Wedding album design principles/ideas

[tim]

I have quite a few wedding albums to design in the near future, a mixture of matted, digital, and books. I can make a reasonable album, with good image selection, nice placement, creative uses of backgrounds, etc, but i'm wanting to take my albums to the next level. I've seen albums from some photographers or designers that make you go "wow", with interesting shapes, colors, lines, etc. I think my photos are good enough, but i'm looking for suggestions on how to "wow my albums up".

If anyone has principles for album design they'd like to share, book recommendations, or any other resources, i'd love to hear them.

[EOS_JD]

Tim
Have a look at www.stuartlittlephotography.co.uk. This guy has created a few DVDs with some nice actions and edges but also a couple of Digital Album DVDs.

His Designing Wedding Albums DVD is excellent value providing some really useful tips on creating your own Wedding Album in Photoshop.

His tutorials give a good idea of what toi expect (the ones you pay for though are generally better and more detailed).

I'd advise checking him out on ebay as well as I got the DWA DVD for 9.99 I think it was. I've a couple of others too including his actions CD which is very useful.

Cheers
Jim

[verty]

I have quite a few wedding albums to design in the near future, a mixture of matted, digital, and books. I can make a reasonable album, with good image selection, nice placement, creative uses of backgrounds, etc, but i'm wanting to take my albums to the next level. I've seen albums from some photographers or designers that make you go "wow", with interesting shapes, colors, lines, etc. I think my photos are good enough, but i'm looking for suggestions on how to "wow my albums up".

If anyone has principles for album design they'd like to share, book recommendations, or any other resources, i'd love to hear them.

tim do you have a website with just your wedding photography?
i would be interested in seeing :D

[tim]

PM sent :)

[coreypolis]

best bet is to go onto fredmiranda and click on the wedding forum, resource list at the top


gary fong has some premade software for sale that looks good, i'm just not a huge fan of him

[Sharyn1983]

This sounds like a bad thing to do... but I look at other photographers work and I copy the layout style and twitch it to make it mine. Watch all the proshow contest winners and take notes. Look at Graphistudio layouts. Learn from the pros...

[tim]

I don't have a high opinion of Gary Fong, i'd avoid using anything of his if I could avoid it. He's a money grabbing opportunist who keeps releasing new un-improved versions of something that wasn't great in the first place, and makes stacks of money from people who don't know enough to know better.

I also look at other photographers work, decide what I like, and make my own versions, there's nothing wrong with that. Now if you copy their shots and their layouts exactly, then that's a problem!

I've just aquired myself a mentor, who happens to be one of the best photographers and album designers in the country, so that should help!

[verty]

PM sent :)

Hi Tim,

thanks for the link.. you have some really nice pics :D

how long have you been shooting pro for??

[tim]

Hi Tim,

thanks for the link.. you have some really nice pics :D

how long have you been shooting pro for??

I was first paid to shoot a wedding something like a year ago, and i've considered myself a professional photographer for... well... weeks now ;) I've been supporting myself for the last few months solely on photography income and i've just joined the NZIPP recently, though I still sometimes hesitate to call myself a pro.

[song4themoon]

Tim, could I get a link to your website too? I was always wondering why you dont post it here??

[tim]

I don't post it here because i'm quite outspoken, and i'd rather my customers don't see what I write! PM sent :)

[Claire]

I'd also be interested in seeing your website. :)

[psykoko]

euh...
I'm too interested in seeing your website... :D

[tim]

Ok, anyone interested, look at the website in my profile, go to the home page (ie remove /Featured from the URL), then click on the link!

[mackb]

Ok, anyone interested, look at the website in my profile, go to the home page (ie remove /Featured from the URL), then click on the link!

LOL, I don't know why but I laughed out loud when I read this! It's funny that Tim saw the future and how many people wanted to see his work.

IMO, regardless of how anyone viwes Tims Photography, He has proven to provide quality feedback. and everyone should respect the fact that you protect your customers!

BTW, I don't like your work (lol.kidding)

[Sharyn1983]

I really like your pictures, Tim. But I do think your Proshow could be improved.

[tim]

Sharyn, i'm not sure which proshow show you're talking about, there's none linked from this thread that I can see. I have a range of shows with different things in them, for different purposes. Also when you say "it could be improved" it would be helpful to hear how you think it could be improved.

[Sharyn1983]

slight movement, perhaps rotation by at most a few degrees or panning gives life to shows. As does different transitions such as fading in different pictures instead of using one picture fading to one picture. You could fade one picture in and then a second picture in (see Yervant's slideshows) and then fading the first picture out.

[Sharyn1983]

Your pictures are very good. While the proshow contests aren't for huge amounts of money I think if you added to your shows you could win them.

[tim]

You need proshow producer for some of those more interesting transitions, I don't want to spend the US$300 on it right now. I've done complex shows with movement, panning, and effects, and i've done simple ones, I prefer the simple ones because it puts the attention on the photos instead of the show. The simple shows also look more professional, and will stand the test of time, whereas "gee whiz" style shows might grab someone on the first and second viewing, but after that it'll get a bit lame.

[dmp-potn]

Hello Tim,

If you are not using it already, my suggestion is that you add Adobe InDesign to your toolkit. We're very new (newer than you) at the album design thing, but InDesign has prooved itself to be an immensely powerful tool for this sort of work. The primary advantages over Photoshop are that you work with a screen-resolution proxy of the images, which is faster; and a single document can contain multiple pages, so you get things like templates, headers/footers, page numbers, etc.

InDesign is certainly not a replacement for Photoshop, but it makes building a multi-page album layout tons easier than trying to create a folder full of 10" x 10" PSD files. Sorry if this was obvious, but hopefully someone will find it helpful.

[Arnie1]

Hello David,

Can I ask how you save out your InDesign album files for hi-res output?

Regards
Simon

[tim]

David,

PhotoJunction fills a similar role to Indesign. I'm not 100% sold on PJ, so InDesign might be a good solution. PJ is great to throw images around quickly, but it lacks the detailed control I want for a digital album, i'm having alignment problems right now and their support team can't solve the problems, at least not so far. I will consider it, especially once I get more experience it sounds great. I didn't know anything about it before you pointed it out, thanks :)

[Sharyn1983]

I am not a huge advocate of the really flashy shows. And I admit that the simple shows I have seen do highlight the photography more. But of all the shows I have seen are the photographers who can put together shows with amazing pictures and simple transitions and movement. Those are usually the ones who win the contests. They know the importance of balance and moderation in producing amazing shows.

[Sharyn1983]

while still keeping the photography center

[Sharyn1983]

Its like cooking. You can use seasonings to highlight the ingredients or you can try to "hide" them by smothering them. But no seasonings leave that "somethings missing" feeling. You don't need proshow producer, just a little salt.