Wedding album design principles/ideas

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Hello David,

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

Regards
Simon

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

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.

while still keeping the photography center

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.