A few words on: Coffetable Books, Flushmounts, and Traditional Albums
Ok here are some 'visuals'
1.Coffee table style books:
They look like books. Many places like MYPublisher, Picaboo, Blurb.com, Shitterfly, etc make books like this style. they are variations. The traditional coffeetable book is completely custom from cover to cover. HOWEVER the quality of the printing and the deisgn style and thickness of the pages is very similar to these sites which is why its so popular Its less expensive thana flushmounted album but you're still paying for the customized layout because its the same amount of work, no matter how you are printing it in the end.
This link is for a company I am looking into because they do just the binding for you. You'd submit your own layouts and they would print and bind it.
Coffee Table Wedding Albums
2. Flushmount albums:
This is what is the new trend in albums now and what people generally mean when they refer to 'digital layouts/albums.' The coffee style books above are ALSO digital. However, the flushmount format is the one usually used by photographers for brides and grooms. Its the same style of layouts as the coffeetbale style, BUT the pages are thicker.
They're usually like a thick cardboard paper with a photopaper style laminate over them. They also tend to lie perfectly flat so though you have the seam in the middle, its more of a 'seamless' straight-across look, as opposed to a coffeetable style album which is just a bound book so it won't lay flat across and your photos can look 'cut off' in not space properly in the middle.
Flushmount albums have one major flaw despite their beauty (I LOVE EM!); you can't add as many pages into one as you can a coffeetbale style book. You know when your photographer tells you you only have 20, 30, 40 or maybe 50 pages to work with? Thats because they cannot physically add anymore. The style of the thick pages makes it impossible. Thats why pics are generally limuted as well, because you dont wnat an overcrowded 'yearbook' look to your album. I personally hate crammed looking layouts so I like to work cleaner.
In a coffee table book though, you CAN add many more pages because the pages are a thin high quality photo paper. Usually you can stick in well over 100 pages and you're fine.
Flushmount albums have different covers-depends what your photographers offer but generally its a nice leather album that looks traditional on the outside but on the inside its a digital layout meaning its designed all through the digital (think digital cameras) format and done on the comp as opposed to tarditional mounted and matted prints thats a 'hard' copy.
Flushmoutn Albums
Traditional Albums:
Ok some brides don't want digital. Its a personal preference. The easiest way to sum up a tradiitonal album is look at your parents' wedding albums. They are generally black pages and either slip in, matted, or stick on. But no matter what the format, its always a hard copy print and a simple matting of some kind. you can feel the picture as opposed to digital which is all smooth and glossy with no 'texture.'
Classic Matted/Traditional Albums
One last word on digital:
Digital just means the format. WITHIN the digital format there are TONS of different styles. Depends on what the photographer's style is.
There are 'modern clean' layouts, meaning that the background are generally white or black with very simple layouts, almost classic in style. Not too much of the fancy photoshop work at all.
Soem photographer use touches of color like Helen's in my album.
Other use more of the faded backgrounda and layer masks to make special effects like variants and borders. Tara's album 'gettinhutched) is a good example of mixing all the possible digital styles.
This is a website whose albums I love to look at-shows what I meant about 'clean and modern' touches of color and using masks and layer effects.
Modern Album Deisgns
Hope that clarifies things a lil' bit!
1.Coffee table style books:
They look like books. Many places like MYPublisher, Picaboo, Blurb.com, Shitterfly, etc make books like this style. they are variations. The traditional coffeetable book is completely custom from cover to cover. HOWEVER the quality of the printing and the deisgn style and thickness of the pages is very similar to these sites which is why its so popular Its less expensive thana flushmounted album but you're still paying for the customized layout because its the same amount of work, no matter how you are printing it in the end.
This link is for a company I am looking into because they do just the binding for you. You'd submit your own layouts and they would print and bind it.
Coffee Table Wedding Albums
2. Flushmount albums:
This is what is the new trend in albums now and what people generally mean when they refer to 'digital layouts/albums.' The coffee style books above are ALSO digital. However, the flushmount format is the one usually used by photographers for brides and grooms. Its the same style of layouts as the coffeetbale style, BUT the pages are thicker.
They're usually like a thick cardboard paper with a photopaper style laminate over them. They also tend to lie perfectly flat so though you have the seam in the middle, its more of a 'seamless' straight-across look, as opposed to a coffeetable style album which is just a bound book so it won't lay flat across and your photos can look 'cut off' in not space properly in the middle.
Flushmount albums have one major flaw despite their beauty (I LOVE EM!); you can't add as many pages into one as you can a coffeetbale style book. You know when your photographer tells you you only have 20, 30, 40 or maybe 50 pages to work with? Thats because they cannot physically add anymore. The style of the thick pages makes it impossible. Thats why pics are generally limuted as well, because you dont wnat an overcrowded 'yearbook' look to your album. I personally hate crammed looking layouts so I like to work cleaner.
In a coffee table book though, you CAN add many more pages because the pages are a thin high quality photo paper. Usually you can stick in well over 100 pages and you're fine.
Flushmount albums have different covers-depends what your photographers offer but generally its a nice leather album that looks traditional on the outside but on the inside its a digital layout meaning its designed all through the digital (think digital cameras) format and done on the comp as opposed to tarditional mounted and matted prints thats a 'hard' copy.
Flushmoutn Albums
Traditional Albums:
Ok some brides don't want digital. Its a personal preference. The easiest way to sum up a tradiitonal album is look at your parents' wedding albums. They are generally black pages and either slip in, matted, or stick on. But no matter what the format, its always a hard copy print and a simple matting of some kind. you can feel the picture as opposed to digital which is all smooth and glossy with no 'texture.'
Classic Matted/Traditional Albums
One last word on digital:
Digital just means the format. WITHIN the digital format there are TONS of different styles. Depends on what the photographer's style is.
There are 'modern clean' layouts, meaning that the background are generally white or black with very simple layouts, almost classic in style. Not too much of the fancy photoshop work at all.
Soem photographer use touches of color like Helen's in my album.
Other use more of the faded backgrounda and layer masks to make special effects like variants and borders. Tara's album 'gettinhutched) is a good example of mixing all the possible digital styles.
This is a website whose albums I love to look at-shows what I meant about 'clean and modern' touches of color and using masks and layer effects.
Modern Album Deisgns
Hope that clarifies things a lil' bit!
