Fong album design software? What do you think?

After hours of pouring over information and waiting for vendors' sites to finish

loading, I'm ready to CLICK AND BUY SOMETHING/ANYTHING!!! and just get on with

it. What do you know about Gary Fong's albums and design software? I want to

be able to drag my photos into nice, classy pages, or make my own layouts with

their frames and edges, etc., or use my own photoshop or InDesign designs. Can

I do both with Fong? I've read lots of posts here on the subject of templates

and such, but sometimes it's a matter of time and designer's block.

 

I was almost set to click AutoAlbum by Kubota, but read a really bad review

about a page printing low-res and their failure to address the issue, so got leary.

I have Fong's album design software, used it once..... If you are willing to invest a bit more money I would recommend YSI... You Select It.

 

http://youselectit.com/home.php

The Fong software is a collection of Photoshop actions, so you can apply any of it to any image you have open in Photoshop. That gives you some of the options you stated above. The "automatic" part is in the actions he has for the initial page setup for square album layout or vertical / horizontal layout (which you can elect not to use), and other actions which export your page design as flattened left and right pages (basically splits your page into two separate images, then preserving your PSD file. It's not the smoothest process, and I prefer to have more control over it by doing that manually. Also, I don't like the way it imports photos into your layout. It places them in a smaller size, and then if you want to size it up, you're just spreading out diminished pixels. I prefer to paste in the full-size photo and scale it to size manually, which results in a crisper image, but defeats the speed advantage of Fong's image import action. However, he does give you a number of very useful actions, and for $99, it's cheap.

 

I bought some Italian-made software called Album DS, and while very clunky from an interface standpoint, it does a lot more with pre-made templates. It's a software program that runs alongside Photoshop. I just downloaded the latest update, but they still have some usability issues they need to work out. It's about $300, so it ain't cheap.

 

Photographer David Ziser promotes LumaPix FotoFusion on his DVD, and it looks pretty sweet. I think I'll give it a try next. The Extreme version is the most exensive at $300, the Enhanced version is most popular at $119. I've copied the following from a review I found:

 

"FotoFusion will never delete, modify, move, or otherwise affect your image files. Operations such as rotating, color correcting, or 'removing from the database' in FotoFusion don't touch the original media."

 

Check out the details and demos at www.lumapix.com.

Thanks, Steve and Michelle. Still considering, but guess I forgot to mention that I'm a Mac user. Darn. Really liked the look of lumapix.

Aw, too bad. Mac users are so limited on what software they can use. However, you can pick up a good PC for cheap! Come to the Dark Side! The appeal of the Mac is insignificant next to the POWER of the PC! We have right mouse buttons and LOTS of software!

Steve is right "Come to the Dark Side!" then you can get LumaPix, I really do like it. It takes a little getting use to (doesn't all software) but works really well!!!

Charlie D.

Or if you have an Intel processor in your Mac, you can set your Mac up so that is is a dual-boot machine. You can then either run it as a PC running Windows XP or Vista, or as a normal Mac running Mac osX.

 

Don't ever consider switching back to a PC. It would be the biggest step backwards you could possibly make. If you need more info on how to set your intel Mac up with dual-boot capabilities, let me know.

how come no one mention about using photoshop, illustrator, or Indesign?

Jeremy,

 

Actually, I DID mention Photoshop, because Fong actions run in Photoshop, and Album DS runs inside of Photoshop.

 

Illustrator and Indesign are not really directly suited for doing album design the way template-based dedicated album products are. Although, I suppose you could use them. It would not be as fast as the other products, because they are set up for album design, and the other products are a "clean sheet of paper" into which you have to place things.

 

I guess a dual-boot Mac would give you the option of running PC software (as long as there are no hidden software compatibility problems), but I hardly think it would be the biggest step backward you could possibly make. If you can't work out a dual-boot Mac, you could easily pick up a nice PC with monitor for several hundred bucks, run it alongside your Mac, and have the best of both worlds.

is there any photography/graphic design out there create a one of a kind album for different couples? Reason I ask is I am planning to do that. But I don't see anyone doing, then there must be a reason, right?

Jeremy, I'm trying to understand your question. If you are asking about photographers or designers who design custom albums for couples, then, yes, there are many of us who do this. There are online services that provide this service too.

 

If you want to sell customers Graphi-Studio albums (or other brands too), but do not want to design the pages yourself, you can pay them to do it. Graphi-Studio charges $3.50 per page side to design your pages, then they send you a PDF to approve, or make changes.

 

You can still design the pages yourself, using the special software we are talking about here.

What? Heresy you speak!

Go to the dark side - never!

(mom told me NEVER to say that...)

Seriously, though, some great thoughts, especially the dual boot.

Actually, I heard somewhere in this forum about a dvd by Jeff Hawkins, Album Design Simplified using PhotoShop, and ordered it for $39.95, since I have background in graphic design. It's great! Really shows how to make the actions and put the pages together easily, and quickly.

I would recommend a look at it.