Tips For Making Truly Personalised Photo Albums
Tuesday, March 16, 2021 - 14:09
Whether you’re only starting and checking out what can be done with our products or looking for a way to top out your orders, this self-contained guide will surely help you along the way.
AN OVERVIEW OF ALBUMS
Let’s talk photo albums. To make it as simple as possible, we’ll deconstruct the whole product lineup into a list of things the album may contain.
Inside the Photo Album product line, you will get:
- 5-40 Lay-flat spreads.
- A selection of different ways the cover can be made.
- A selection of paper types.
- The option to have a fitting box and USB alongside your album.
- Various add-ons, depending on the collection chosen.
Now that we have the overview let’s see how it applies to the albums!
One of the first things that will distinguish your album order is the choice between “Photo Album With Box” and “Photo Album Only.”
The first will give you a choice between ordering a Complete Photo Album Set (Album, box for the album, option to add a USB inside the same box) and a “Photo Album Set” (Album, box for the album, a separate box with USB included.)
The second choice focuses on just the album alone, with no further products alongside it.
COVER COLLECTIONS
Next, you select the album collection according to how you want the cover designed. In summary, you have the following to choose from:
The Exclusive Collection:
It's the general opener into the whole line. It has access to a large portion of all the decorative options available and typically features a clean, all-material cover but has the option for a cutout window. Most other collections take aspects from it but focus on their special distinction.
The Acrylic Prestige Collection:
Similar to the Exclusive, but it focuses on the front cover to offer larger edge-to-edge windows, that are encased with a layer of acrylic by default.
Black Star / White Lady:
Themed albums, both have a smaller, hand picked selection of leatherette material covers that fit best with their respective unique cover designs which also make good use of acrylic. The White Lady in specific makes for a perfect wedding album due to its color palette.
The Creative 100% Collection:
Unique in that the entire cover is printed, which means that you can design the entire front, back, and spine. The cover can have a glossy or matte laminate.
COVER AND INTERIOR MATERIALS
Now, once you pick the kind of cover you prefer, most of these options, except for the Creative Collection, will have material choices. Depending on what you choose, the options will include Textile, Leatherette, Velvet and Suede.
PAPER TYPES
After that, the next major choice is in paper types. These can heavily affect the style of your photos and are a great way of making your work appear different to most! Again, you can choose from Fuji Silk, Fuji Pearl/Metallic, Canon Deep Matte, and Mohawk Eggshell. Additionally, you can mix and match Fuji Silk and Fuji Metallic if you wish to make some spreads pop out more than others.
Fuji Silk is exceptionally durable and offers balanced colors, while Metallic is sharp and has a glossy surface. The Deep Matte has a solid matte finish and absorbs light, while the Eggshell works great for fine arts and has the closest feel to uncoated paper.
PERSONALISED OPTIONS
Now, after all these options, we can get to the specifics to get the finishing touches. Most album collections have access to text on the front cover, whether in the form of UV printing, laser etching, or embossing. You can add up to two lines of text, 25 characters each, on the front and back cover, inside and outside.
LASER-ETCHING
Laser Etching cuts off the top layer of the material used to draw or write using the layer underneath it. Most textile and leatherette materials support it, including some velvets.
UV PRINTING
UV Printing uses a less forceful method to allow its magic to happen, printing on the surface, making it compatible with more materials. The color is matched to the material selected.
EMBOSSING
Embossing pushes physical characters onto the surface of a material to create the text. Due to how this method affects most materials, this is only available for leatherette options, with one line of text instead of two. However, this method allows adding colored foils to give the text a glossy finish.
If standard text isn’t your thing (even with over 20 different fonts to choose from), you can also go ahead and create your custom design – whether it’s a logo or names written in a font that we don’t have available, it can all be done, either through etching or UV printing. To do this, we use vectors, which you can upload to your project as a PDF for us to use. Having trouble with vectors? (Learn how to create vectors here)
ADD-ONS
There are also a few extra things you can select for your album in between – which is what I had in mind when referring to “add-ons” earlier. Rounded corners can make your cover and spreads appear more inviting; you can get metal corners for your cover as well. The cover can be padded, which will give it a softer touch. Leatherette covers can have a seam done in various colors. You can go as far as changing the spacer color!
With all of this now in mind, let’s create something truly personalised! Let’s say that we need to create an order for a personalised wedding album. I’ll use the information from here as an example.
Starting with assuring its importance, we’ll go for a complete album set to give the album its own box. We’re going for a clean but official look, so let’s pick the White Lady Collection to get an authentic wedding album cover. We can pick one of the White Lady’s pattern designs, so for this one we can go with BD2 – having just the names on the front can have a more formal effect, which is what this pattern offers by allowing pattern text.
For paper types, we can go for Fuji Silk & Fuji Pearl in order to make some of the large, full spread photos stand out using the Pearl paper. We’ll keep it consistent by staying with white spacers and inside cover paper. We won’t need text on the front cover since the pattern already helped us out. We won’t need a USB for this order, so we can disable it, which will accommodate the box just for the size of the album alone. That’s that – once it’s added to your cart, you can start working away on the project :)
Aunque la personalización de un álbum depende de lo que tú quieras que sea, hay algunos puntos importantes que merece la pena tener en cuenta a la hora de buscar géneros fotográficos específicos. Puede que a la larga te faciliten la elección.
PERSONALIZED WEDDING ALBUMS
As mentioned in the example above, the White Lady collection is a well-known favorite of many specialized wedding photographers. Its color scheme matches the wedding photography perfectly and gives your work a slightly more premium or "specialized" look. The Black Star Collection is also worth considering for groom and bride packages when combined with the White Lady, as it offers an unrivaled set between the two. Many photographers opt for 12x12 inch / 30x30 cm albums as it provides an ideal size.
PERSONALIZED PHOTO ALBUMS FOR BABIES
In this case, the most effective option (and the most used) is Acrylic Prestige. The album suits bright textiles to lift the mood, while allowing for darker or specific materials, such as velvets, to match the tone of some photographs and create more emotion. A photo of the baby on the cover almost always elicits sincere reactions from the customer. One possible option is to order several unique 15x15 cm albums over a period of time to capture the child’s growth.
Personalised Pet Photo Albums
Here's where things get a little interesting. People enjoy a wide variety of designs, even depending on the animal type. Some sport a material color that matches the fur of the pet, and some fit it with the style of the photos. Acrylic albums are used quite often, but for smaller pets or shorter photo shoots an exclusive album will usually do. People love presenting their pets in joyous, uplifting fashion, so often the Fuji Metallic paper type is used in a mix with the Fuji Silk.
That’s about it! We hope these insights are able to help you out in making future orders!
