RPG KEYS: FAQS:

Question #1. What is the big deal?

Answer #1. Money!!!!

As a studio owner I am in the business to make money. I know its a little harsh, but I didn’t get into the photography business because I was bored. I left a stable and well paying job as an engineer because I knew I could make a better living doing something I enjoyed!

As I write this reply, it is currently 10am Monday morning after a Saturday wedding. Using the RPG KEYS, I was able to edit the 2000 photographs while I enjoyed my morning coffee. I have posted the weekends wedding photographs online and encouraged a few sales by offering a 15% discount for anyone who places an order before the end of the day Tuesday.

With the help of a little web magic, I can see that almost 50 of the 250 guests have already viewed the slide show set to music and reviewed some of the still images. These are people sitting at work, reliving the excitement of the weekend. By the end of the sale on Tuesday night, I can expect between 10 and 30 orders will be placed for prints. And normally a few rather large orders from family who want to take advantage of the sale.

In comparison, if I had of waited two or three weeks to post the photographs online, the excitement of the weekend’s event would be gone! Uncle bob would have already posted his photos on snap fish.com or Kodak.com and your chance at a few extra orders is gone!

As a photographer, I know I am going to get a few orders from family, but capturing orders from the guests is all about the “hot potato” concept that Gerry Fong speaks about. Once that potato is cooled off, your sales will drop quickly.

Photographers who want the RPG KEY but don’t already own the system keep asking me how it is that I am able to sell the RPG KEYs for almost $700. Photographers who are using the RPG KEY system and getting their images online while the “potato” is still hot are realizing that the keys paid for themselves very very quickly.

Question #2. I noticed that V1.3 of the RP KEYS looks like an x-key. Why cant I just purchase an x-key and program my own keys… saving up to $500.

Answer #2. I wish it was that easy.. If it was I would have done this years ago and offered the RPG KEY product without so many months in programming.

The X-key system is perfect for assigning a keyboard key to an existing shortcut in a program. For example the common shortcut for the copy functions is “ctl + c”. The x-key is a perfect application for this.

BUT… Lightroom is shipped without shortcuts to activate the image editing features and the presets. Our program creates these much needed shortcuts and places them on keys that are easy to location while editing.

If you already own an X-key and want to use our program, check out the “purchase page” as we do sell the program for $150 less than the package price. IE… the cost of the key boards. But you do need to mail us your x-key for us to hard code the memory chip that lives inside the keyboard.

Question #3. If I purchase the RPG KEYS, will it work with future version of lightroom?

Answer #3. So far we have the keys working in lightroom 1.3, 1.4 and 2.0 beta. Because we are not a part of Adobe, we have no idea what direction Adobe plans to head with Lightroom. However, it is our intention to support our product for many years to come. We love lightroom 2.0 beta and can’t wait to use the full version of 2.0!

See our blog for a sneak peak of RPG KEY systems of the near future.

 

Question #4. I am really interested in the RPG KEYS, but the price is too much… Why so much?

Answer #4. Another company sells a product similar to ours but it is specific to Photoshop. This company sells the product for $1400 and like our keys, they sell a lot of them. We have priced our key system so that professional and semi-professional photographers can afford them. Still not sure? Remember that the RPG KEYS come with a guarantee. If you purchase them and then decide it’s just not for you, you have only lost the $10 it costs you to ship the keys and program back to us. The other option would be to try our RPG KEY PRESET’ER or EDIT’ER programs. These programs allow PC users to take advantage of their key pad to control the presets and editing tools of Lightroom, but at a fraction of the cost of the full RPG KEYS. If you can cut your editing time by 30% to 70%, can you afford not to try the RPG KEYS?

 

 

Question #5. Explain to me how this really saves so much time while editing?

Answer #5. Think about the 1 to 5 seconds it takes you to find the correct slider or button using your mouse while adjusting each image. Then think about all the different things you do to each of your images. If it takes you an average 3 seconds to find each editing tool, and you make 20 edits, you are spending over 60 seconds editing each photo. Imagine being able to make those same 20 changes in less than 5 seconds.

Still not a believer? Time yourself with these seven steps.
Step #1. Go to develop mode and crop an image
Step #2. Go to your presets and select your 17th preset on the preset list.
Step #3. Adjust the sharpening of an image
Step #4. Auto white balance the image…
Step #5. The auto white balance looks bad, so do a hand white balance.
Step #6. Adjust the exposure of an image
Step #7. Activate another preset… perhaps a vignette preset you might have already.

Time?____ Really how long did it take? 45 seconds? 2 minutes?

These steps took 12 seconds using the RPG KEYS because after a few days of use with the RPG KEYS, your hand automatically knows the location of the keys for each of the steps above.

Question #6. When my RPG KEYS arrive, is there much programming involved?

Answer #6. When your keys arrived you only have to place the install disk into your computer and install the program using the install wizard.

When you are ready to start using the “preset keys” on the keyboard you will need to rename your presets using Lightroom’s develop mode. This is done by ( right clicking ~pc) (double clicking ~mac ) and placing a number and underscore in front of the existing preset name.

For example: If you have a preset named “silver.” Rename it to 13_silver if you want the 13 key to activate that preset. When your done you should have presets named 01_name, 02_name all the way up to 22_name.