I need help learning how to create wedding albums

I am in need of advice from experienced wedding photographers who make albums on a regular basis. The things I know I need to know are...

1. What photos are best/important for the albums, and how many of each kind
2. Which order/sequence should the photos be in? I understand the idea of keeping a chronological timeline for the story, but what about details, shots with just the B&G, etc.?
3. Photo sizes - custom-cropping or "collage-ing" certain photos to fit within the album page, and any spacing/border suggestions for these photos
4. What should I be thinking most of all when I put together an album?
5. What else do I need to know about album design?

I want to take this bull by the horns now that I have a brief opportunity to do so. Any help is appreciated!

Get the program by Lumapix - FotoFusion. Easiest album software out there. A lot of tutorials available, and design suggestions to get you started.

Have your B & G pick their favorites. Build it from there.

The most important thing we focus on is telling the story of their day through the images we select for the albums. Normally we use 70-85 images for a standard 36-page book. There are no set numbers in terms of images -- just whatever is necessary to tell the the story of the particular couple.

We keep ours chronological and introduce details at the appropriate times within the sequence of the album (ie, reception details along with the reception spreads). We usually do the B&G session whenever we photographed it within the day. Typically it ends up being towards the end of the album unless they see each other before the ceremony.

The beauty of digital album design is that you can custom crop the images to any size you like. For us, we usually stay consistent with the original 2:3 aspect ratio or square.

One thing that really helped our album design process was when we went to using Adobe InDesign. This helped tremendously with maintaining the flow of the book. Good album design doesn't just have a hodge podge of good pictures -- there is an intentional sequence to the images. InDesign lets us easily manage all the spreads within the book at once, making this process much easier. We also purchased some great templates from Ben Harrison -- and haven't looked back since. They have greatly simplified the design process for us.

form wrote in post #9208682
I am in need of advice from experienced wedding photographers who make albums on a regular basis. The things I know I need to know are...

1. What photos are best/important for the albums, and how many of each kind
2. Which order/sequence should the photos be in? I understand the idea of keeping a chronological timeline for the story, but what about details, shots with just the B&G, etc.?
3. Photo sizes - custom-cropping or "collage-ing" certain photos to fit within the album page, and any spacing/border suggestions for these photos
4. What should I be thinking most of all when I put together an album?
5. What else do I need to know about album design?

I want to take this bull by the horns now that I have a brief opportunity to do so. Any help is appreciated!

I make around thirty albums a year, a mix of magazine style and matted. I use Queensberry, mostly 14x10 horizontal albums, a few 18x12.

1. My albums are the "best of", average 2.5 photos per page, but some photos span two pages.
2. Timeline 99% of the time, but details are used wherever I want them.
3. I rarely use standard sizes. Depends if you're talking about matted or magazine style albums.
4. Flow, simplicity, and not trying to fill the whole page. Empty space is good. Symmetry is good, but breaking it occasionally is good too.
5. It takes a LOT of time when you first start it. Get PhotoJunction, there's a learning curve but it's easy enough.

My general approach is each two page spread tells its own little story. Sometimes I just drop the images on the page then move them around until i'm happy.

The first page (a single page) I usually put a nice photo of the B&G portrait session on.

The second spread is the groom prep. I have templates I made myself, so I use them sometimes, but often I use the drop and move approach.

Third spread is often details, fourth and maybe fifth spread bride prep. Then getting to the church, ceremony (I only do 2-3 spreads of the ceremony), then group photos. Then I dedicate a lot of the rest of the album to the wedding party portraits.

I put the reception on one page, often with just a photo of the head table on the left then 9-25 little speech photos on a spread. Next spread cutting of the cake (often with a big photo of the cake being cut from the side), then a spread or two of dancing. I end on a romantic photo of the B&G, usually taking less than half the page area. I just like it.

For magazine style albums I generally use white backgrounds, and shift to black backgrounds when it's dark outside. I never change back and forward between them. I rarely mix B&W and color photos on the same spread. I like symmetry.

I learned by looking at albums from other photographers, there are HEAPS online. These days I like simple layouts, make it about the photos not a fancy album.

hth

Let me tell you, albums changed by (still very young) business. I used to offer only a very basic albums on the cheap just so I could say I have them. But really basic; one page = one picture, few options, no design, etc. Sold a few, but mostly my revenue was all about shooting the day. Now I'm using Lumapix's Fotofusion (~$300 I think?) and selling Zookbinder albums. Do NOT waste time and money on PS templates; they're slow and painful to work with. Get real album software whether Fotofusion or something else. So now, without fail, more than half of my revenue and about half of my net comes from albums, coffee table books and other stuff. And I'm certain the sample albums I'm now able to show are absolutely central to my winning the weddings I have recently.

Tim answered most of your questions, but I'll add a few of my own thoughts.

There is no one right design. More commonly, I'm doing albums in the 30 page range, but I just did a 90 page album where the bride was looking for a lot of density (300+ images). I like working square; 10x10 or 12x12. I do a lot of two page spreads; sometimes just a straight picture, sometimes the spread image as a background for others. Sometimes, I'm doing a very stylized design, other times basic and black. The key, as Tim has said, is story telling. Not only as you assemble the album but taking the images; keeping an eye on the types of shots that would make good two page backgrounds: big, wide, scene setting shots. Most of us are already taking these anyway, but you want to have album design in the back of your mind while shooting the day.

There's an excellent site that I go to for some design inspiration, but the link is on my other computer so I'll have to wait until tomorrow to post it. Something like DoodleDo? Please post it if someone knows what I'm referring to.

wedoodledo.com

they have some great designs.

Juniorbilks wrote in post #9212270
wedoodledo.com

they have some great designs.

Yeah, that's them. Scroll to the bottom and you'll see categories in the lower right.

They have some excellent designs; some of my favorites. I like their product reviews, too.

Thank you for the information, there are some good suggestions here and I will consider them when tackling albums, which I may try to do soon.

Good luck with your decision Joey!

I go with GraphiStudio because their software does it all. Drag and drop hundreds of different templates from several different categories, and then after you import your images, drag and drop your images into the templates.

Then it saves it all in a zip file you upload to them. Fill out the order form, and voila!

They have different style covers and paper, but it's not overbearing. Plus, the material is legit and they're relatively inexpensive.

If I had the time, i would probably use Fotofusion and expand my creative scrapbooking horizons, but until then I'm sticking with GraphiStudio.

As far as artistic layouts, well, that is up to you. You have very good camera angles in your shots in general, so you seem to have an eye for what looks good and what doesn't. The best way to learn is to just experiment.

AlexMoPhotography wrote in post #9213460
I go with GraphiStudio because their software does it all. Drag and drop hundreds of different templates from several different categories, and then after you import your images, drag and drop your images into the templates. Then it saves it all in a zip file you upload to them. Fill out the order form, and voila!

I'll have to say, Zookbinders, which is my preference from a quality and product perspective is a real PITA from a software perspective. I'm producing images independently with Fotofusion because I like it's power and flexibility. I use it to generate 12x24 jpgs that I then nead to upload into ZB's ROES application. ROES is anything but intuitive and, on my system, has always been buggy. ZB does have their own album creating application that you have to pay for, but you get credit back with the purchase of an album and maybe it makes the ordering process simpler.

Anyway, the point I wanted to make is to decide now which album company you want to be associated with. You're going to need to drop a few hundred dollars on samples and you don't want to have to do that more often than necessary. I originally went with a cheap basic album provider as I was starting up. Now that I'm attracting brides who expect and will pay for premium albums, the $'s I spent on my earlier samples are now sunk, except to show off just how beautiful the ZB albums are by comparison. Also, getting back to my other discussion about marketing, know where you want to be in the market, what type of brides you hope to attract, how much albums matter to them or not, what style appeals to them, and how much are they likely to spend and choose your album provider accordingly.

It's not about finding a company that's easy to work with, has free tools, etc. Yeah, you want a good company, quality product, they focus on customer service, etc., but what you mostly want is a sample album that will make the prospect say "wow" when they see it. I get that with my ZB samples and I've gone from selling cheap albums a third of the time to selling high priced albums nearly all of the time.

Good luck.

Another important item one must be aware of are printer specs. Or in this case, the album companies specs as most companies vary this a little bit. What will print perfect for one company may be rejected or print poorly at another. Most album maker programs have this built into the set up once you select the vendor but if using InDesign you will be responsible for setting this up yourself.