Principles for a good life
Album design started as a hobby, and continued to develop into a real addiction. I reached the state of designing an album in one weekend, a few hours on the computer and the album is ready. Including filtering, scanning, editing the photos, editing the album and building a leading idea ...
So here I want to share with you the work process, tips that not everyone is familiar with, and useful links of course.
What for?
Almost any event can be adapted to an album: pregnancy album, child birth, bar / bat mitzvah, recruitment, wedding, elementary / middle school / high school graduation, round birthday, anniversary, trips abroad, family album to summarize a year, recipes book, roots album and what not ...
When to start?
If there is a deadline, I recommend starting about a month before ... Preparatory work is needed: collecting the photos (for example, childhood photos from the parents, photos from all the children in the class, photos from friends and more), scanning if necessary, editing, and arranging - all details below. You should always check if there is a good deal on one of the sites and when it ends.
How to begin?
- Collecting photos - About organizing photos on this page. As for collecting, you should contact the relevant people as soon as possible and ask for as many photos as possible, rummage through old albums, go to the Facebook page and find rare photos, etc. When you are already getting photos or taking out an old album, you should take the opportunity and write down the date, place or event, anything that will help later in the arrangement. You should also backup your phone, download the photos to your computer (both from the DCIM folder and from the Whatsapp folder) and look for relevant things there. In general, it is a good idea to download photos from your phone once in a while and save for backup on your computer.
- Image scanning - It is best to scan images that are only in a printed copy, at the highest resolution that a scanner allows (up to 600 dpi, more than that is unnecessary). I scan in my home printer, several images together, and then in editing software cuts the images and saves them separately. If there is any information about the image like date or place I put it there.
- Organize photos - The software I use ACDSee allows you to save photos with their date. How? Highlight several images together, right-click and search for "Rename". When it comes to this option, clean up what was in the file name, and look for the "Insert Metadata" button. This information stores information about all kinds of features of the image (whether the image was downloaded from a digital camera or the phone), including the date it was taken. This date is under EXIF-> Image -> Date / Time Original. Add a suffix of #### _ to add running numbers to the date (just in case two photos were taken at exactly the same time, a pretty rare event). This way it is easy to sort photos by name and therefore by date. More details on this on the photo organization page.
What do you need to pay attention to?
1. Image from WhatsApp does not save the date on which the image was taken, but the date on which the image was sent on WhatsApp. This date is automatically saved in the image name. Know that this is a picture from WhatsApp because it has a WA extension and a running number. Such images should not be renamed the way I described earlier because the information is not saved in the image's metadata, so it will return an empty date.
2. Scanned images should be saved in the same format as the date, so that they are automatically sorted. If you do not know the exact date, you should at least write the year. Example name structure - first year, month and day, then hour or running number.
3. You should already arrange folders according to the various topics in the book. For example, in a book in honor of a 40th birthday, a folder is made for each special period: baby, child, teenager, army, company, studies, work, family, trips, etc. This helps a lot to organize the structure of the book in advance, and upload pictures to the book slowly and not at once, because then it is difficult to get around and it is easy to miss pictures.
- Photo Editing - It is a good idea to edit and edit photos before starting the editing work on the book. Can be edited with tools like ACDsee, Lightroom, Photoshop, etc. If there is no editing software, there is an option for minor fixes even within the editing software. For example, if a scanned image is faded or the color is not good, you can automatically correct color, contrast, light. Black and white images are best passed through a black and white filter of editing software (or sepia for those who like), simply because there can be several shades of black and white or sepia, and you should have the same shade.
- Choosing a company - now it is worth going through the various promotions of all the companies that print albums. The page has relevant links. Personal recommendations: cbooks are the cheapest all year round, and especially when they have coupons that buy in advance for 55 NIS for an A4 album, they are also the fastest, and in terms of service, even if there are printing problems (and this happens sometimes - images come out too dark, problems with The font, etc.), they always print again without making any problems. (Square or Jimbo). Why is it important to choose a company in advance? Because once you start designing you can not switch from one software to another but have to redo. Each company has unique software, but quite similar in their functions. Usually there is also an option to edit an online album. Allows for example co-editing with someone else. There are some issues with online editing, the work there is slower, and I usually prefer to edit the software on the computer, free download. One problem is saving a backup of the album (in case of reprint).
- Edit the album - Once you open the software, you can insert all the photos at once. As mentioned, I prefer to enter in stages and in the order of the pages. I also prefer to open an empty template, and arrange the images myself, both in size and in place on the page. In choosing the design of the album, do not embed photos automatically, but insert manually. You can always add pictures, you can always add pages.
You should be careful not to reduce the images too much (size 8-10 cm is a good size). You can do the steps below for each page individually, and only then move on to the next page, or do one step on all the pages and then move on to the next step. Editing steps:
1. Arranging the page - In the first step, you put pictures in the order of the folders, preferably chronologically but not necessarily. Another parameter according to which it is worth arranging pictures on the page is the color - for example in a bat mitzvah book, choosing pictures with the same color palette (for example the same garment or the same photo environment). Load images from a first folder, count how many images there are, see if there is a suitable and interesting template for the number of images we want to put in the pages (I work on a couple of pages together), and if not, just add the images manually and enlarge / reduce . I do not invest too much time at this stage, because sometimes the background will change the size or location of the images, so basically just place the images.
2. Caption or add text - Already at the stage of arranging the page, it is worth adding a caption, such as dates, or an event, or a topic. There are many fonts to choose from, you should vary. As for the color of the font, again, not at this point, because the background will affect.
Background - There is a lot of interest here that can be added. So some prep work ... I've pretty much exhausted all the backgrounds in the software, and started downloading my own background images. I found the following site of win8 wallpapers that contains a huge amount of background images for PC, really good quality and for private use. You can search for images by subject or color, I use mostly flowers, but very much depends on the subject.
Go to the site and start downloading the interesting backgrounds to the computer, preferably to a unique folder of wallpapers. You should download the images at the maximum possible resolution, so that there is no problem when they become the background. In general, a resolution of HD 3554X1999 should be enough for an A4 album. If the images are too low in resolution - a warning will appear in the editing software, and it is worth replacing, otherwise it will not be sharp enough.
Once there is a respectable collection of wallpapers (at least according to the amount of pages expected and more), one can start the design work. The background adjustment will be done according to the color palette of the leading images. If there is nothing in common, choose something you like, and adjust the frames. For example in black and white images, you should choose a color background image, and in color images, a quieter background (pastel, or one or two leading colors). You can play with the transparency of the background, and if the image is too bright, you can lower the transparency and it will appear dimmer.
Editing software also has the option to select any background color from a selection of color pixels that are in the image. If, for example, such backgrounds are too noisy to the eyes, it is definitely worth choosing a more even and calm color. After choosing a background, you should match the color of the frames and the caption to the leading colors in the background.
4. Picture Frames - The editing software has many frames and masks that can be applied to the pictures. You should choose one type or a maximum of two per page (a combination of a mask for some photos and a frame for others). I like to make the simplest frames of a solid color (usually thin), depending on the background (say a color of the flower in the background), or combine several colors. It has a clean and elegant look. For a naughty look, you can definitely play with the masks that the software offers. You should not give up frames or masks - to me it feels unfinished ...
5. Decorations - There are many decorations within the software that can be added. Most often they are illustrations, sometimes a little childish, must say. That's why I like to search alone. First of all you should look for images in png format that have a transparent background. This way you can add over the images and no white frame or square will be created. Look for keywords of the topic you want (for example butterflies - butterfly free png) and download the images. You should make sure that you can download for free, because there are sites that require payment (rightly so, but you can also find beautiful things for free). On the side there are links to several such sites. I found, for example, charming effects of twinkling stars, bubbles and more that add magic to the page in a bat mitzvah album, for example ...
6. Choosing a Leading Theme - To get out of the stencil of photo albums only, I like to add what is called "excess soul", i.e. some kind of leading theme to the album that accompanies the photos and adds interest. Usually the topic will be related to the area of interest of the celebrant, for example:
- Art - For art lovers, museums around the world have opened digital libraries of masterpieces for home download. Such works can be combined as a background or as a theme.
- Jokes - For example in my dad's book (who really likes to tell jokes) I searched full of jokes on topics relevant to pictures and added it as a decoration
- Graphs and facts - For example in my brother's book who was a very curious child, I decorated with all kinds of funny graphs or funny or interesting "knowledge" passages.
- Lyrics from favorite songs - of favorite singers, periods, relevant events. A link to a songbook for lyrics of Hebrew songs is on the side. Songs should be punctuated, on the side there is a link to an automatic punctuation.
Inspirational sentences - especially for Bat / Bar Mitzvah books
- "Animation" - In the book of my dancer's sister-in-law I kept a video in which she dances as continuous pictures ( how ), and I added to each page in ascending order, and then when you browse a kind of animation is created ... really cool ....
- From Water - In the last family album I put a lot of inside jokes through funny water.
More ideas: crossword puzzles, music notes, puzzles, link to video using QR code, scanned old letters, quotes, numbers, comics and more ...
7. Greeting - Of course on the first page you can write a suitable greeting, in rhymes or just exciting
- Keep a copy and backup - you should keep another copy of the book (for example, I had to do a new installation on the computer and forgot to back up some of the books, and they just disappeared for me ... sad).
Sharing - In online editing software this option exists by definition, and can be sent to anyone who wants to see and advise. In the software on the computer, there is an option to save the pages as images in a somewhat indirect way. In the past it was possible to create an interactive Flash presentation, it no longer works for me, but does save the book as images in a folder.
Send for printing - no matter who in the family I make an album for, I almost always print a souvenir copy. When there is a sale it really does not come out expensive, and it is an amazing souvenir ... The printing takes between two days and 5 days, and the delivery another two days, you should take this into account if there is a pressure of schedules.
That's it, get to work! It's really worth it ...