ATG Album Design Blog

Stephanie & Jeremy recently received their gorgeous Signature Studio ATG Album….couple was happy, we’re happy with the design, and it’s a great showpiece for our work and their memories…

ATG InDesign Template Tutorial

Again, as we’ve been getting such a response to our templates I thought it might be helpful if I posted a video on how easy they are to use.  So here it is in all of it’s glory in quick time; just click the link and it will download, and you’ll want to open it/view it in quicktime.  It’s pretty short and sweet and really will sort of walk you through the process of using the templates even with a very basic amount of knowledge about the software.

Enjoy!

Someone asked me a question on a blog today regarding Indesign CS3 and the improvements for photographers in InDesign CS4, so I thought I might post my answer here to make it helpful for anyone wondering the following question:

“Since your DVD tutorials and templates are designed for CS3, will they style apply to CS4?”

Yes, there have been improvments in CS4 for photographers using InDesign, no doubts about that, but mostly I noticed that the improvements are more about efficiencies and short cuts; the core of the program is still very much the same, which is what I love about InDesign.  They’re not taking this AWESOME program and make it UNSTOPPABLE…

Adobe InDesign ROCKS!  That’s as much as I can say about it from a graphic designer or a photographer’s perspective, and now that they are really fine tuning this incredible piece of software, it’s great to see that they are now building these efficiencies into the program to make it easier for folks to go, yes, that makes sense, it’s great that I can do these things even faster before my files go to print.

Couple of things about CS4:

As far as the live preflight is concerned, I see this as more of a graphic design/publishing improvement, where a designer could see if they’d loaded an RGB image versus a CMYK image and correct the problem immediately-so possibly would apply to photographers, however, likely wouldn’t as our images are RGB only when it comes to printing. I think most photographers don’t package their designs in general because usually they organize their images prior to design, and so they’ve got their files in a central location to begin with. So it’s great improvement from a design standpoint as most large scale print houses use indesign files themselves that are packaged or exported as PDF, which is a bit different from photographers exporting JPGS or PDFs for print, which maybe is not super significant to photographers.

There’s also spread view rotation, which is pretty cool if you want to design something with transformed images at either 90 or 180 degrees without moving your monitor. Again, something cool, but maybe not something completely used by photographers unless they’re designing calendars or something non horizontal.

There are also smart guides that rock for alignment-something that is likely not new to photographers working in photoshop….

Smart cursors and smart spacing and smart dimensions are all pretty cool features when it comes to alignment if you’d like specificity about sizes of your frames or exact distances and locations when it comes to X & Y location and alignment, this is likely a great enhancement for photographers who like things really precise, but you could also use the align tool in CS3 or simply use a guide and the duplicate command to create the same features once you’ve checked your specifications on the object tool bar by determining the exact Width and Height using the width and height selection boxes in the object toolbar to set the exact size you want. The CS4 improvement is of course something that can increase efficiency, but again, it can be done very easily in CS3.

I also understand there have been improvements in the links panel making it easy to identify images along with size, resolution and detailed file information, which make make it easier to identify if you’ve placed a low resolution by error that can easily be relinked to a high resolution image, however this can also be done in CS3 by going to the links pallette and double clicking on a link or image and it will give you the exact same information.

I know the fitting command has been improved and you can now place an image into a frame it will automatically fit the image to frame, which is an improvement for photographers or folks looking to use the program in a very straightforward fashion, which could add to efficiency.

So yes, there are of course improvements, but this program already rocked…so now we’re in the bonus folks.  Should you upgrade to CS4? Most definitely because the advances will keep coming.  Will our templates work in CS4, for sure, not a problem at all…..Just go to file, open, libraries, and open them up, then start designing your hearts out….make those couples smile!

Often times I read posts by other photographers asking, “How do you organize your album to tell the story….?”

We’ll, for us it’s simple, one of the first things we do in telling the story, is that we do our own editing when it comes to the final selection of images presented to our couples.  It’s really, really important to have the final set of eyes on the final selection of images done by the actual album concept designer.  Now, this doesn’t mean that that person has to be doing the actual design, but it does mean that if you’ll be outsourcing your design, and having your perspective on telling the story present in the final album design, you’ll have to be the one organizing the images that will determine the images used on each spread.

How do we do it?  We’ll, one of the greatest keys to our success has been image organization.  When we do our final round of processing and editing, we select our images during that same process in either aperture or lightroom.  Once those images have been selected, we organize them into individual folders, in sort of a per spread fashion.  That fashion tells us how many spreads we’ll design and how many images will be included in each spread.  Typically when we determine the images for our clients, we end up with anywhere from 20-60 spreads, which is really relative to the amount of hours we shoot and the size of the final album that the couple would like or have purchased.

Having your images organized from the start is the BOMB!  It’s the absolute best way to be organized and build efficiency into your album design system whether you’re doing it or someone else is.  It’s a great way to speed up the album design process in no time while still telling the story in the most effective and powerful way possible.

This is Jason & Aimee’s album.  Reason I’m showing it is that they had a lot of really wonderful moments to choose from, but, it became very difficult for them to decide which images to include in their smaller sized album.  So instead, we recommended that we design the book using as many images as we felt possible in the most pleasing design possible.

This is where the templates can really come in great.  There are a few different collage templates, of course we gravitate to our favorites, but here where having choices that perhaps you may not see yourself, can be very helpful.  Also, the collages don’t look so busy that there is no flow, which is really important when it comes to design.  Telling the story is really a major part of having a beautiful album design, but our clients just love our collages because there are quite a few memories placed into them carefully, that even though there are a lot of images, it’s more of organized chaos.  Their book was originally supposed to be only ten spreads, and instead, they added 12 more spreads, to make a really gorgeous 44 page book.

So recently some folks have been having problems exporting to JPEG from InDesign.  Seems like the folks at Adobe might need to work out a few more bugs as exporting to JPEG is sort of a new thing in CS3 for high resolution export.

But hey, who needs JPEG, when you can export to EPS? ooohhhh…..aaaaahhhh…..

EPS is in my opinion the original way of exporting files used previously by graphic designers everywhere.  It’s quality proven by designers and printers, and the files look incredible.  Therefore, it’s really no big deal to go back to exporting in EPS.  The quality will amaze you and your files will look gorgeous printed.

EPS or encapsulated Post Script is like a exporting a single image with tons of information in it that is to be recognized just as it is. It just contains a low res preview in it so that it can be viewed quickly and easily.

So for example, you design your page using InDesign drawing frames, placing images….adding color, all of that designing has to be able to be described in a page and the program has to have a format to be able to do it.  That format is Post Script.  Now, in using EPS (which is a post script program), you’re simply exporting that format as one single file determining how to distribute graphics.

Your EPS files may be much larger file size than your exported JPEG files, but the way the information is preserved is a bit different.

How do you preview an exported EPS file to a client or Album Company?

As most album companies prefer JPEGs here are the steps:

Option 1.) once you’ve exported to EPS, then open photoshop CS3, and filp those images quickly to JPEG and you’re ready to either a.) upload for client review, or b.) upload to your album printer.

Option 2.) to export to PDF (which is like a mini EPS making it more convenient for printers) for those of you using companies other than Vision Art, you have another option.  Create your entire album in Adobe Indesign as a single file, then take that file and go to Export in the file commands and select Export as PDF.  Then select the preferences in accordance with what your album company recommends.

It might take a few moments more, but it’s an easy temporary or full time fix until Adobe works out the JPEG bug that some folks are experiencing.

I’d also mention that we here at Studio ATG have no experienced any problems with exporting JPEGS and have great faith that InDesign is the wave of the future when it comes to album design.