by Gavin Seim Updated 11/09:
Images stuffed into mat pages, then an album covers is becoming less and less attractive to clients. If you’re designing wedding, event, or portrait albums you’ve probably played with making layouts in Photoshop or another program to then have printed as flush mount albums like Kiss or Asa Books, You might have also used press books like the ones from WHCC. Once you have a good design there’s loads of choices, but it’s the design that’s the challenge.
As many people know the service and support of Adobe has gone in the toilet in recent times and while they need some competition to slap them back on track, their software is still great. Today I want to talk about In Design CS4 and how it relates to album deisgn. I’ve tried various tools for album design, some of which worked really well. When it comes to crunch time however, I’m finding In Design is the king.
I learned the basics about using ID for albums from a video that Kevin Swan made. And now gives free on the Kiss books site. Not required but it was sure a great crash course and I use it often to hone up my knowledge. The bottom line is that it’s fast, easy and powerful. Once you get the hang of it.
In Design was not actually designed for photographers to make albums. Rather it’s the industry standard for designers doing layouts on magazines and other published material. It turns out however that it works a treat for doing albums. Bear in mind it’s not a photo editor. What ID rocks at, is laying out pages and doing it fast.
I cringe when I think of doing individual pages in Photoshop. It’s not a page design tool and it’s tedious to do layouts with. What I love about ID is that the entire project is contained in a single file. All images on the pages are referenced to the original files on your computer similar to when one makes a web page. You can edit and change you design in one place and when it’s finished just export the final file as a PDF of JPEG’s. Kinda like the way we use Lightroom.
Continue reading ‘In Design CS4 Photographers Look. The Lightroom Of Album Design’
Adobe Creative Suite 4 is officially available for ship and download orders. There’s not a ton to say yet other than to let you know. We’ll see when we get it in our hot little hands on it, whether it’s an upgrade worthy of our money. According to the poll (currently) on the right, it looks like about half of you are upgrading in some form or another.
Sadly Adobe has not opted to simplify the lineup, so there’s still six versions of the Creative Suite none of which come cheap. If your just a PS user you can of course upgrade that alone. From the looks this seems evoluationary, nor revoluatiary but itv does look to hold some really cool updates just the same.
Many of you who follow me on twitter know that I’ve had many stability issue’s with Lightroom 2. I know others have had problems as well. We’ve been waiting for some bug fixes.
Well Adobe Labs made 2.1 available today. It won’t be in automatic update yet, but it’s worth getting manually. Though I have not used it much yet I do see indications that there are some good improvements. Brushes may even be working smoother now. I won’t make this long. It’s time for bed. Go get it for yourself and share a comment about what you find.
~ Download LR 2.1 here ~
Thanks to Twitterer’s for letting us know…
Gavin Seim
Adobe has just realeased Lightroom 2. The ever popular workflow tool for photographers. You can find the press release here.
At $299.00 (99.00 upgrade from V1) Lightroom two is still a Benjamin more than Aperture, but holds the biggest market share to be sure. We’re pretty excited over here. Here’s a list of some of the best new features as outlines on Adobe.
- Local adjustment brush
- Enhanced organizational tools
- Volume management
- Extensible architecture
- Multiple monitor support
- Flexible print package functionality
- Streamlined Photoshop CS3 integration
- Enhanced output sharpening
- 64-bit support for Windows® and Mac OS
I’ve been using beta 2 myself for some time, but will defiantly be getting the full 2.0 release and getting into it. I’m eager to push the limits a but further with my Lightroom Presets We’ll also be talking on the show about it soon.
Updates! Here’s a few articles worth checking out.
