jamesmorophoto Offline Upload & Sell: Off
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I recently tested out the trials of the latest versions of these game-changing album design programs on a client album design today.
I figured this might be of some use to some of you still designing your own albums by more tedious means.
this is by no means an exhaustive review but rather a summary of my experiences with both programs.
I'm running a 2009 8-core mac pro with 16GB of ram and the OSX on a 128GB SSD, for reference. It can easily handle d800 files at full res. For the test, I was using my down-resd files I delivered to my client at 4500px long side.
Smart Albums
pros:
FAST
designed for mac and it shows.
I was able to select several subfolders I had categorized the images into, and it pulled all the images into a main gallery and imported them in under 5 mins.
images displayed thumbnail style at bottom of window. you can tell a vertical from a horizontal.
quick keyboard controls.
creative layouts with the touch of a button.
easy image swapping.
album style and formats are up to date w/ latest offerings from most manufacturers (except queensberry).
works great for flush mount designs, taking full advantage of the limitless layout possibilities.
fast export for proofing.
quick preview of template layouts.
cons:
keyboard dominant controls. I would've liked to see more touch or mouse controls. you can't drag to the next spread like you'd expect.
random layouts. you have to basically keep flipping through till you get one you like.
you can't modify the templates.
I would've really liked to be able to select part of a template I liked and mirror it to the other page, and to also mirror individual images (flip over Y-axis).
goofy templates don't use enough page space. I often found a layout I liked, but it kept cropping an image to a square when there was clearly enough room to maintain the original aspect ratio.
no option to maintain original aspect ratio.
no option to filter the types of templates it chooses. I would like the option to filter the choices of templates such as: 'maintain original aspect ratio', maximize negative space, minimize negative space, filmstrip templates only etc. There needs to be a way to reduce the randomization of the layouts that show up.
I was initially disappointed and hoped that the fundy build v6 would give me more control.
I didn't attempt to use this to design a template-restricted matted album, and I'm not sure it's capable of doing so. This could be a major deal breaker, as I've got 2 matted albums in the works.
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Fundy Album Builder V6
pro's:
the potential ability to modify template sizes and groups.
Con's:
lacks the latest album styles and designs. I was surprised to not see formatting for the Finao Playbook.
right off the bat, you can tell this program isn't optimized for Mac. The trial kept giving me a damaged file error until I search a help forum and found out that you have to enable access by ALL programs, not just apple-approved--not a safety feature I feel comfortable enabling.
LAG: The lag made the software practically unusable. It lagged when I was filling out the registration form.
There's a 1-2 sec lag between clicking a selected image and it actually registering as being highlighted.
Quickly selecting multiple images is out of the question.
Trying to resize windows and the thumbnail gallery display took several seconds and was basically non responsive.
I continually found myself waiting for the software to catch up.
Not designed for Mac OSX. It felt like a cheap pc user experience. It forced me to go into each individual file directly and highlight all the images. quick shortcuts like 'select all' or simply selecting multiple folders does not work w/ fundy v6.
So I selected a single folder. It took over 5 mins to import a SINGLE FOLDER. Smart Albums imported the entire, categorized wedding from all the folders in less than 5 mins.
It reminded me of an older version of lightroom w/ the interface lag and import/export lag.
I couldn't figure out how to resize template frames, and couldn't figure out how to zoom in/out or reposition a single image crop within a template group.
The control buttons were not intuitive at all, and the interface was simply so laggy that I could've even tell if my actions or dragging/resizing attempts were even working.
The thumbnail gallery displays all images in a square format on the left of the screen in a vertical arrangement. this made it extremely difficult to identify vertical vs horizontal images, and I couldn't find a way to change this gallery layout.
I really, really wanted fundy v6 to work, but the lag made it unusable. The design wasn't intuitive at all, and I wasn't about to have to learn the nuances of new software when it was a no-brainer with Smart Albums.
So I went back to smart albums. Despite the lack of customization, I was able to figure out how to manipulate the templates and come up with some really nice layouts. moreover, it helped to keep my layouts fresh, and showed me new layouts that I probably wouldn't have come up with myself. It was a little frustrating letting go of control over template design, but also liberating in the sense that it forced me to consider more creative options that I would've chosen on my own. I tend to be conservative with cropping and end up with film-strip layouts for the most part. The random layouts were refreshing in a sense.
Bottom line:
Fundy Album Build v6 was lag city and was unusable on my mac, using down-rezd D800 files in the 16-20mp range. It's not adapted to work on mac, and it shows, dreadfully.
Smart Albums was fast, intuitive and seems to take advantage of the processing power of my mac. despite the limitations in customization, I was able to create a very nice album, FAST--and it forced me to consider alternatives to the tried and true layouts I tend to stick to.
Edited on Apr 18, 2014 at 11:26 AM · View previous versions
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