Article by David Perris
Designing a flush mount wedding album from scratch can be a difficult job. One of the secrets of success is organizing your workflow. Setting up the overall structure of your album, and sorting your images, will let you concentrate on designing individual pages. Try using these steps to get you going:
Decide on a format
The first decision to make is the format and size of your album. Look at the images from the wedding day, would a portrait or landscape shape work better? If you have a majority of landscape shots you’ll probably want a landscape format album and vice versa.Square albums are popular with album designers, partly because they will display both portrait and landscape shots well.
How many pages?
Work out how many photos you want to use and do a rough calculation of the number of pages you’ll need. Many album manufacturers will allow you to add or subtract from their standard number of pages, so you may be able to alter this later if you need to.
Sort your images into the different stages of the day
Make a list of all the photos you plan to use, dividing them into different stages of the day: the preparations, the ceremony, the formals, the reception etc. Copy them into separate labelled folders on your computer. Add a few more images than you think you’ll want, this will give you some choice later, you don’t have to use all of them.
Prepare a set of numbered folders
Make a numbered folder on your computer for each double page spread i.e. 1-2, 3-4, 5-6, allowing for single start and finish pages if needed. Put them in a parent folder and name it.Move the images from the stage folders, that you sorted out previously, into the numbered folders, working through the day. Start to visualize roughly how many images you want to use on each page, and how they might be laid out.Allow for some full page spreads and some pages with more smaller images. You may find that you want to add or subtract pages at this time. You should then have a series of folders, containing the images for each page, ready to use.
Work on your images
Assuming that you’ve already done basic corrections on your images, go through the numbered folders and do all your final work on each file. If you are working in Photoshop, save everything as layered Photoshop Documents (.psd) in case you want to make changes. You can make further adjustments at any stage, but it will make the process more streamlined if you have everything prepared and can drop in images without having to stop and work on them. Save the images back to the numbered folders.
Think about your style
Think about the kind of look you want. Are you going for a simple layout that will keep the viewer’s attention on the images, or do you want to make it more elaborate, using background images, bleeds and other effects? Aim for a consistent style throughout the album.
Layout your pages
Time to do the work. Design your pages and spreads using your chosen software, this will vary depending on personal choice and the requirements of different manufacturers.Design is too big a subject to cover in this article but, if you don’t feel confident about your design skills, look at other peoples’ albums and see what makes the good ones stand out.
Have a break
After you’ve finished your layouts, leave them for a while and come back later. Allowing a bit of time between designing and final checking will allow you to see your work with fresher eyes. Have a look at what you’ve done and see if you can make any improvements.
Order your album
When you’ve done your final checks, prepare your pages to the manufacturers specifications, size, resolution etc. and send them off to be printed and bound. Job done!
