Class Reunion: Album Software?

In September I will be helping a friend who is organizing her class

reunion with the photography. In the past, the reunion committee

used a yearbook/reunion company to make the reunion album. All the

company did was print the photos and center staple the pages at a big

cost.

 

We are thinking that we can do this with digital and create our own

albums using an appropriate software.

 

Can anyone recommend any type of software that is designed to make

creative albums and montage effects?

Todd, I would offer two suggestions:

 

1. Unfortunately, the site is down for the next few years, but we had a Class of 1981 website that showed old pix, new pix, had bulliten boards and kept the number of mailings down. Online registration for the events was extremely popular.

 

As to the pix, we had low-rez images that popped up about 3x5 inches on computer screens. But, you could click on an image to get a multimeg version that could be downloaded and printed.

 

2. Rather than making a hard-copy photo album, think about a DVD album that could be viewed on a computer or DVD player, with a companion CD or DVD that contains high-enough rez images that people can have copies made of the prints they want.

 

The per unit cost of the DVD and or CD would be very low. Also, the mailing cost for one or two discs would be significantly lower than a bound album.

 

Regards, E

I�ve been working with a photographer who has contracted with a reunion company to do this sort of thing. The Memory books cost what they do because of the time, materials and profit that go into them. To lay them out all you need is Photoshop. You can get as creative as you want manually laying out each page, or let PS automatically create proof sheets. I think that most dedicated album software is tied to some company�s album product, and those albums cost several times what your Memory book will sell for. Simple album programs usually don�t permit much layout variety.

Todd,

 

I'm just learning about its capabilities, but JASC Photo Album (very inexpensive) has the capability of creating HTML web-style pages with code, images, etc. If it behaves as it should, you can create an HTML based CD with documentation for photos, thumbnails, etc. There would be no licensing or copyright issues distributing just the HTML code and photo content - users would use Internet Explorer or another web browser to view the CD. This would make it very universal!

Having done a number of these High School reunion gigs, I can tell you that people want pictures. Most of our sales are 5x7 prints done on site. We are often asked how extra prints can be ordered (we use Pro Shots for that), but have never had a request for a digital file.