parent books?

Do you offer parent books to your clients? What size has work best for you? Do you design them differently from your main wedding album for the b&g?

Do you offer parent books to your clients? Yes
What size has work best for you? 8X8
Do you design them differently from your main wedding album for the b&g? ABSOLUTELY NOT!!!

My albums company will not let me redesign parent albums anyway. It is tough enough to get one album design approved *LOL*

scorpio_e wrote in post #16821593
Do you offer parent books to your clients? Yes
What size has work best for you? 8X8
Do you design them differently from your main wedding album for the b&g? ABSOLUTELY NOT!!!

My albums company will not let me redesign parent albums anyway. It is tough enough to get one album design approved *LOL*

Offered: Yes
Size: 8x8
Different than B&G: No

So in other words, what he said.

Yes.
The same sizes available as for the couple.
No.

Yes.
They like 8x8's but I'm able to offer special pricing for a pair of 6x6's
Yes, but it comes at a cost. That's when the couple decides they like the design just the way it is.

Copies of the main album. 7" or 10". Queensberry does them for me.

Yes, 8x8, 10x10 or 12x12. Different layout as both sets of parents want dif set of photographs in their album. They do choose the album pics as well as the couple does for their album.

I offer parent books but it's the duplicate as the main book and a 6x6

You Guys are doing it the hard way. Seriously, go buy Fundy Album Builder V6. Parent albums or any other album is a piece of cake and you dont have to limit yourself to an 8x8 or whatever.

With V6, all you have to do is click on the new size album you want and it takes you old layout for your 10x10 or what ever you were using, and it re -sizes and adjusts it to your new parent album. And you can choose any size you want. Its 1 click and your done. Piece of cake and its never been easier to do.

Also works for other layouts. Say your bride changes her mind and decides she wants a 10x14 album v/s your 10x10. Just click the button and its done.

umphotography wrote in post #16835977
Fundy has all the album company's albums and specs in the program. I think they are up to 60 companies. With picto, i click on a 10x10, program downloads guidelines and has all the specs from MFG in the program. You design and hit go for print and it sends full size Jpegs to a folder for you. PDF files will be the next option they ad to program starting in June

Trust me, its never been this good for all of us.

Currently i believe i'm sending PDF's to the printing company. which is annoying, if this can make high res jpg exports to the lab in a format they understand and I don't have to worry about it, the $300 would be well spent.

I'm surprised to see Susan Stripling on their list of endorsers.

jmikolich wrote in post #16836013
Currently i believe i'm sending PDF's to the printing company. which is annoying, if this can make high res jpg exports to the lab in a format they understand and I don't have to worry about it, the $300 would be well spent.

I'm surprised to see Susan Stripling on their list of endorsers.

Thats exactly what they do. Everyone i know thats a big name in the industry is switching over to this product. Susan, Cliff,Sal, jerry, all of them are using it. Its crazy easy to use. start to finish with me dropping in custom background files for a 20 spread lay out takes me right at 90 minutes. and its ready to send to the printers with usually 15-20 MG files.

umphotography wrote in post #16835959
YYou dont have to with this program. Fully customisable so you wont have that problem. It's bulletproof.

Not for the way I design albums it isn't. InDesign is perfect for the way I work.

I don't do standard style albums. As I said before when everyone does things the same way they all lose originality. There are a raft of photographers out there where if you were at an expo and swapped their albums over the public wouldn't realise it had been done.

Parent albums for me couldn't be easier. I just ask the printer to print another. I design at A3 size and they are automatically scaled down to A4 if required. Parents get the same album designs at the clients.

I take a similar approach, though I use Lumapix's Photofusion. Very fast and very powerful. To keep things simple for both me and the client, I design and sell only square albums. I will run off a different set of jpgs for the smaller parent album as the proportion of the bleed area is different, but it's a quick change in the program.

I offer a small discount (typically <$50) if the design is the same as the couple's album and that ends up carrying the day 90+% of the time. For that rare couple that insists on a different layout, it's typically nothing more than an extra page or swapping out some photos in the existing layout. So quick and easy that keeping that $50 for the effort is plenty.

umphotography wrote in post #16834354
Fundy Album Builder V6. With V6, all you have to do is click on the new size album you want and it takes you old layout for your 10x10 or what ever you were using, and it re -sizes and adjusts it to your new parent album. And you can choose any size you want.

This sounds similar to all the other responses (the album layout is the same as the original; only the album dimensions change).

Most album companies I've used will charge substantially less for parent books simply because the layout is the same. To get back to the question asked by the OP ("should I use the same layout for both"), I would say yes, that's the predominant practice in the industry. If you were to offer different layouts and/or content you'd really be creating an entirely new album and should charge accordingly.