Which album design software would you chose???

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Archive 2008 · Which album design software would you chose???

Marcus Watts
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p.2 #1 · Which album design software would you chose???

coreypolis wrote:
Marcus Watts wrote:
Photoshop if you have design skills. I mean professional level.
If you are like the other 90% of us then Page gallery. It takes the design side out of the equation. I am sure it may not be perfect having to find a template ( i don't find any problem there though others may) but it is going to give you a vastly superior end product.
That is not to insult other photographers but to say lets be honest as the answer to this is dependant on your level of graphic design skill.
Recommending anything prior to that being established knowing that the probability is not in favor of those skills being adequate i do not believe is fair or professional of us.
Other programs still leave you to do the designing so why not stay in photoshop if you do intend to design yourself? It's not a slow program.
YSI i cannot comment on.
you haven't tried InDesign then have you

same design concept, except if you decide to change an image size, style etc, it takes a half a second. All you're doing is placing image holders, if never imports the images into the program, so you are free to manipulate them at any point without doing harm to the original or risking image degradation.

And every page you make is then a saved template, for drag and drop convenience the next time. Not to mention PS for text is just awful.

No you are right. i have not used in design.
Of course it still depends upon the graphic skills of the photographer.
One of the great setbacks in the industry right now is that many good photographers are combining good to great images with tardy unprofessional looking album layouts.
Not everyone of course but from those i see post on forums i would say that the majority fit that mould. We have become the uncle bobs of graphic design.
Your own site looks fantastic Corey. I take it you do your own graphics?

Feb 06, 2008 at 04:05 AM

runner301
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p.2 #2 · Which album design software would you chose???

Marcus Watts wrote:
We have become the uncle bobs of graphic design.

Exactly what my graphic design friends say too!

Feb 06, 2008 at 04:17 AM

hislight
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p.2 #3 · Which album design software would you chose???

I've moved from templates to photoshop only.

I look at other's online albums for inspiration while I'm in the learning phase. I've now done 3 albums in PS and am getting faster and am enjoying much more than using templates.

A book that helped with some workflow stuff and concepts I like is digial weding album design guide by woodford. Frankly, I don't care for many of the designs but the book was very informative for me and where I'm at in the whole process. I gained ideas and workflow. While it's not mentioned in the book I use LR and put all album selects into a collection. Then I start selecting the appropiate # of images for the pano and then drop into a folder, IE, p2+3, 4+5, etc. then export...Now I have all pano's in their folders. I then start laying out the images on my blank pages. When I'm done I go back and apply strokes, gradiants, etc.

There is more but you get the drift. With a little effort you can do better than a template if you are willing to put in some learning time in the beginning...

While I'm not a "graphic artist" I'm not finding it that difficult to make some nice lay outs.
Look around for inspiration at others work. Learn how to "apply" the affects in PS.
You will have much more creativity once you get going and will most likely have more satisfaction in your work as opposed to using templates in my opinion.

If I were to spend money on software for album design other than CS3 then it would be Indesign, but that ain't cheap...

Edited on Feb 06, 2008 at 05:57 AM

Feb 06, 2008 at 05:50 AM

jeremymcknight
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p.2 #4 · Which album design software would you chose???

hislight wrote:

I look at other's online albums for inspiration while I'm in the learning phase. I've now done 3 albums in PS and am getting faster and am enjoying much more than using templates.

Where are the resources that you look at for inspiration. Are there specific sites dedicated to this. If so please share

Feb 06, 2008 at 06:04 AM

rocksy
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p.2 #5 · Which album design software would you chose???

Anyone tried Pixel Creator Pro?

Feb 22, 2008 at 06:32 AM

Saad Syed
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p.2 #6 · Which album design software would you chose???

+1 for PS CS3

Feb 22, 2008 at 12:05 PM

Marcus Watts
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p.2 #7 · Which album design software would you chose???

hislight wrote:

While I'm not a "graphic artist" I'm not finding it that difficult to make some nice lay outs..

That is what way too many photographers think who are as i say putting out less than professional album designs.
I cannot say for you personally without seeing your work but that mindset is adopted by too many photographers who live in denial.
At the end of the day an album layout program that will increase the quality of your designs is very cheap.
If someone here charged $800 to do a shoot and burn wedding he/she would get flamed for lowballing. For less than that you can have a program that will let you put out album designs of a higher quality than most of your competition and better than you could do yourself.
I have to say it again. If you are a professional level graphic designer get a program that lets you do all the design.
If you are not then get one that provides the templates designed by real graphic artist. You will be doing yourself, your clients and the industry a favour.

Feb 22, 2008 at 12:40 PM

cordellwillis
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p.2 #8 · Which album design software would you chose???

Marcus Watts wrote:
hislight wrote:

While I'm not a "graphic artist" I'm not finding it that difficult to make some nice lay outs..

That is what way too many photographers think who are as i say putting out less than professional album designs.
I cannot say for you personally without seeing your work but that mindset is adopted by too many photographers who live in denial.
At the end of the day an album layout program that will increase the quality of your designs is very cheap.
If someone here charged $800 to do a shoot and burn wedding he/she would get flamed for lowballing. For less than that you can have a program that will let you put out album designs of a higher quality than most of your competition and better than you could do yourself.
I have to say it again. If you are a professional level graphic designer get a program that lets you do all the design.
If you are not then get one that provides the templates designed by real graphic artist. You will be doing yourself, your clients and the industry a favour.

Amen, amen, amen! You said it all. Denial is it.

Feb 22, 2008 at 02:03 PM

tomKphoto
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p.2 #9 · Which album design software would you chose???

I didn't see a mention for PhotoJunction. The new ReMix version is very good. Once you design a book, all of your spreads become templates with thumbnail views - reuse a design you did months ago - cool.

That said, it's hard to get around FotoFusion - I see it as thee target - I'm not on a PC, so I can't run. Thinking about adding XP to one of our iMacs. My PhotoJunction licesnse runs out this fall - we'll see.

Feb 22, 2008 at 02:27 PM

Marcus Watts
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p.2 #10 · Which album design software would you chose???

Yeah funny how we only get it with bad photographers who think they can shoot weddings professionally but cannot at all get it when it comes to our own graphic design skills. Getting a professional camera does not give one the required skills does it?

Though if you add a good book they could be shooting like a pro in no time.

Edited on Feb 22, 2008 at 02:30 PM

Feb 22, 2008 at 02:29 PM

okafoja
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p.2 #11 · Which album design software would you chose???

You guys should stop spending you money on Fotofusion, YSI, and Yervant etc. Just get Indesign and you would never look back. I have use all the above programs and none of them came close to Indesign period.

My wife is a pharmacist and has no interest in photography nor graphic designs but after playing around with Indesign for less than 20mins she came up with these designs. Imagine what some of you could do with Indesign.

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Feb 22, 2008 at 04:39 PM

Sam Hassas
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p.2 #12 · Which album design software would you chose???

CS3

Feb 22, 2008 at 11:46 PM

liza
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p.2 #13 · Which album design software would you chose???

I purchased Fotofusion and wish I had spent the money on Indesign instead. I've used Adobe software to design high school yearbooks and found it to be much more intuitive.

Feb 23, 2008 at 02:38 AM

Mike Mahoney
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p.2 #14 · Which album design software would you chose???

I used Photoshop 6 recently on an old computer for my very first album design. Borrowed a couple of ideas from Spencer B.

You can get some ideas anywhere and with some basic photoshop skills just start right in:

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Feb 23, 2008 at 03:30 AM

sboerup
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p.2 #15 · Which album design software would you chose???

coreypolis wrote:
sboerup wrote:
CS3. I feel that most people tend to complicate things. It's much easier to use than the others. I've tried Foto and YSI. Not very intuitive, and nothing comes close to matching the power and speed of PS.
InDesign CS3

Yes Indesign is a good program, but I don't think it's great for albums. Yes, page design, brochures, BC cards, etc. I use it all the time. But CS3 is much more flexible and customizable for albums. It's much easier to control gradients, drop shadows, blending modes, etc.

Indesign is great for vector artwork. I don't consider albums to fall in that category. YMMV

Edited on Feb 23, 2008 at 07:10 AM

Feb 23, 2008 at 07:10 AM

tcamper
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p.2 #16 · Which album design software would you chose???

Without reading the other posts in the last day I can say that anything for albums can be done in PS versus InDesign. Where I would import to ID would be when I want to add text. PS text translates into pixelated crap. Other than that PS, and yes even PS6 can do album design............if you're not an Uncle Bob graphic designer.

Tad

Feb 23, 2008 at 07:58 AM

T Hellsten
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p.2 #17 · Which album design software would you chose???

I use a proggy called Pixel Creator Pro.

Quite nice and they have a fe undred templates that come and you can buy more and make your own etc... very easy to use for bother PC and MAC

Feb 23, 2008 at 09:47 PM

coreypolis
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p.2 #18 · Which album design software would you chose???

sboerup wrote:
coreypolis wrote:
sboerup wrote:
CS3. I feel that most people tend to complicate things. It's much easier to use than the others. I've tried Foto and YSI. Not very intuitive, and nothing comes close to matching the power and speed of PS.
InDesign CS3

Feb 23, 2008 at 10:32 PM

kesava
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p.2 #19 · Which album design software would you chose???

+1 Indesign.
Using CS3 to make an album is like trying to play the piano with mittens on. Its limiting and slow.
Photoshop was purposefully given minimal layout software. The same reason it was given the ability to create vector images and web layout abilities. Indesign for layouts, dreamweaver for web, its main function to manipulate photographs, Illustrator for vectors and so on and so forth.

Edited on Feb 23, 2008 at 11:03 PM

Feb 23, 2008 at 11:02 PM

tomKphoto
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p.2 #20 · Which album design software would you chose???

dumb question - how do you manage templates in InDesign?

Feb 23, 2008 at 11:58 PM

butchM
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p.2 #21 · Which album design software would you chose???

tomKphoto wrote:
dumb question - how do you manage templates in InDesign?

I prefer ID mainly from using Quark Xpress for page design while working as a PJ. When Adobe released ID, it was a no brainer to make the move. I love it for album design. Just upgraded to CS3 and a few of the new features make populating a page a breeze.

As far as templates, If I like a layout spread and think I will use it again in the future, I save it as a "snippet". I keep my snippets in folders based on style. Once the snippets are saved to a folder you can use Bridge and just drag the snippets onto a page in ID and away you go.

Using the style sheets for Object Styles, Paragraph Styles etc. really make quick work of fine tuning the design. If you want to change the look of your drop shadows, make the change to the object style and ID automatically updates every object using that style in the entire document. I don't think you can do that in PS with any of the add-on software options because each spread is a single file.

You can save any document as a template and have a base design and style sheet ready to go then adjust to taste and situation. When you File>Save as ... just select template format.

sboerup wrote:

Yes Indesign is a good program, but I don't think it's great for albums. Yes, page design, brochures, BC cards, etc. I use it all the time. But CS3 is much more flexible and customizable for albums. It's much easier to control gradients, drop shadows, blending modes, etc.

Indesign is great for vector artwork. I don't consider albums to fall in that category. YMMV

IDCS3 has virtually identical controls and adjustments for gradients, drop shadows and blending modes as PSCS3.

Edited on Feb 25, 2008 at 06:40 AM

Feb 25, 2008 at 06:33 AM

sboerup
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p.2 #22 · Which album design software would you chose???

IDCS3 has virtually identical controls and adjustments for gradients, drop shadows and blending modes as PSCS3.

Yes, they are the same, but are applied much much differently. I find IL and ID very annoying in this regard (its applying them to vector art here).

One of the big things for me is that ID cannot fade an object into "nothing". I'd like to get boxes, lines, objects and photos to fade from one color, to transparent. Nope, only color to color. Can't fade an object into the background either. Atleast I haven't figured it out.

To each his own.

Feb 25, 2008 at 06:56 AM

rufteckstudios
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p.2 #23 · Which album design software would you chose???

I hope this helps.
Make your own templates in PS

lets say an 11x14 or 22x14
put all your bleed lines in.
- take your Rectangle tool and draw out your boxes where you want your photos to be and make sure you select the color you want that box to be. This will allow you to know what layer is what box.

So after you had put in all your boxes in open up a picture put the picture right above the box you want it to go in ( same thing in the layers palette too. ) then right click or ctrl click ( mac ) on the picture and what you want to do is click Creat clipping mask. If the picture is to big for the box then just transform the image and drag it to where you want it.

So what I did is made about 35 spreads so now all I have to do is drag and drop pictures into the boxes and still then out of those 35 spread I can flip change the shape size of each box.

I hope this helps I'm not to good at explaining things but you are more then welcome to call me and I can walk you through it over the phone!

Here is a screen shot what I did notice in the layers palette you can see the picture has an arrow pointing down to the color boxed

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Peter@iconsphotography.com

Feb 25, 2008 at 09:02 AM

BarnDog
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p.2 #24 · Which album design software would you chose???

plove53 wrote:
I have a questions about FotoFusion...

ENHANCED -vs- EXTREME ... is it worth the extra $$

Do you use all what the EXTREME offers?

Thanks,
-p

The Extreme version gives a couple key features for album design:

1.) layout size is NOT limited to 13x19 so a 10x10 book is easier to build (2 page spread)
2.) You can see all of your layouts as a single project instead of one by one pages
3.) Save as PSD files

Those features were worth the extra $$ to us.

Feb 25, 2008 at 09:10 PM

plove53
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p.2 #25 · Which album design software would you chose???

I downloaded InDesign and Fotofusion trial version… and NOW I’m thinking staying with PhotoShop.

I found BOTH ID and FF difficult and did not offer much (at least with the trial version) with templates (which I was looking for).

Here is another question DOES PS have templates for albums? I guess I can start and make my own (then just add images) BUT is there a place I can get some templates?

Thanks for all the replys!

-p

Feb 26, 2008 at 04:08 PM


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