Hey everyone,

I personally use some of the built in ROES software with my local lab for quick books, and InDesign for all wedding albums.

Photoshop gets the job done for a lot of folks. Some swear by InDesign since it IS one of many Industry standards when it comes to printing, design, etc.

Does anyone use an external program? Gary Fong's templates, that German template company, etc?

If so, why... is it really helpful? Can you start from scratch, change templates, conform the templates to any size?


InDesign takes me a while right now, and I'm thinking about outsourcing album design to a company. Do you do this currently?

As always, let's keep up the OPENness of our discussions and help everyone involved.

God bless!

-tmiller
Tim Miller Photography
http://tmillerphoto.com

Gary Fong doesn't have templates, they are actions commonly used in album design through photoshop. Defnitely not "magic" though.

Duely noted... either way, they "help" us along.

BTW Nick congrats (possibly?) on the Sandels situation, and your album work is stunningly cool.

My wife is from Florida, and if you want an assistiant or 2nd or 3rd shooter, we're up for moving.

-tmiller
Tim Miller Photography
http://tmillerphoto.com

I use YSI some. I also just bought a pack of 600+ templates from PixelCreators. They are buggy, but the concept looks very good. It's templates coupled with scripts to automate the process. YSI can get funky, and these are pretty clean. I also have bought 2 or 3 sample album templates that are .psd's I can tweak. I have used Gary Fongs, and those actions were OK too once you learned the size limitations.

Try DG Foto Art.

We have been using them for around 3 years now, great product, 1000's of templates included in the package, and easy to make your own or alter theirs.
You can design any size page, and when you're done export each page as a jpg and send to your album maker. We use Graphi so it's ideal for us.

Hope this helps.
Carl

I use Lumapix Fotofusion. I have been using it for the last few months and I can say that it is pretty powerful. I was able to whip up a 12X9 30 page signature guestbook design for VisionArts in less than 20 minutes. It is very fast and pretty intuitive. David Ziser demo'd it for us during his lighting master class at WPPI. I highly recommend it

FF is just for Windows PC, but i heard it can be used on a MAC using Vmware or Parallels.

I outsourced to DoodleDo this year -- and it was the best thing I have done for my business in a long time!!!!

Another Lumapix Fotofusion user here - love it!

Tim - did you ever live in Ohio? I went to school with a Tim Miller about 25 years ago and you look so much like him!

Hmm, I might have to look at Fotofusion. Unfortunately no... never been to Ohio, and thanks for the compliment. Cook to know I've got a doppleganger out there. =o)

-tmiller
Tim Miller Photography
http://tmillerphoto.com

I use Fong's actions. I'm tempted to look at InDesign and AlbumDS...but I've customized some of Fong's actions for my needs...which makes it hard to change for now...

Thanks for the kind words Tim! Yup....writing up a proposal today...we'll see what happens bro! Second shooting? I'll remember the offer when we hire associates for 2009. Even on top of the Sandals thing, we've been contacted about shooting weddings in 4 other states.

Hmm...maybe it's about time I quit building cabinets.

Regarding the diff album builders, I've researched ID, YSI, Fotofusion, and others. I'm just a "build-it-from-scratch" kinda guy, so I decided to stick with PS. I used Fong's actions at first, then after using them more, realized exactly what they were, and made my own (Much like Mr Dan up there) From my research, here is what I gathered-

ID - Not proprietary to album building
YSI - IMO, I like to sell albums with photos, not 80% blank spreads.
Fotofusion - I think that's the program that you never fully own it.
Kabuto's Auto Drop - Template based....I despise templates..
Sallees Album Designer - Template based

Tim, it all boils down to how much time you want to spend on it. You can build a very simple spread from scratch in about 2 minutes, or build a complex spread personalized to each client, which will take longer.

Page Gallery - It creates Photoshop spreads that can be further customized.

Takes me about 1 hour to design an album.

Here's an example from last week: http://SeanAzul.net/albums/AmerikaMikeAlbumv1/

Sean

Photojunction Remix.

Fotofusion

The latest version now allows template sharing

yay!!

I just use photoshop and do everything from scratch. Not a fan of template programs. My husband is looking into INDesign...but I'm a creature of habit and LOVE my photoshop

indesign

photojunction remix and indesign
photojunction makesa all the initial deign soooo easy

Former PS designer, new Fotofusion user.

What I loved about PS was complete creative control - if I could dream it, I could make it. I was very comfortable in Photoshop and enjoyed making custom layouts from scratch. What I didn't like was changes to layouts involving resizing and resampling images. I also found it extremely difficult to reliably and quickly line images up with each other. Guides and such were useful, but I still spent too much time checking things at the pixel level to make sure they were evenly aligned and feeling like I was eyeballing it too often.

I've now been using Fotofusion for just 2 weeks. A giant album I'd been wading through for weeks in Photoshop took me an afternoon to complete, even while learning the software. LOVE that it works with proxy images so any edits you need to make you just make in Photoshop and it updates in FF. Still figuring out how to accomplish certain things, but totally in love with how easy it to rearrange things, and since you can just split a frame into parts, perfectly aligned and offset just the amount you choose, aligning is easy peasy. Exports to all sorts of formats and I'm never looking back!

I use Yervant's Page Gallery in combination with Photoshop.

I am also experimenting with InDesign but I still got some doubts on how to do things I do in Photoshop.

Saludos David!!!!

I downloaded demo/tiral versions of Page Gallery and Album DS...I liked both programs, but after several days testing them, I found Album DS better Bang for the Buck...The only thing Album DS is missing is the ability of splitting spreads while exporting as Page Gallery does. I notice Page Gallery slower in my iMac. Another thing, in album DS you are able to modify the design prior to exporting, this is due to the fact Album DS works within PhotoShop.

Best Regards,

I'm all for people enjoying their design work, but cringe when I see them hanging onto Photoshop as the tool. It's like some guy insisting that nothing sounds as good as his 8-track tape deck. We all know there's better technology, but he just won't budge.

Photoshop is the slowest application possible for album design. Nothing wrong with loving it and being comfortable in it, as long as you're aware that you're wasting tens of hours per album. InDesign can whoop the beejezus out of PS. Just because you're using design software doesn't require templates. InDesign, Photofusion, etc. can all start from scratch; they just don't require you save separate, full-resolution layered PSDs for _every_ _page_, or that you open each photo in full res, then copy it onto your layout PSD in a layer. Not to mention, when you reduce the size of an image in PS for your layout, and later change your mind that you want that image larger, you have to delete it and reimport it (unless you want to up-res something that's been shrunk, which will result in blocky JPEG artifacts looking like poo).

Being a creature of habit is fine, too (who isn't?), as long as you're aware your habits are costing you measurable, significant time, which is the only resource we have--and it's getting more and more scarce every day it seems.

OK. I'm done. Really.

$.02 or less.

Is the actual machine behind ID faster than PS? Just curious, how are you basing the assumption that ID can whoop the beatlejuice out of PS? With boxes and gradients laid at the press of a button with PS, how is ID faster? My spread is saved as a copy, and split for printing in about 10 seconds with an action...truly curious how ID can save so much time. Bigger photos....transform key? I've had several albums printed, and see no difference.

I respect you as a photographer and designer Swan, and no battle is meant here. Just really want to know the facts I reckon....time is money.

I spend a lot of time designing albums, and all I have seen so far as folks bragging about the time spent desiging a spread...10 minutes. Not putting anyone's album's down at all, but when you just plop a few photos on the page and call it done, I can understand it taking just a few minutes.

I'm extrememly passionate about album design...obviously...but it's like I told Shane...I'm all for saving time, but how much time can you save when you have to learn everything again (hot keys, shortcuts).

Album DS and loving it!

In every way.



Gradients, drop shadows, glows, boxes (c'mon, you're doing BOXES in PS?), strokes, opacity, all of it. Easy clicks in InD.


You're opening and saving 300dpi 24x12 (or whatever size your albums are) at full resoultion. I can open and save an entire 40-spread album in the same time you open and save a single spread--in fact, I can do it faster. I need to export a 40-page album? Open one file, export it as a PDF or JPEG, done.

You can resize photos up and down to your heart's content in InD. In PS, you can only scale DOWN without image quality loss. Sorry, there's no magic transform key that will scale up. You can get away with a little bit of up-scaling, but it's always at the cost of image quality. E.g. you're in PS, you have an image that you put on your spread in a 10" box. You later decide you want to try it as a 3" box, so you resize... no problem. Later, you decide you want to have that image back at 10". If you use transform, you'll end up stretching a 3" image to a 10" image, which will result in image destruction and blurry/blocky printing. In InD, you can go from .5" box to 10" box, back and forth, all day long, and the resolution is always 100% because you're only dealing with proxy images in InD, not the real pixels. It's only when you export that you're dealing with full res.

That is one of the main reasons InD can blow PS away. You're never dealing with full resolution, so everything is lightning fast. I'm not saying you CAN'T design an album in Photoshop, just that it's the wrong tool (it's not called "Albumshop," after all). Heck, I'd bet I could design an album in Word that would look just as good on final print as anything you can get out of Photoshop--but it would be a nightmare getting there because Word isn't built for it. InDesign is a LAYOUT tool. Albums are layouts.




It's not about the final output, it's about how you get there. InDesign is undeniably faster.



You can train yourself in InDesign to be faster with short-cuts, for sure ( I use them all the time ), but I'd bet even your FIRST album in InD you'd end up saving time over PS.

Humbly submitted.

Basically there's a reason InDesign and Quark are called industry standards for the printing and design world.

These are facts, just the way it's been for years and probably will be.

All great tools, some "sharper" than others. =o)

-tmiller
Tim Miller Photography
http://tmillerphoto.com

I appreciate your time Swan. I think I'm gonna grab that vid and at least watch what you have to say.

InDesign is faster because it is a program to do layouts and PS is not.

PS is an image editing software that was adapted by photographers to do layouts. But just because you can do them, does not mean is the best option. That is why template programs are so popular. They help save time by simplifying the "hole" making step.

That is why I went the route of Page Gallery, because doing albums on the "raw" on PS is time consuming and complex, and software like Page gallery makes PS more responsive as a layout tool.

For example, to create three equal boxes on PS to place images takes several layers, steps and lots of time when you compare to the simplicity of InDesign to the same.

Yes, Kevin is right, it may takes time getting use to InDesign, but once you do you will create complex layouts a lot faster. And. like he say, even doing the first one saved me time from doing it in PS.

I watched Kevin's tutorial video for InDesign, it took me a while to get going but was able to finished the book in few hours. Overall it saved lot of time.

I was at Joe and Yervant's seminar last friday and couldn't resist buying the %30 discounted Page Gallery. Its simple and fast


I use both depending what i need

I too just started outsourcing to DoodleDo- and I am so psyched about it-
Robin and Bruce are great to work with-

Lisa

When I have to design an album, Fotofusion!

But I am outsourcing to Mercury Designs. (She is our photography business partner, but is opening her own album design company because she rocks!!!!)

Just to give a plug for her:

She loves album design

She will work with your client directly if you don't want to be the middle man

Her designs are clean and lovely.

And she does it for $100 an album (20 pg/40 side).

Steph

PS: I would give you her website, but it isn't finished yet! LOL

3 years ago i used the photoshop templates from fotowerkstatt-belz.de and it took me about 80 hours to do my first 40 page album.

After watching GaryFongs OneStepAhead Video i purchased his Actionset.
Took me about 8 hours to get a 40 page predesign done, but it took me ages to do all this little tiny changes my clients asked me to do.

After watchin Kevin Swans InDesign Album Making tutoriual i switched to InDesign (never started this program before even if it was included in my CreativeSuite).
Did a 60 page predesign in about 3 hours yesterday and changing images or layouts due to clients request is superfast.

I have tried DG FotoArt and Lumapix, but i just can't get access to the workflow they use. So InDesign just fits my needs.

Hey everyone ... we have tried all of the album design packages ... pagegallery, photojunction, etc ... and while they worked well for us, they lacked the flexibility we wanted.

I agree with many others on this topic that InDesign is the way to go! We just switched to InDesign and we are cutting our album design time in half ... literally!

Being a graphic designer by education I decided to go ahead and create templates for other photographers who didn't want to take the hours of time it takes to design the templates.

So I went through all the template designs out there and chose what I felt to be the top 65 designs (if you are like me, you would rather have 65 awesome designs than having to wade through 500 to find the top 30 you use for the album)

I also created videos that show you how to use InDesign ... not only to be able to use the templates but also how to customize the templates, create your own etc.


I have made them available on our website: www.benharrisonphotography.com ... just click on "photographers resources" and you can see the sweet goodness!!!

I am offering a discount for the first two weeks of the release ... just enter earlybirdgetstheworm in the shopping cart and you will get $50 off

*the discount code ends may 31 so if you are interested act quickly