Well, I ordered a couple items from CafePress last week, and I see that they have been delivered. So I'll post what I think of their quality and such after I get home from work and get to open my packages!

Just in case anyone is curious, you can order any of the stuff on my CafePress site at any time. Right now there is very little there. The "official" calendar has not been posted yet, since we don't know the image winners yet.

A side note about the winners, I was looking at the current numbers, and there are a couple pics of the same person's car in the top 12. For example, everyone loves Mike's AMX, but I don't think we'll give it two (or three) months of the calendar. I'll use the popular images, but I don't want to repeat anyone's car, unless it's in a group shot. That seems fair to me. What do y'all think?

 

Tom,
Seems fair to me!
Bill (SF)

 

Agreed - this only fair.

 

If I am correct, there are NO stand alone pictures of a red roadster.

It would border on a criminal act if there were a Crossfire calendar that didn't have a prominent photo of a red roadster.

 

X2...................

 

Agreed that is the only fair thing to do, there are plenty of great pictures to choose from.

 

Well, I just got home and opened up my CafePress stuff, and guess what....

the Test Calendar was missing! Ugh. So I called them up and they're going to ship it to me by Friday.

Fortunately, that wasn't all I ordered. I ordered the 1 page yearly calendar with the collage of Crossfires, and I'm very satisfied with the quality. The printing is well done, the 4 color alignment looks good, the images are crisp. The only thing I didn't like about it is the margin across the top isn't equal to the sides. No big deal, but that's something that printing people should notice. Still, I give it two thumbs up - well worth the $4.

I also ordered a child's bib with a Crossfire on it (of course, gotta bring em up right). I was disappointed in the quality of the material of the bib. It's no thinker than your average t-shirt, so it's probably not going to be the best bib your child has. But, for $6 you can have a bib that says anything you want, which is kinda cute. (Yes, I said kinda cute, but I will deny it in public

And I ordered some frig magnets. They came out very nice.

I also ordered a license plate frame. I'm very disappointed in that. All they did was print the lettering on tape and stick the tape on the plate frame. They didn't even trim it properly, and the printing had some artifacts and fish eyes in it. Not cool. On the up side, it is a decent chrome plated metal frame.

More later when I get the test calendar!

 

Yep...only fair to get a good cross section of cars.

 

The key to avoiding uneven margins on paper printed CafePress items is to upload items at "Full Bleed" aspect ratios.

This only works well when out well if you have unimportant stuff around the edges, because their equipment doesn't perfectly center the items, hence the uneven margins. This should be an important criteria in choosing photographs and in how you crop them. You shouldn't use an image as-is when the edges of the vehicle are too close to the edges of the photograph, unless it would be OK if some of that were lost, such as on a close up detail shot where the surrounding sheet metal is the background.

For example, on the calendar (single page and regular 12 month), they recommend that you upload an image that is 11.5 x 9 inches, which will be trimmed on the calendar to 11 x 8.5 inches.

So, the magic width to height ratio is 1.2777:1, or another way to think of it is this:

EXAMPLE: At 200 DPI, an image should be cropped to 2300 Wide by 1800 pixels high, with the outside 50 pixels on each side containing only unimportant background material.

You can be off a few pixels off from the ideal ratio of 1.2777:1 and CafePress will still print as full bleed. The product configurator will let you know you are full bleed in the pull down menu where you choose image height.

 

Thanks Display_Name. I figured that stuff out too. I've been altering the images for the good calendar to 2300x1800. I have a buddy that will photoshop in a border where necessary - the aspect ratio is off, or the car is too close to the edge. It should work out.

 

OK! We're almost there! Today is the last day for rating the images. AND: I finally got a copy of the test calendar from CafePress. I must say that I really like the quality of the calendar. I experiemented with the images a bit to see what I could get away with, and they all came out looking great. A couple even had some white space at the top and bottom, and it worked out nice, you hardly notice. So I'm no longer fearing the results of having these printed on CafePress.

So finish up your ratings today, and tomorrow I'll announce the winners and get the images uploaded to CafePress. We should have calendars on sale before Monday. Woohoo!

 

OOOHHHHH....I CAN'T WAIT!!!!
Are we there yet?
Are we there yet?
Are we there yet?
Are we there yet?
Are we there yet?

 

Couldn't resist throwing this in here........not at all relevant.
http://birdloversonly.blogspot.com/2...his-dance.html

 

Gary,

That is a HOOT (&Not Hoot Owl ), it's one of the funniest things I've ever seen!!!

This is the Dance the Winners of the Crossfire Calendar may be doing!

Thank you very much for sharing, it Made My Day!

Bill

 

OK, the winners are in! Here is a list of them in order (attached in PDF).

Please note, this is NOT the order they will appear in the calendar, and some images - even though they were highly rated - won't appear as we decided to limit one person's car to one month of the calendar. That doesn't mean they won't appear in a different calendar! I plan to make at least 3 layouts. I will post them as soon as I'm done photoshopping them up.

Congrats go out to all of the winners! Special congrats to RickZ with the #1 shot - great photo by the way. And special thanks to SilverFox, who's got more images in the top 20 than anyone else.

This was a tough competition. There were tons of great photos. Thanks to all that submitted!

 

Tom,
A Very Big THANK YOU for all your efforts you put into this, I know how much Time & Dedication it takes to make it happen! Bill (SF)

 

Yes thank you Tom, this was a great idea and I really enjoyed looking at all the great photos. Looking forward to the calendar (s).
These cars are really photogenic and I am sure there will be even more great shots for next years calendar

 

Tom, this was a great idea from the start, (and I'd say that even if my car didn't make it ) thanks so much for all the time and effort you're putting into it.
And thanks to everyone who voted for my cars photo. This is the first time I've ever had any of my cars included in a calendar, and I'm very proud that my Crossfire finally made it. Especially when there are so many other cars (on the forum) that I felt deserved to make it.

 

Thanks Tom for putting this together. A big congrats to everyone that made the calendar and specially to RickZ, a truly amazing photo
I do have a complaint, how did that AMX make the XF calendar

 

Thanks so much Tom for putting this together.... 3 Layouts, argggg... I have to make a decision... or I have to buy 3 calendars!!!! Buy 3.