Go to www.naturalcolorlab.com
Select SERVICES, Roes Natural Express, then select the appropriate version for the product you need..
From our Natural Express Network Page we have three options.
1. Natural Express Network users guide
2. Natural Express Network Fonts
3. Launch Natural Express Network
We want to select Download Fonts. This is important because many of our templates and some of the templates you may create will require these fonts.
When we click the Natural Express Network Fonts we will see a screen similar to this.
This file should be saved to a location on your computer easy to find. Your desktop would be ideal.
Your next step would be to unzip the fonts using your favorite unzip software. A few choices would be WinZip or Windows unzip application if you are using a PC. If you have a Macintosh you might use Mac zip or stuff it expander. Unzip these files to a folder on your desktop using one of these programs.
Installing Fonts on a Macintosh.
Open the folder the fonts where extracted to.
Double-click on "Macintosh HD" (on your Desktop).
Double-click on "System":
4. Double-click on "Library":
5. Go back to the window where you selected the fonts, drag and drop the fonts into the "Fonts" folder in the Library folder :
That’s it.
Installing Fonts on a PC.
Open the C:\Windows\Fonts folder.
Also open the folder you unzipped to your desktop.
You should have something that looks like this.
In this diagram our extracted fonts are on the left and our “C:\Windows\Fonts folder is on the right.
Let’s select the extracted folder on the left. Now let’s do a select all. We can do this two ways.
Hold the “Ctrl” key and press the “A” key.
Go to the edit menu and select all. You can see this in the diagram below.
Once the fonts are all selected we can drag and drop them from the left window to the right window.
We should have an installing font’s box come up that looks like this.
As the new fonts are copied into the Fonts folder there are bound to be duplicates. If you receive a message like this you can just click the ok button and continue.
That’s all.
Now let’s launch Natural Express Network
You should see the following.
When Natural Express Network opens for the first time you will see something like this.
Let’s go over these screens one at a time.
This is your customer Information screen.
Please fill out all the information. Your Name field will be your copyright data. Please make sure this is your studio name/copyright. The Account# field should be entered as your Lab ID. When finished click the ok button. The screen may hang for a few seconds don’t worry this is just reaching out to our server to get catalog information.
This is our tip of the day screen.
Please read this info, it provides you with information on some of the new templates we have added to Natural Express Network. It also provides you with info on any catalog changes or additions. Once you have read this you can check the “Don’t show again until next message changes” box. This will keep the message from showing on each Application launch until we update the message.
Setting up Natural Express Network
Let’s take a look at our preferences. Click the preferences button shown here.
Let’s go over each one and what they mean.
Search Enclosed folders (This simply means if you open a folder and there are subfolders inside that folder, it will load those as well.)
Show image thumbnails. (This should always be checked. If not it could show the images as a program icon instead of an icon of the image file itself.)
Mark ordered thumbnails. (This will mark the thumbnail you ordered with a blue box around the image once you have added it to order.)
Show Queue window when sending. (The queue window will stay open when the order has been selected to send.)
Show hot areas when editing nodes. (When editing a node in template creator lines and boxes are shown so that you can easily skew, size and move the node you are working on.)
Revert to edit tool after draw. (In template tool if we add a node to the template it will automatically re select the edit button.)
Show Banner. (You can choose to show or remove the Natural Express Banner from the top of the application. Removing this will add more real estate to the application. It also removes anything about Natural Color Lab from the application header.)
Show Prices. (Very handy if you are showing or ordering with your client. It simply removes our pricing info from the application. This will require you to close and re-launch the application.)
Use pro tool layout. (Enables and disables the pro tools. You would need to toggle these tools through the preferences window if disabled.)
Auto Rotate affects print size instead of image. (This will rotate the layout and not the image. Rotating the image is recommended.)
When auto rotating, do so counterclockwise. (When auto rotate is selected this will rotate the image counterclockwise.)
Days to backup orders. (This allows you to hold onto jobs you have sent to the lab. By default this is set to 15 days. If you plan on holding them longer you should change this field to your desired length.)
Image Application. (Choose an image editing application so if you would like to edit images you could right click the image in Natural Express Network and select “open with image application”.)
Setting up Roes Working Area.
Let bring up our size palette. This will help us visually see our products and choose our catalogs.
You can also bring this up by holding down ctrl key and pressing the 2 key.
Now We should have a palette that looks similar to this. This window can be sized and moved around your working area. We will show a few examples of how your working space can be setup below.
We also need to have our options screen up so lets do that. We can do this by selecting the options button. We should now select show options palette. This can also be done by holding the Ctrl key and pressing the 3 key.
Once selected you should see a screen like this one.
Now that we have our size palette and our options palette up lets look at a few examples of how we can setup our working space. Let’s look at that in our examples below.
Options and sizes palette are on the left
Options and size palette are on the right.
Options and side palette are on the bottom
Loading images into Natural Express Network.
Loading images into Natural Express Network is simple. To do this we would click the folder button. An Open dialogue box will appear. Use this to navigate to where your images are located. When you have found them you can click the open button to load the images into the application. The images should show up on the right like the ones you see in this example.
Catalogs
Below our Products window we have a catalogs button. Contained within are the different product catagories. Switch to the appropriate catalogue, keeping in mind that there are 3 different versions of ROES and it is important to be in the correct one in order to see the products you want.
Begin Order Process
Crop Slider Skew Button
Image cropping tools.
These are found beneath the layout screen
Rotate Layout Button Rotate Image Button
In this diagram of our Natural Express Network screen you can see how the order process should be done.
Step 1. Select the folder your images reside in.
Step 2. Drag the image from the image screen to the layout you have selected in your sizes palette. (You can drag multiple images.)
Step 3. When done editing, cropping and selecting your print options for the product, we want to make sure the quantity is set. Then we can click the add to order button.
Step 4. When you have completed adding all the products you should click the Review order button and process it to the lab.
During your ordering process you may want to hold an option. There are tools for doing this. They are called “pro tools”. These tools are located below the product layout screen.
Your pro tools:
I will explain each tool from left to right. You can also just hold the mouse over the tool and a help box should appear with info on what the tool is used for.
Hold Crop Tool. (This will hold crop info for each image you drop into the layout screen.)
Hold Options. (This holds all the options you selected in the options palette.)
Hold Quantity. (This holds the quantity of each product you order.)
Hold Images. (This will hold the current image you have in the layout screen.)
Lock Image. (This will lock a single image that shows in a multi node product.)
Crop or fit. (This toggles from cropping and fitting a image in any image node.)
Auto Rotate. (Images dropped into a node will auto rotate dependent to the layouts aspect. This is very useful when creating a proof job.)
Reticle. (used to establish scale or position)
Note: The locks that display are there to show the option is either being used or it is not. An open lock means the option is not being used. A lock closed or a check mark means that option is in use.
Reviewing Your Order.
Once you have finished your order you need to click the Review Order button. You can see the review order button above.
Your review order screen will look something like this.
As you can see I have labeled a few areas on the image above. This will give you a description about each option and what it does. Once you have gone over all the order options you would click the complete order button. This will give you the option to select how you would like to send the job to the lab, shown below.
When sending a order to the lab there are three options.
Send Via the internet. (With a broadband connection you can select this option and have the order start sending right away.)
Save for sending later via the internet. (This allows you to complete the job and work on other to send all together.)
Save to disk for alternate delivery. (This allows for you to save the order to your computer so you can burn the file to a cd/dvd to send to the lab.)
Order Completion Screen
Once we have selected our delivery method the order gets zipped and encrypted for sending to the lab. This process can take a few minutes depending on the size of your order.
Queued Orders Screen
If you have selected to send via the internet the order will finish zipping and encrypting. Once that is complete it will automatically start the upload process. The upload screen should look like one in the example on the left. If you didn’t want to send at that time you could hit the cancel button. This will stop the upload process, but it will keep the job in the queue for sending later. If you didn’t want to send the order and you wanted to remove it there is also a remove button. This will delete the order.
Once the order has completed uploading you will get an upload complete screen.
You should receive a confirmation email within a few minutes.
