Wow, that's bordering on insanity. How do you choose?

Choosing a template is pretty easy.
The templates are well named and sorted.
Sort criteria 1: Amount of vertical images on the template
Sort criteria 2: Amount of horizontal images on the template
Sort criteria 3: Amount of square images on the template

The names are like: V01-H02-S01 (1 vertical - 2 horizontal - 1 square).

When i design an album my steps are:
1. Import images in lightroom
2. Sort images with the pick / reject mode (p and x key)
3. Do very basic retouch on the picked images (no croping)
4. Export as JPEGs
----- now the album design starts ------
5. Choose images from the picked preselection that cover one topic and belong together in the album (like arrival of the bride / speech of the bestman / first dance / first see of B&G and so on).
6. After knowing how many images covering this one topic i decide if i want them to go on one spread (= a double page) in the album or if i split them up on two or more spreads.
7. Now i count how many vertical images, how many horizontal and how many square images will go on the next spread.
This count depends on the image and not on the file orientation. It may happen that i use a crop of a horizontal image as a vertical or a sqare image in the album,
8. After step 7 i know what template i need. If i want to have 3 vertical, 2 horizontal and 0 square images on my spread i search for a template called V03-H02-S00. If i can choose from different templates covering this amount of images they have a suffix like V03-H02-S00_2, V03-H02-S00_3 and so on.
In InDesign you can easiely double click on the template so see the layout. I choose the one that fits my need and doubleclick it.
9. Now i drag & drop the images into the template images boxes and change my crooping size
10. When all boxes are filled with images i create a new InDesign Page using this template.
The reason why i first change the template and create the page with a template allready containing images is pretty easy. I don t want an album to have the same template used twice or more. So when i am in step 8 an i click through my templates i see wich one has been used allready because i see the images instead of the numbers in each image box.
11. Export as PDF
12. Save JPEGs out of the PDF
13. Use ShowItWeb to present the predesign to my clients
14. Make changes according to clients wishes
15. Order album at bulmark.com (my fav. album company)
16. Collect the money*g* <-- most important step

Not sure if this sound complicated.
The process takes about 2-5 minutes per spread.
So a predesign with 50 spreads = 100 pages takes me about 2 - 4 hours.
Getting paid about 120 USD / spread this is well invested time:-)

Still interested....

Well, you sure do have a system, I'll give you that.

I think there would be a market for these templates and am interested in test driving your system.

If you want to try it, you can still use the available free Templates i made so far.

PDF PREVIEW
Download PDF here

Download ZIP here

Have fun and give it a try.


At the moment i do some qualitychecks on the 700 templates. Looks great so far. Just a few minor issues that have been fixed allready.

I have made up my mind about the price and talked back and forth with a couple of photog. friends.

The base price will be 189 USD for the templates but i promisse you there will be a great OSP special once i release them.

Cheers
Juergen

ok.. here we go.
It will take about two - three weeks to get a stable release of the Templates.
At the moment there is a sorting issue with a couple of my old templates which are not sorted in line.
If you don t care about that here is your OSP SPECIAL DEAL.

Send 49.95 USD (instead of 189 USD) via paypal to webmaster@einersites.de and you will receive the templates via eMail. Make sure you can receive a 15 MB ZIP-File via mail.
Otherwise i ll send you a link to download the file from the web.

This offer will expire on May 30th.

Once the final Version is released you will get it via eMail free of charge.

To be honest, i need some cash to pay my bills:-) So buy fast *g*

Any feedback is welcome.

Yours Juergen

Special OSP offer extended to June 30th because the final version is not ready yet.

Juergen -

Thanks so much for all you have done. I am really enjoying the templates and I can't believe all the different styles there are. I never would have thought about some of them! Keep up the great work and I am looking forward to the final release!

Chad

Hi,

Nick informed me, that the PDF Preview is no longer available.
Sorry, the URL has changed since my server was hacked and i had to move.
Here is the new PDF-Preview URL.
http://www.storybooklove.de/templates/ID_T...s_V20080512.pdf

Have fun.
Juergen

I would love to purchase the 700 templates, but I seem to be missing the link. How do I order these from you? Thanks so much for do this.

Tabitha

awesome i can't wait to get these.. today is almost the last day

How does your template work with different sizes spreads? 10x10 or 12x12 for example?

Having used the template for the last 3 wedddings I though I would share the out come,

may take a while to load but heres a couple

gallery one

and

gallery two

cheers

tom

Those links don't seem to be working...?

Apologies, lost whole site when email was hacked, long story.

site back up

links here

http://www.idlehans.co.uk/index_gallery/st...&helen.html

http://www.idlehans.co.uk/index_gallery/steph&paul.html

cheers

tom

Hi Tom,

looks great. Did i miss the music on the slideshow or is there none?
You should really thing about adding some music. Makes it way more emotional for the viewer.

by the way. Whats your experience working with the templates?

Have not got the music sorted yet (lost whole site recently so in the process of updating) Clients get to choose the music they want for a DVD so that works well but the copyright does not cover internet so will do something.

Templates, definitely make things quicker once you get used to the workflow of vertical /hor / square etc.

I some more to do but client wants portrait to trying to think of an easy way to adapt layouts to portait

cheers

tom

This is a really great thread. I have been away for a while but I wanted some inspiration so here I am.

My question for you is once I copy the pictures into indesign I get some saturation loss in the pictures. Do you have the same problem and how do you compensate for it?