactivation. There are 20 blocks, and for 18 of them, I can easily pass. The Countdown one though is pretty sweet, and the Progress Bar is excellent. Oh, who am I kidding? Of course I’m keeping them.

Testing Premium Blocks for Gutenberg in my WordPress site

June 4 2020

As you can see from about 10 of my last 20 posts, I’m on a run testing out various blocks on my Gutenberg site. The next “collection” to consider is called “premium blocks” and we’ll see if it lives up to the name. There are 12 blocks in the collection:

Accordion — A really nice simple accordion block. I already have one with massive styling with Stackable, or highly workable with Kadence, but if I didn’t, this one would definitely get the job done. Easy to add items above each other, and then once created, to change typography, spacing, borders, padding, and even shadows. Nice.
Banner — I have no use for it, but it is a block to put an image with a title and description over it, with some basic animation. There are six options, and depending on which you choose, the title and description pop up when you hover, or the description is added, or the title slides in, etc. Decently done, I just don’t have a use for it. It’s more like an animated “cover” image option.
Button — There are lots of button blocks out there, and I have one that does multiple buttons together well. But this one has a nice animation feature, which is when you hover, it can do a slide, a radial or a shutter transition. Standard options for typography and colours, borders and CSS, but the transition options are decent.
Count Up — This is probably the best block I’ve seen for a count-up function, and it almost makes me wish I had a use for it. There’s an option for an icon or image above it, prefixes and suffix text, the actual number of course, and some text afterwards (part title, part description). And you can make the standard changes to the typography and colours. But what I think really sets it apart is the control over the count-up progression. You can set the time in milliseconds for the overall rolling, as well as the delay before it starts. So you can make it go fast or slow. Really nicely done. But as I said, I just don’t have a use for it.
Dual Heading — Have you ever seen a mixed text heading where say the first word is one colour and the second word is different, and maybe they change typography, colours, and other features? Yeah, not often, except in logos. And if you were doing a logo, you’d do a graphic. Not sure the point of this block is, I certainly don’t have a use for it.
Icon — It has about 800 to choose from, but like most of these, I don’t know why you wouldn’t use actual clip art of some kind.
Icon Box — It’s an icon. It’s a box. There’s a button. Oooohh, ahhhhh. Zzzzzzz.
Maps — I assumed it wouldn’t work without API key, and yep, it doesn’t. Moving on.
Pricing Table — Let’s be clear, this is a pricing box. There’s a spot for the table, the price, some features or terms, a description, and a link box. All standard, but all nicely done. And then they drop the feature everyone should have. You can add a “badge” to the corner of the box to make it stand out — like a triangle in the corner so you can identify savings, or that it’s popular, or the recommended choice. You choose the text and what it means, but none of the other blocks I have seen have had this. Really nice. And again, I wish I had a use for it.
Section — This is more of a text box to separate out different parts of a page, but there are dozens of ways to do that already, not sure what this adds. It’s more of a container wrapper though, with any other block possible within it.
Testimonials — At first, I was thinking it was rather ho hum. Until I realized that it had double sets of quotes around it. It would make for a really good simple blockquote block. And TBH, if I hadn’t already styled 400+ instances with another block, this would have been a serious contender for me to use for a simple quote block. They have an image I wouldn’t need, company info not so much although I could make it the citation, author, etc. I would like an option to turn the quotes OFF, but guess what? I could make the opacity on it 0, which hides it completely. I’m seriously tempted to keep the plugin just for this block.
Video Box — This block has the option of YouTube videos (already covered), Daily Motion (never use them, or Vimeo (ditto), or, wait for it, self-hosted videos (which I do have). It’s not fancy, I can change some start-up options, add looping, etc., all pretty standard, and a border. Overall, impressive. If I didn’t have video options already, this would be a nice uncomplicated addition.

As I said on numerous sub-blocks, this is a really nice, highly-functional middle-range set of blocks. Not overly complicated on the styling, not too many functions, and it does all of the ones it has really well. Several work AWESOME, I just don’t have a need for them, and I already have my quote block covered, so I won’t keep the Testimonial one.

Testing blocks in Orbit Fox on my WordPress site

June 4 2020

I’ve already worked through a bunch of major block collections, and chosen which ones make the grade and which ones don’t. So I had seen the recommendations for Orbit Fox and thought I would give them a try. Except I already tried Otter’s collection by itself.

When I opened up the one called Orbit Fox, I got the exact same block options as Otter. They’re identical, and I’ve already reviewed them (Trying-out-otter-blocks-for-my-wordpress-site/). Well that was a waste of time.

But, while I’m here, I can check out the plugin’s other features I guess.

Social Sharing Module — This allows you to create sticky buttons on the left side of your screen for your content, making your share buttons always visible. Umm, how about no? It totally doesn’t integrate with your theme in any way, shape, or literally, form.
Gutenberg Blocks — Pass, as I said above.
Uptime Monitor — I already have that in Jetpack.
Analytics Integration — Integrate Google Analytics? Already have it, thanks.
Template Directory — This is one of the few options I see in the plugin worth considering. They have pre-designed templates for pages and, once imported, they operate as “all-in-one” landing pages with an interactive header, FAQs, etc. If you can fit it all in one page, this is a good option. Except, btw, you have to install Elementor for it to work. I didn’t see that ANYWHERE until I got to the preview page. Major pass not only on content but on marketing approach that basically advertises you can simply import them.
MyStock Import — The ability to directly import from mystock.photos…with a whopping 1200 or so photos. Umm, I have clipart collections with 10x that number, plus there are sites with free clipart and images with literally 1000s of images. Why would I want this?
Policy Notice — a simple notice bar to “inform users about your website policy”. Umm, which website policy? User policy? My policy on Covid distancing? Privacy policy? Yawn.

I jumped over one of their modules in there, mostly because my snark was on a roll and I didn’t want to kill the bad buzz. But they have an option called Menu Icons. A lot of the button blocks you see in the collections gave options to add icons to the buttons, right beside the text. This one lets you do the same thing, but to every item in your navigation menu. Your text remains, but beside Home, you could have an icon of a home button. It’s a nice feature and one I haven’t implemented well in other plugins without a lot of overhead. Nicely done.

Overall, I admit I’m beyond disappointed. The site that reviewed the plugin and collection said nothing about Elementor nor the repetition of Otter’s collection (the same company). So I was pretty jaded, pretty fast. But I’ll admit the menu icons option is decent, if I needed it. Which I don’t. Hard pass.