We’ve got some exciting news for our QuiKeys family: QuiKeys is re-branding! From today onwards, QuiKeys will be referred to as theproductformerlyknownasQuiKeys … until we announce our official new name

What does this mean to you?

No need to worry; it’s business as usual for theproductformerlyknownasQuiKeys!

Current customers:

No changes for you at all You’ll be happy to know we’re continuing support and development for all things formerlyknownasQuiKeys. All QuiKeys family members are welcome to contact me by phone or email as always.

QuiKeys owner Hopefuls:

The productformerlyknownasQuiKeys line is current and available at www.quikphototools.com!

SuperBonus: Save 30% on all in-stock old-skool-QuiKeys-branded photo editing systems!! Hop on over and use coupon code ReBrand to pick some goodies up and get a bit of QuiKeys nameplate nostagia while you’re at it

So what’s gonna change?

Three things:

. . . 1. Our name.

. . . 2. Our website.

. . . 3. Our blog.

This will be our last post to this blog but don’t fret: we’re merging all this good Geekery into our Chic Speak counterpart! All future Geek-related posts can be found over there until we get our new web-house in order.

Looking forward …

We’ve been busy working on updates for the recently released Photoshop CS5 and forthcoming Lightroom 3 release. There’s also been major efforts made in squishing 64-bit PC bugs and dreaming up future products.

Oh yeah: we’ve also got some revolutionary projects coming down the pipeline, so be prepared for BIG announcements in the near future.

It’s the start of a new chapter for us, and 2010 is gonna be a heck of a read

See you on the other side ….

Yo Mac Party People!

Great news: Apple’s long-awaited Snow Leopard update (with USB bug-fixes) has been released today!

Besides removing my network printer sleep-mode woes, this update should be the One all QuiKeys Snow Leopard users were waiting for.

To return to pure Lightroom and Photoshoping QuiKeys bliss, please update your OSX today!

Got questions?  Hit me in the comments and welcome back to QuiKeys productivity

Hellooooo Vegas!

It’s that time of year again to join up in the madness that is the WPPI 2010 Convention!  But this year is special: it’s WPPI’s 30th anniversary and with an expected record attendance of over 13,000 photographers from around the world, this promises be a crazy week you’ll never forget

If you’re here for WPPI would love to connect and grab a hug   Here’s some places we’ll be guaranteed to be found hanging out:

Sunday 11am-1pm – DQ Studios MasterClass – For Love, money and art the DQ Way.  Room #203 (Sold out – but free hugs in the hallway after class )

Sunday night: Airhorns and lasers partee!

Monday-Wednesday – (10am-4pm M&T 10am-3pm W). WPPI Tradeshow QuiKeys Booth #1250

QuiKeys Tradeshow Bonus round: With a bunch of our friends, we’ve set up a cool “Speaker’s Corner” right by our booth where amazing photographers will be sharing their imagery and stories. Here’s a schedule of some of the people who’ll be by the booth:

Speaker’s Schedule

Monday March 8
John Mireles – 11:00 AM
Concept & Fashion

Joe Photo – 12:00
Changing with the Wedding Market

Catherine Hall – 1:00 PM
Starting Strong

Tamara Lackey – 2:00
Children’s Portraits

Tuesday March 9
Jennifer Dery 11:00 AM
Pricing Destination Weddings

Dave Quin 12:00 PM
Cutting Edge Weddings

Greg Gibson 2:00 PM
Recent Work from a Top Ten Wedding Photographer

Suzi Q. Varin 3:00
Delicious Wedding Photography

Wednesday March 10
Marcus Bell 11:00 AM
New Work from One of the Best Wedding Photographers Ever to Walk the Planet

Tony Bisson 1:00
Killer Album Design

It’s like a mini-convention within the convention!  I think I overheard there may be milk and cookies too …. just sayin.  I’ll be twittering updates, special guest appearances and some crazy surprises so be sure to follow me on twitter to receive the latest awesome on all things WPPI.

Super-Duper Bonus Round:

We’ve joined forces with WPPI and lots of other cool companies to create a HUGE Scavenger Hunt Giveaway!  With over $50,000 in prizes (including four full QuiKeys Pro systems!?!?!) it’s worth getting a group of 4 friends together and chasing after the jackpot!  Click here for details and sign up to win big.

If you’re at WPPI, don’t be a stranger and introduce yourself! With more parties and events than hairs on my neighbor’s dog’s head, I’m hoping to run into bunches of old friends and making plenty of new ones.

See you in Vegas!!

old-skool Mind Map of DQ Studios and QuiKeys web presence.

I first discovered “mind mapping” many moons ago in Junior High but didn’t use it much with the exception of big-picture thinking for important or complex projects.

Thankfully, there’s an app for that now Actually, there’s bunches of apps both for iPhone and your computer making mind mapping one of my most valued and useful everyday techniques.

What is “Mind Mapping?”

Don’t worry: nobody’s gonna stick electrodes in your skull and measure your intelligence … unless you want them to I guess.

Think of mind mapping as a whiteboard on steroids. It’s an awesome way for visual thinkers like me to brainstorm and formalize, organize and share ideas. Today’s mind mapping software goes beyond the whiteboard in allowing more organized and collaborative methods to share in the digital age.

Why Mind Map?

Mind mapping is a visually stimulating way to engage both sides of your brain and for visual thinkers like me, this is a good thing I’ve heard it was used by some of amazing minds of the past including Michelangelo, Mark Twain and Leonardo da Vinci.

Good enough for them; good enough for me.

Here are three major benefits I’ve found of mind mapping over traditional note-taking: clarity of thought, increased productivity and collaboration.

Clarity

By its nature, mind mapping requires you to constantly “connect the dots” between your ideas. Adding visual cues as simple as the branches of a tree help relate ideas and realize those that don’t belong. Compare this to note-taking where you can easily fall into the “zombie-zone” of writing with no comprehension of thought relationships. Seeing your ideas literally connect in front of your eyes is an amazingly simple yet powerful way to gain clarity of thought.

Competitive Analysis created with MindNode for iPhone.

Productivity

With increased clarity comes a decrease in time required to formalize thoughts and arrange ideas. Mind mapping software magnifies the time savings: instead of writing down lists in a typical text editor and then cutting/pasting them into a proper order, you can brain-dump in your mind map and simply drag your ideas around until everything is in its place.

Mind mapping’s “drag & drop” methodology has the added benefit of preventing copy/paste errors. What sound like a “little” time savings becomes an easier, more intuitive, faster and less error-prone method of materializing and organizing your thoughts.

Collaboration

There’s a couple of great web-based mind mapping apps out there, one of which is MindMeister. It strikes a great balance of being super easy to use yet amazingly powerful under the hood. Besides the usual text-based entries, you can easily add icons, images, live URL links and even to-do’s with email reminders. These features make your digital mind maps not only more visually interesting but web-ready for my favorite feature ….

My favorite and most powerful feature of MindMeister is its ability to share your mind maps with anyone around the world and simultaneously live-edit.

Two brains are better than one, and the more the merrier when I’m working on any project worthy of brain-time. It’s super-easy to invite anyone to work on your mind map and collaborative tools include real-time color-coded editing, assignment of tasks to any collaborator, and a funky history play-back system where you can easily see who made what changes when.

MindMeister automatically saves every change which is great peace of mind. With a paid subscription you can also export to common mind mapping formats making it easy to back up and share with most every mind mapping software.

MindMeister isn’t perfect: I don’t like the limitation of dragging/arranging only one thought at a time. But its benefits are many and reason enough to have it become my main mind mapping software. You can sign up for a free account and create up to 3 mind maps. If you love it and find it as indispensable as I do, you can purchase a premium license for unlimited maps and more export options.

Blog Post outline created with MindMeister Free

What’s Mind Mapping good for?

Best part: you can get the many benefits of mind mapping for literally anything you can think of. Here’s just a few things I’ve used it for this past month:

+ prioritized todo lists
+ presentation slides
+ note-taking
+ QuiKeys competitive analysis
+ brainstorming
+ goal setting
+ blog writing outline
+ book writing outline
+ QuiKeys training

Collaborative efforts include:

+ QuiKeys development
+ QuiKeys trouble-shooting
+ real-time Q&A during 1-on-1 Omakase phone consultations

Try it! You’ll like it!

I wish I had mind-mapping software when I was in school. Actually, I wish I just had the internet when I was in school …. heh heh …. maybe I would’ve done better??

Who am I kidding? Nah!

Take mind-mapping for a spin! What have you got to lose? I hope you’ll find it as beneficial as I do and reap the rewards of added clarity, productivity and collaboration for all your projects.

So …

I’ll let other people pimp today

True story: Below are recent unsolicited words from real-live QuiKeys users.

—-

“I just color-corrected and tweaked over 620 images in Lightroom using QuiKeys. It takes me so much longer than that to upload images to [insert RAW processing service of choice] or [insert 2nd RAW processing service of choice], and I’m all about cutting down the time between shooting events and getting them out to my clients. Plus, if I color correct 3 weddings, I pretty much break even from what I was spending out-sourcing it …

“I have only used the QuiKeys for a few sessions because I was having issues running it in Snow Leopard. But I think I saved even 30 minutes culling in Photo Mechanic, not to mention at least 2 hours in LR. I’m so sold on this product that I actually did a full reinstall of Leopard so that I can run QuiKeys in a stable environment. There is no doubt that I can make up that time with what I can get done using the Keys. I’m probably going to camp out at the QuiKeys booth at WPPI to glean some more knowledge this March.”

~ Daniel Chin

[Editor's note: We'll be at WPPI booth #1250 so come join Quin, me and Daniel ]

—-

“It is, without a doubt, the single purchase with the highest ROI I’ve ever made in my photography career.”

~ Bill Holland

[Editor's note: Thanks so much Bill.  Truly means a lot to me from such a great man of integrity and photography.]

—-

via Twitter:

“Not only does Quikeys help me to be super speedy fast, it also always me to finish images in Lightroom in ways I didn’t know I could! Holla!”

…and

“ok last tweet about Quikeys They seriously just gave me my life back. Three HUGE sessions knocked out in about 4.5 hours instead of 3 days”

…and

“Can’t thank you guys enough for the amazing product you sell! I was stressed about work overload and now i truly feel like I can spend so Much more time with my family rather then behind a computer! Very thankful today to be stress free and caught up!!! Thank you both!”

~ Savannah Kenney

[Editor's note: The amazing part is she purchased and installed QuiKeys only One Day Before this.]

—-

Thank you so much to our entire QuiKeys family. I’m so happy our little keyboard can give freedom so many and am truly honored to have you invest in our Baby.

If time, money, sanity and freedom matter to you, I’d love for you to checkout QuiKeys for yourself and see why QuiKeys users are happy users

Yesterday Quin went out to the mailbox and brought in our usual pile of mail. It’s always a treat to see Rangefinder magazine in the mix, but this time it was extra special.

As usual, I flipped to the contents page to see what new and cool articles were in this month’s issue and was surprised to see one of our images.

Really?

Strange but true: we were interviewed by the talented Michelle Perkins for Rangefinder Magazine last year but didn’t see it reach print … until now

From talking about our start in wedding photography to how we’ve been pushing forward in lighting and client relations, it’s all in the 5-page write-up.

So grab your copy of Rangefinder or download the pdf of the article and enjoy getting to know DQ

Honest: it’s not just the cappuccino levels in my body causing this crazy behavior; there’s meaning in the madness

I remember reading a sign in a machine shop which read:

“Pick any 2 of the following: Fast. Perfect. Cheap.”

My preference is for perfect and fast. I’m not eager to sacrifice quality for speed, and this choice can be clearly seen in the productivity tools I choose to purchase and create in business and in life.

I’ve recently been pondering on the “Why?” in my quest for maximizing my productivity. It’s been a good exercise in getting to the root of my motivations and a great reminder of what matters most. Below are some thoughts on why productivity tools matter so much to me.

Reason #1: Time.

Time is a non-renewable resource. No matter how much we try we can’t jam more hours into our day or more days into our week. We’re all in the same boat of having to fit our increasingly busy lives into the same 24 hours. So why wouldn’t we want to find ways to be more productive?

Reason #2: Profitability.

We’ve all heard the saying, “Time is money.” Althought I don’t agree wholeheartedly with this notion, I believe a business will have a competitive advantage (read: profitability advantage) if they can increase their productivity.

Whether in the service, sales or product industry, businesses strive to streamline every fiber of their being for this very reason. For example, if Business “A” produces 50 widgets a day which can be sold for $5/each and Business “B” produces 100 widgets a day with the same selling price and resources, which business would you choose to invest in?

It’s easy to see why businesses invest so much money in the fastest and smartest people and tools when profitability matters.

Reason #3: Enjoyment.

Sometimes tools make the mundane more fun and that’s enough reason to justify a tool/toy/software purchase.

Not surprisingly, I’m a fan of David Allen’s GTD (Getting Things Done) productivity ideas. One piece of advice that initially sounded strange to me was in the purchase of a labeler to label your folders. His theory was having a neatly organized folder system made you more likely to use it and stay organized.

Reluctantly, I bought a labeler and labeled all my files. Surprisingly I found his advice works! I find it faster to file and find documents in a system that is clearly and professionally labeled versus trying to decifer my horrible handwriting and perhaps not filing it in the first place … which is where I was before adopting the labeler.

Of course it’s tough to quantify the “enjoyment factor,” so be reasonable and realistic with the effort you use to research and money you invest in your tools. $20 for a labeler wasn’t too much of a stretch. $4000 for a slightly faster computer …. more-so.

Reason #4: Freedom.

We’re finite beings and have limited resources of time, money, energy and passion. More time, money and less anxiety in your life gives you choices to pour yourself into projects and people that matter most.

Whether it’s chasing after a new business idea, investing time in your family and friends, or giving back to the world at large, having the freedom to release your energy on things of your heart is a wonderful way to live with purpose.

Cool, but what now?

Before finding productivity tools that matter, find out what truly matters to you. There’s no use in chasing after more time, money and happiness if you haven’t clearly thought-out your passions in life and what you’ll do with yourself when you aren’t tied down to today’s todo list.

Here’s 3 simple steps to get you started:

1. Write down 3 lists of goals: (a) personal, (b) family and (c) business.

2. Prioritize the above all in one mega-list.

3. Share the top 3 with the closest person to you.

For those of you who have business or life-partners, it might be eye-opening to do this on your own and then come together to share your thoughts with each other.

Productivity and You.

I hope this sheds some light on my seeming obsession with productivity. Honest: it’s not as unhealthy as it looks … but a means to an end of creating the freedom to pursue what matters most to me ….

Would love to hear your thoughts. Agree? Disagree? If there’s enough interest, I’ll be starting a Productivity category for this blog where I’ll share my productivity tools, tips and techniques in photography and beyond. Would love to hear from those who attended yesterday’s productivity webinar too.

Whoever you are, hit me up in the comments to weigh in. Feedback good and bad is truly appreciated

Thanks for reading friend.

It’s a Monday morning, but it’s worth celebrating cuz …..

… it’s Family Day in Alberta!!

Yes Wilma: it’s an honest to goodness holiday here in good ol Alberta Canada    GO CANADA!!

In celebration, I’ll be chilling offline with the Cheung-Boyz today thanks to a great reminder from an amazing friend:

“Love fiercely and fearlessly and let those you love know now and not tomorrow.”

~ Joy Chan

You can read more on Joy’s journey and how she and Vince lives her advice out loud here.

Also a quick reminder that we’re broadcasting our first-ever free Webinar tomorrow at noon!  Due to greater demand than expected, we’ve upgraded our license to allow more people to attend.  If you couldn’t sign up cuz the webinar class said it was full, you can  try again to get your geek on with a great group of peeps and me.

Here’s to loving fiercely and fearlessly from this Family Day onwards ….

With our 3rd birthday coming up, I thought I’d take you for a walk back in time and share some insights into the creation of what we know and love as QuiKeys. You can skip down to the bottom for a quick glance of QuiKeys past and present, or grab your favorite beverage and read on to dive a little into our lives ….

—-

Once upon a time ….

… there was a crazy husband/wife photography team who unwittingly decided to offer only the best to their clients by personally retouching each and every image they delivered.

Thankfully, fully retouched images were a hit! It set them apart from the pack and allowed them to distinguish themselves from everyone (who was everyone) who was offering un-retouched “proofs”.

One problem: they were killing themselves in the back-end and became slaves to the computer, spending hundreds of hours after each shoot to perfect every image.

Can you say, “Dead meat”??

They couldn’t go back to “proofing” but needed to find a solution to their workflow nightmare.

They looked for available workflow solutions and tried a bunch of software and actions.  No matter how good, they always hit a wall of productivity with everything they found.

Both being musicians (he a pianist and she a smokin hot bass player), they’d always used both hands in performing music, and it seems natural to find a better tool for retouching to “perform” images than settling for a simple mouse.

“God gave us two hands, so why not use them both?” they reasoned.

With the purchase of a programmable X-Keys pro keyboard and the desire to create the ultimate workflow, QuiKeys was born.

But it wasn’t happily ever after just yet … it would be a loooong road before QuiKeys would become the workflow tool it is today ….

At first, they were like kids in a candy store, stuffing everything they could onto the X-Keys. This was a mistake as they soon found themselves jumping between their X-Keys and QWERTY keyboard, creating needless hand and eye movements and wasting precious time.  Moving key modifiers over to the X-Keys fixed this problem, but it would take several more years and thousands of images to tweak the layout to the ergonomics QuiKeys users know and love.

With time came the automation of everything possible.  Automation, that is, without losing control of the image. It laid the ground-work for what is know today as QuiKeys’ “Non-Destructive Smart Tools.”  Every key was programmed to think a couple steps ahead, making their keyboard an easy press & paint affair.

The couple slowly tweaked their keyboard and figured out how to maximize every key and save time without sacrificing quality.

An interesting side effect happened too: retouching images became fun again! The tool they created allowed them to focus on the image and not the tools/menus/software.  It was as if they entered into the magic of a darkroom again … but without the stinky chemicals and, well, dark … room.

Funny thing is: this couple never created their custom keyboard to sell.  There was no meeting where they sat down and said, “I bet if we make this funky keyboard and throw in some waffles we could sell a bunch of them!” It was created out of *their* needs as digital photographers.  That’s why it works so amazingly well and has taken off with novice and pros alike.

Today there are hundreds of QuiKeys users across the world benefitting from the amazing productivity only QuiKeys can bring.  We’ve continued to add value into the QuiKeys system, which now includes plug-ins for Lightroom, Photoshop and Album Design. We’re really proud to say QuiKeys was the first and is still the most powerful, complete and flexible workflow solution for digital photographers everywhere.

To our QuiKeys family: Thank you so much for your trust!  We’re so glad to contribute to your imagery & profitability but, more importantly, hope to have bettered your lifestyle by giving you more time to do more of what you love.

We’ve come a loooong way baby!

—-

Brief history of QuiKeys

+2007-Feb-14: quikeys.com officially opens for business! QuiKeys released with a single purpose: Photoshop hardware/software Plug-In for super-fast image retouching. Why Feb 14th? Who wouldn’t want a QuiKeys on Valentines?

+2007-March: DQ the DVD released: Philosophy of wedding photography & other misdemeanors. How Above-&-Beyond quality and customer service can produce the side-effect of incredible profitability.

+2008-March: QuiKeys Album Design Plug-In released. We did it again: turning Album Design workflow on its ear with QuiKeys’ revolutionary keyboard-based workflow.

+2008-September: QuiKeys Lightroom Plug-In released. Not again!?!?  QuiKeys releases another milestone: a plug-in for Adobe Lightroom, completing the triple-play of RAW, retouch and album design in *one* workflow tool.  shaBOOM!

+2009: Released QuiKeys Lightroom Plug-In mega-update to include dedicated layers for Lightroom’s Library and Develop Modules. Also included culling tools for PhotoMechanic and dedicated Library and Develop layers for Lightroom.  Can you say “Super-Power Workflow Tool” 10 times fast?

+2010-January: Launched Virtual QuiKeys: One Photoshop panel to rule them all!

+2010-January: Official launch of QuiKlips flash accessory, broadening their reach of productivity tools from the computer into shoot-time.

+2010-January: Launched new shopping cart: quikphototools.com to contain all the new and coming QuiKeys goodness!

+2010-January: New motto to fit the growing list of QuiKeys productivity products:

QuiKeys :: Smart solutions for creative photographers.

Three years ago QuiKeys was launched with the sole function of super-fast Photoshop retouching.

Three years ago Lightroom didn’t exist and our album design plug-in was just a pipe-dream.

Today, QuiKeys solves all the photographer’s digital imaging workflow problem with plug-ins for Lightroom, Photoshop and Album Design.

Hard to believe our little workflow secret-weapon has turned into the industry’s most powerful and complete workflow tool in three short years.

And what a ride it’s been! It’s amazing to look back and see how QuiKeys has grown with the needs of digital photographers everywhere. From its inception to its current amazingly flexible and powerful state, we’re glad to be able to share our tools and tips with creative photographers like us

Happy birthday QuiKeys!

As a “Thank you!” for your support through the years, we’ll be doing our first public webinar:

Office Productivity: 4 steps to the Paperless Office.

Admittedly it doesn’t sound terribly sexy, but going paperless last year reduced my office work by 3 weeks and gave me more of my life and sanity back!

Strange but true.

The webinar will be a slice of our uber-geek hit presentation at Mystic5, so if you missed it, it’s your chance to simplify your office paperwork AND become an organized, efficiency super-hero.

There’s limited seating, so sign up in the widget below or email me at d(at)dqstudios.com to reserve your spot. It’s first come first serve, but hope to see you there

When: Tuesday, February 16th at 12 noon GMT (-7).

Super duper bonus: it’s free!

More QuiKeys birthday goodies coming up via Twitter, Facebook and this blog really soon …