If you watched, “How to Edit 1000 Photos in 21 minutes,” then you already know what “Keyframes” are.  For those of you who are just joining us, “Keyframes” are what I call your “5 Star Favorites” in Adobe Lightroom, and are used to speed up the editing process substantially.  Part 2 of this 3-part post will NOT instruct how to design an album, but will be more of a primoridal soup of endless rants and run-on sentences with my philosophies on album design.

Enjoy.

Your ready to start designing using Photoshop CS2.  Although, if you want to build a house with a hammer instead of a nail gun, then go right ahead.  I used to spend my days in Photoshop designing, until I happened upon Foto Fusion.  FF literally shaved my design time in half.   I could go on-and-on about Foto Fusion, but we’ll save that for a different post.  Other programs for album design include Adobe InDesign, Photojunction, and Yervant Page Gallery (which is template based).

After a typical wedding, I will have roughly 100-200 Keyframe (favorite) photos.  These are the building blocks of the couples wedding album.  The rest of the photographs from the wedding will serve as “fillers.”  The actual design process is completely freestyle, and is really based on your own creativity and personal tastes.  You have to really visualize the spread before you build it.  Each spread should have 1-2 Keyframes, and anywere from 3-7 fillers.

So how long should this take you?  I typically spend 30-45 minutes on a spread (reduced from an hour per spread using Foto Fusion).  Most of you are more than likely shaking your heads; but why?  Because it shouldn’t take that long?  Why should it not take that long to build a spread for a couples wedding album that will be passed down from generation to generation and will more than likely be around for over 100 years?  Why would you would want an album design that’s thrown together in an hour?  Sadly, this is considered the norm nowadays.  Is it fair to charge the couple $8,000 to shoot their wedding, only to invest an hour of your time designing a wedding album?  Reduce your time editing to allow more album design time.  It’s the final presentation from you as a photographer and your client’s deserve nothing less than the best.

You should already have an idea of what pictures to include, and not to include in the album.  This comes from actually opening your eyes when your shooting a wedding, and communicating with the bride and groom.  Is there a special friend of the bride?  Did the best man save the grooms life?  Is the FOB terminally ill, and this may be the last time everyone is together?  Did the MOB construct something special for the couple out of paper-mache?  Those are the important things that you need to take note of.  Those tidbits of information will make the album design process personalized to that individual client.  The more personalized your album design becomes, the more value that gets added to it, resulting in a higher priced album.  It’s like buying a CD.  The CD itself doesn’t cost much, but the content inside is what’s worth it.

Previously : Part 1-Pre-face