Album design questions

[ben_rubinstein___mancheste]

Hi,

 

I'm trying to get into storybook wedding albums to sell to my clients. Although

I've seen many examples of software, templates and services offered by various

companies and people including people here who have offered their services, I

am yet to find anything which a) I cannot do myself easily in PS, and b)matches

my mental image of how I want the story told!

 

A couple of questions: When you resize using the 'free transform tool' in PS,

how is it resizing, is it using bicubic or something more basic? How are you

sharpening the pictures given that the sizes are arbitary and tweaked by the

minute?

 

This is another interesting question and I have to research the market here

which is only just starting with storybook style design, how are you working

the book with the client? With traditional albums you got the B&G to pick which

pictures they wanted for the album then showed them the different matts and

suggested a layout. With these albums especially as I won't be working to

templates but basing the design on the images themselves, this wouldn't work.

 

My idea is to explain what the main bullet points of the wedding are in the

storybook style, i.e. how to divide up the page spreads throughout the day,

then ask them to pick their favorite 'X' photos from the album, plus

the 'absolute must have' photos while I am there and helping, and tell them to

leave it to me. No, not all the photos will make it but using the pictures and

the storyline I can work on the design.

 

What do you do if they change their minds half way through, if they dislike

your designs after having spent hours and days on them, if they want to make

major changes, etc? With a traditional album until it's put together it isn't a

big deal, changing 5 spreads of digital design which have already taken hours

to make is not as trivial as it may sound.

 

Does that make sense, what is the industry doing at present or is it still very

much based on the individual photographer/studio? How are you doing it and more

to the point, how are you advertising that you do it?

 

All suggestions and pointers much appreciated!

[marcsaint]

I ask for four lists: 1. pictures that absolutely must be in the album, 2. pictures that absolutely must NOT be in the album, and 3. pictures they would like to have in the album but its okay if they aren't. List 4 is the rest. Then I do a quick design in FotoFusion using List #1 and filling in with pix from List #3 and my own personal favorites. I don't spend a lot of time, just get a general layout done to try and spark a dialogue with the bride about the design. Some brides let you do whatever you want, some want something totally different. The key, I think, is to communicate with the bridal couple and get them involved.

[fotografz]

Ben, it may be time for you to learn "In Design".

 

I'm going to try this year myself. While I don't use it yet, all the Art Directors that work for me

do, and it is amazing to see what they can do and how fast it is. You can even build

templates for yourself, import RAW files to see how they look, resize instantly, and a absolute

host of other functions which you access through Bridge.

 

If you have PSCS2 then you already paid for it. It is the tool that has taken the place of Quark

as the premier design program.

[iskandar_azaman___kuala_lu]

I don't know whether what i'm doing is what you're asking but i'll give it a go.

 

What i do is use Photokit Sharpener. First i convert all RAW files into full uncrop PSD or TIFF files. Then i run a batch to capture sharpen every picture. Then i open a blank 12x10 page (album page size) on PSCS2 with 300dpi. Since most of the time i crop to something much smaller than the native size of the tiff file i set the setting to use Bicubic Sharper as default. If i want to upsize i'll crop leaving the resolution box empty then resize in the image size box using bicubic smoother.

 

After cropping and resizing i just drag it onto the 12x10 page as another layer. Then after i've created the page with all the images i want, i use Photokit Output Sharpener on the whole 12x10 page for 300dpi resolution for whatever output i want (which usually is Contone).

 

It isn't a big deal for me if a client wants to change the design.

[kari douma]

Ok Marc,

I want to know what you mean by "in Design". Do you mean just desing in photoshop, or is there more to it than that? I searched it and couldn't find what you were talking about, but my ears perked up to that.

[cwk]

Indesign.

 

http://www.adobe.com/products/indesign/

[lb-]

Adobe In Design, it's part of their creative suite. I just did a large 18 month photo

calendar layout with it. cool app. I hated quark.

[ben_rubinstein___mancheste]

Iskandar, I'm also using photokit but when using free transform in PSCS2 there is no option for how the resizing is carried out, i.e. bicubic or not.

 

Marc, to be honest I'm having great fun in PS, I've had problems for a long time trying to get my head around designing album pages but having spent an afternoon at it in PS it's working well and fast. I will check it out though.

[rich_taylor____mequon__wi]

Unless you really have a desire to design albums, I think you should consider working with a designer. There are many talented people out there who are experts at PS and other programs, and whose job is to design. Now that I shoot digitally only, I have had to learn more and spend more time on my computer than I care to. But, I have no choice. Where I do have a choice is whether I want to spend even more time learning about album design.

 

If you have a talent for it, and you want to do it, go for it. I have a deal with my album designer: I don't design albums and he doesn't shoot weddings.

[annealmasy]

Hi Ben,

 

To answer your second question...

 

We ask the couple to select a certain number of images (usually 1.5 times the number of

pages, so 90 for a 60-page book, etc.). They submit their "Favorites" to us through our

SimplePhoto online gallery feature (http://www.simplephoto.com).

 

We then design the album around these "Favorite" images, occasionally inserting other

images that add to the story. Typically each books winds up with twice as many images as

there are pages (e.g. 120 images in a 60-page book).

 

We post a proof of the design online for them to preview and approve. They are allowed

to suggest "minor changes" to the design, subject to our approval. We've NEVER had

anyone hate the design and request more than a couple of simple alterations. If they did,

we'd simply quote them a flat-rate for the re-design.

 

It's been a good workflow for us.

 

P.S. The reason we don't allow the couple to select the full-range of images that will go in

their book is this: 90% of the time they wind up selecting a range of images that don't

really relate to eachother. Most couples don't see the advantage of a series, and they're so

desperate to cover all the bases that they'll only choose one photo from each portion of

the day to "maximize" the coverage. However, in the end that type of selection winds up

looking disjointed, and some of the series-based photos lose their flair. That's why we

add in a handfull of images while we're designing, filling in spaces that could benefit from

a certain type of image, or adding photos to what should have been a series. People

always wind up loving the added images and NEVER want to remove or replace them once

they've seen the design.

[ben_rubinstein___mancheste]

Anne, very good point and well thought out! I hadn't thought about how to make sure the images they choose fit into the storyline.

 

If anyone is interested in seeing what I've managed so far...<div></div>