Album Design Tips

I have a new hero… Suzette Allen from http://www.shootsmarter.com . 

You have to register to be able to view the tutorial but it’s a pretty painless process and once you’re in, it’s well worth it.  She teaches a lot about album and template design in photoshop and she has many many tricks up her sleeve. 

Check it out! 

Sample Album 2008

Here is the sample wedding album we ordered from Graphistudio. We will be getting it in a few weeks and we are really excited to see how it looks.

We are going to start designing albums for other photographers so if you are a photographer but you don’t have time to design albums and you want to offer this service to your clients, just contact us for more information.

You can also see this album at our website at www.SilvasPhoto.com.  

Photo Album Suppliers

Here is a list of photo album suppliers. 

High end Coffee Table Albums
www.asukabook.com
www.zookbinders.com
www.graphistudio.com

Low cost photo books
www.blurb.com
www.mypublisher.com

www.storybookpages.com
www.artleather.com
www.albumsunlimited.com
www.caprialbum.com
www.cornerstonealbums.com
www.finaoonline.com
www.winkflash.com
www.exclusivealbums.com
www.hhcolorlab.com
www.leathercraftsmen.com
www.picaboo.com
www.pictobooks.com
www.proprints.us
www.proweddingalbums.com
www.queensberry.com
www.topflightalbums.com
www.thebookalbum.com
 www.wgbooks.com

Offering Photo Albums to Clients

One of the ways to increase profit for yourself and enhance the value of your product is by offering photo albums.  For a lot of photographers, album design makes up close to half of their profit. 

Let’s face it:  photos in a photo box just get left behind in a drawer somewhere while photos on a CD never get looked at.  But an album, an actual photo album, is something you place on a coffee table or shelf and that you show to anybody who comes to your home. 

There are many different kinds of albums and if you are new to the world of albums, you might get confused.

• Coffee table-style Photo Book
  These are photo albums that are digitally lay-outed through a software such as Adobe Photoshop or other image or album software and are printed like a book, on book paper, and bound.  The thickness and type of paper depends on the printer that you have.  These books are really impressive and some printers have layout templates so you can simply drag and drop your photos into the designs, making it a breeze to create albums.  They also come in different sizes and it is pretty easy to make a design in one size, then duplicate the same design in a different size, as in the case of wedding and parent albums.Examples of these are AsukaBooks  and Zookbooks .  On the more economical level, you also have the myPublisher  books and Blurb  books. 
• Slip-In Albums
  These could either be digital or non-digital.  For digital albums, if you are making a 10×10 album for example, you layout the photos you have into a 10×10 page and print out all the 10×10 photos.  You then slip these 10×10 photos into the album.For the non-digital type, you simply slip in the photographs into the album. Example of this is the Renaissance “The Book” Slip-in Album.
• Self-Mount Albums 
  These work the same way as slip-in albums except that instead of slipping in the photos, you paste or tape the photos to the page.Example of this is the Renaissance “The Book” Self-Mount Album.
• Flush-Mount Albums
  These are the same as Self-Mount except that instead of you doing the mounting, you send your photos to a printer and they do the mounting for you.
• Matted Photo Albums
  These are albums with mats in them.  The mats come in many different designs.
  You usually have to buy the mats and pages separate from the cover. Example of this is the Elite Album.
• Proof Albums
  These are the most economical albums and they are designed to hold a large number of photos.

If you don’t have the time to design albums, you can actually have it done for you.  

Try out these album suppliers.  You can get a free catalog from them and usually the catalogs and the price list are separate so you can show the catalog to your clients.

Perfection Distributing
Michel Company
DNL photo 
Albums INC
Marathon Press

If you want more information about the photo albums, go to the album manufacturer’s websites.

Renaissance Albums
Tap USA Albums
Kambara Albums
GP Albums
Art Leather

How to sell a photo album

A good way to sell a photo album after the wedding is to make the photo album with the couple’s photos in it and actually let them see exactly what the photo album looks like.  Chances are, the couple will like the album so much that they NEED to have it and will buy it.  Of course, there is also the chance that after all that work, they might not buy it after all, but then you can add it to your portfolio and you can show potential clients what the albums look like.

Another way is to layout the albums and upload it to an online photo gallery. You then give the url to your bride and chances are, they will show it to their friends and family. This works better if they see this album first before they get the proofs so that in their mind, their wedding album already looks like this so they already want this album.

View Sample Story Book