We’ve added three new features to the MyCanvas publishing service that I think you’ll love. Many of you have asked for a way to keep track of which photos you’ve already used in a photo book. We agree that this is a pretty important feature ― especially if you’re working on multiple projects and can’t remember which photos you’ve used in which project ― so we’ve added little checkmarks to the image thumbnails to help you keep track.

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The checkmarks only apply to one project at a time, meaning that when you’re working on Project A, you’ll only see checkmarks for photos you’ve used in that project, not for photos you may have used in Project B. The checkmarks are continually updated as you work on your project. So if you place a photo on a page and then decide later to delete it, the checkmark will disappear from the thumbnail.

We’ve gotten quite a few requests for a calendar that starts in some month other than January. Most of these have come from procrastinators who didn’t finish their 2009 calendars in time for the New Year, but we’ve also heard from a few overachievers who want to get a jump on 2010. And I suppose there could be all kinds of reasons for starting a calendar at the beginning of the academic year or fiscal year instead of the official calendar year.

Whatever your motives, you can now pick the starting month for your calendar. On the “Make a Calendar” page, look for the drop-down menu right above the orange “Start working on your calendar” button.

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The third new feature is something nobody’s asked for, but once you start using it you’ll wonder how you ever got along without it. You can now pick border and background colors that exactly match a color in your photo.

Before we launched the magic color picker, you could choose from 70 predefined colors that pop up when you click the Colors icon in the image toolbar:

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…or use the advanced, full-spectrum color palette.

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The advanced palette lets you choose among subtle gradations of color, which gives you a lot of flexibility.

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The only problem is that it sometimes takes several tries to find the right shade. Here’s where the color picker comes in handy. To access it, click the little eyedropper icon in the top right corner of the color palette box. Now click anywhere on your photo. The border will automatically adjust to match the color of that precise spot.

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In the screen shot above, I matched the border to a fuchsia flower. By moving the eyedropper down about half an inch, I can change the border to match a red flower instead.

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You can do the same thing with backgrounds. When you click on the Backgrounds tab, you’ll see a little color box near the bottom labeled “or choose a background color.”

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Click on the box to access the color picker (as well as the basic and advanced color palettes). Then click anywhere on your photo to apply that color to the page background.

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The color picker works for text, too. You can use it to change font colors and also to change the background color of a text box. Try it…and then let me know what you think!