I've been using Page Gallery for a while,but more and more I find those templates to be stupidly made and most don't make any sense at all. Always have to rework everything in PS.
Is there a better and easier program.
Perhaps more interactive where I can create my own templates on the fly and drag and drop pictures there.
Hey Dimitri,
Indesign plus album flow plugin is the best option I have found. You get to use the layouts that you create or custom pages in seconds is a breeze. The best solution that I have been able to find.
InDesign is like the Photoshop of album design. But setting up template is a bit PITA. That wire thing just drives me nuts. I need fast fast fast... even started to look at downloading some free templates. But they still require tweaks. Alas it's too fiddly for me.
So BRI's Cascade is my go to album designer these days.
Fundy Album builder. Lots of templates and easy to design your own. He has a lot of online tutorials. Cost is $299. I hear people using indesign as well $699 and Magic Album Designs is $200.
DmitriM wrote:
Thanks for the suggestions guys. I'll look it up.
For those who say InDesign...Did you guys try anything else? I tried it and it's not the easiest piece of software for albums imho
For quality and ability to do whatever you want, it's the cat's ass...Watch that toutorial and learn the keyboard shortcuts, and it gets way faster....
I tried Fundy but Photoshop isn't for album designing so I wasted my money on Fundy. I tried Fotofusion but it was too generic and not what I wanted. Indesign with Magic Album Designs is the perfect combination. I put out three album designs for clients this week and it took me a total of and hour and a half for all three. And they look pretty amazing.
How are images placed in the spread using indesign? Fundy uses Bridge to place images. I have the images selected from Bridge and the I click on a button and the images get copied from my selection in bridge and placed in the spread. I'm curious about indesign. Are you working with RAW and PSD files for your albums or JPEGS?
I PERSONALLY dont use bridge....but it does work.....i export Jpgs from aperture to a folder on the desktop, and then just drag and drop from there...if you drag a photo onto the spread, it appears at 300dpi.....then you can either drag it out larger or smaller by holding Cmd+Shift and clicking the corner and making it smaller....then you just position where you want....you can hold option and click and drag to copy objects and then just drop new photos on top of the copied frames, and it swaps them over automatically....
and i always use jpgs...never raw or Psd...so yeah, it's that simple...that tutorial i posted earlier is amazing...write down the shortcuts and leave them next to your monitor, and you'll learn them eventually.....the ones i use all the time are
Command+Option+shift+E: Fit object proportionally within object box
Command+Option+C: Fit object box to object
W: hide guides and box frames
Command+[ : Move Back
Command+] : Move Forward
Command+G : Group
There are two different arrow tools, one is a normal selection arrow, the other is the direct selection tool...one black arrow, one white...that was really my only source of confusion at the beginning...The black one (normal) will drag and object around (or resize), box and all.... the direct selection moves stuff around (or resizes) within an object box...
There is almost no reason to work with layers within indesign....the only time i use layers is to drop a PSD template for a cover layout over top of my layout, so i can line up the spine, what wraps, and the center of the front and back covers....that's the only time i use layers...
The page size and layout options are somewhat limiting but the book making feature of LR4 looks like it might work for some people. The 4.1 update to LR4 added the ability to save book layouts to Jpegs as well as to the Blurb format and PDFs.
One minor benefit is being able to do appropriate output sharpening for the book images. The last time I checked, not even InDesign will do this without an expensive plug-in.
