Ice Cream Shop Engagement Album Design for Tori Kelner Photography

Album Designs
The engagement session we're featuring today in this album design moved from the cutest Ice Cream Shop, to the boardwalk, to the ocean and New Jersey Wedding photographer Tori Kelner supplied us with SUCH FUN photos to curate for this design! We couldn't be more excited about how this one turned out! 
 
Tori is one of our beloved Client Advocates and we've had the pleasure of designing 50 albums for her over the past 8 years that we've been working with her. She is such a kind human and her work just keeps getting better and better! She is also so generous to share her knowledge and experience with other photographers. Click here for a short video from Tori where she shares how she gets albums to her clients within weeks of the wedding! It's pretty incredible! 
 
For this design we employed our Simple Design Style that uses 1-4 images per spread with clean white backgrounds. It's perfect for portrait and engagement albums like this one! 
 
Here are a few of our favorite spreads from this super-fun design: 
 






To see the design in full, click through the slideshow: 
 
 
 
Thank you, Tori, for trusting us to be a part of your team!
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Design by: Shannon (View More) // Design style: Classic (View More) // Blog post written by: Melissa Jill

5 tips for picking album images fast

Tips & Tricks

above image by Kristen Browning Photograpy 
 
The process of image selection for an album design can be more of a hassle than it truly needs to be. Many photographers get hung up on this step in their workflow, but there is hope! When done right, picking images for the album design can be fast and easy. 
 
Here are our 5 tips for picking album images fast: 
 
1 -- Pick the images yourself; don't wait for your clients.  
I talk about the benefits of pre-designing in depth in this post (read it if you are still asking your clients to pick their images -- it will rock your world!!) but one of the main benefits is that your workflow will not be hung up by waiting on your clients. You can get an album designed within weeks of the wedding. PLUS this takes an unnecessary burden off of your clients' shoulders and allows you to create an initial album design that uses your best images and serves as a starting point for their changes.  
 
2 -- Cull one time. 
Don't make image selection for your album designs a separate step in your workflow. When you cull through images from a wedding, do it ONLY ONCE and make all of your choices in that first pass-through. This tip is so key that I'm going to share two different examples of how various photographers do this so hopefully one of them will resonate and make sense for you: 
 
Example A: Melissa Jill (that's me!) 
I cull my images once and rate them strategically according to intended use. I cull in Lightroom and rate my images as follows:  
3 stars -- my favorite images I will pull from for the blog post, publication submission and my website portfolio (80-100 images)  
2 stars -- additional images for the album design (100-150 images) These are typically family portraits, more getting ready images, and dancing images, and are used along-side the favorites to create the album design. 
1 star -- additional images for the full gallery (300-500 images)  
 
So on PASS, my online gallery solution, the client will see 500-800 images total (all of the images with a rating of 1, 2 or 3 stars). Their album will be designed from approximately 200 image options (some of the images with 2 or 3 stars -- I send them all to Align and allow my designer to choose which 2 star images to include). And my blog post will include about 30-50 images (some of the images with 3 stars).  
 
Example B: Abby Grace 
Abby Grace is an Align client and she also culls only once, but she eliminates the step of rating images for the album design all-together. She selects favorites in her initial cull and sends only those images to Align for the initial design. Then she has her Align designer include one blank spread in the album design that says "family portraits" and 1-2 blank spreads that say "dancing" at the appropriate places in the design. When she sends the initial draft to the client for revisions, she asks them to select a set number of images for each of those spreads. That allows her to skip selection of family portrait and dancing images when picking her favorites and saves time on revisions for those spreads. By giving her clients a very specific number and type of images to select, it ensures that they won't be paralyzed and overwhelmed by the task.  
 
Regardless of which route you choose, make sure you are rating your images for every type of use rather than culling once for the client, once for the album design and once for the blog post or Facebook.  
 
3 -- Be selective. 
When choosing images for your albums, be very critical and pick only your best. The average album designed by Align has 18 spreads and an average of only 90-100 images. That's not a lot. When culling, make sure you don't pick images that are too similar. Pick the best one from each set of similar images and move on. 
 
4 -- Choose for cohesion. 
Even though you don't want to select images that are SUPER-similar, you do want to pick enough images from the same portrait location or event during the course of the day to allow for your designer to make cohesive spreads. Make sure you select enough bride and groom portraits for 3-4 spreads (at least 20 images minimum), and make sure every image has at least one buddy that works with it. Include both horizontal and vertical images to help aid in the ease of the design. 
 
5 -- Include images that fill out the story. 
It's obvious that you need to select images full of emotion and action that lead the viewer through the story of the day. But don't forget to include scene-setting images that introduce each location (shots of the inside & outside of the venue), as well as detail photos from each part of the day to help fill out the story and add dimension and interest to the design. 
 
Hopefully one or more of these tips will help streamline your workflow and make image selection for your albums a breeze!  
 
Since we're on the topic of workflow speed, I wanted to throw a bonus your way and share with you what I have found to be the #1 time-saving tool to speed up my workflow. The best thing is, this tool is free and quick to implement. It's definitely a game-changer! Click here to download this time-saving hack for free today! 
 

5 tips to help photographers efficiently pick album images and speed up their workflow
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Blog post written by: Melissa Jill

Grand Detroit Wedding Album Design for Jean Smith Photography

Album Designs
I believe Michigan wedding photographer Jean Smith holds the record for the client we have designed the most albums for. As of this blog post, we have designed 174 albums for her in the past 11 years! And every single one is unbelievably stunning! Jean is just SO freaking talented. Her composition, understanding and use of light and photojournalistic style make for such a compelling story-telling design style. 
 
The design we are sharing with you today features a wedding in a grand cathedral, a classic mustang convertible and a reception in a grand ballroom. It is over the top fabulous in every way and we are so excited to show it off to you! 
 
Here are a few of our favorite spreads -- it was hard to pick!






To see the design in full (highly recommended!), click through the slideshow: 
 
 
 
Thank you, Jean, for trusting us to be a part of your team!
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Design by: Shannon (View More) // Design style: Classic (View More) // Blog post written by: Melissa Jill

Classy New Jersey Wedding Album Design for Jennifer Larsen Photography

Album Designs
We've designed over 60 albums for New Jersey wedding photographer Jennifer Larsen in the past 8 years that we've been blessed to work with her. Her work is SO timeless and beautiful and she is such a kind human to boot! So each time we see a new design order come in from her, we do a little happy dance! 
 
This particular album is 20 spreads/40 pages and starts with Jen's signature spread with one image of the bride and groom alone on each side of the spread. This couple added a lot of additional images to the initial design as they wanted to include as many of their loved ones as possible in this memento. The pages are a little busier than typical as a result, but the final design turned out lovely and we know they will cherish it for generations to come!  
 
Check out this gorgeous getting ready space featured on this stand-out spread:

And here are a few more of our favorites!





To see the design in full, click through the slideshow: 
 
 
 
Thank you, Jen, for trusting us to be a part of your team!
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Design by: Shannon (View More) // Design style: Classic (View More) // Blog post written by: Melissa Jill

How to Rename Your Images for a Smoother Workflow

Tips & Tricks

Hey, photographers! Today I want to talk about a foundational, nuts-and-bolts aspect of your workflow that can really help streamline your album process: renaming your images.  
 
There are a number of reasons that the naming of your images is so important when it comes to the rest of your album workflow: 
 
1 -- Proper naming of your images equips your designer to easily sort your images and understand the flow of events so that they can tell the story of the day.  
2 -- Renaming the images before your share them with us AND your clients will ensure that everyone involved in the album design process (photographer, clients, designer) will be referring to the same file names, reducing confusion and saving you from having to track down images of a different name when it comes time for the revision rounds. 
 
If you systematize this process and make it part of your regular workflow, it will soon become easy and automatic for you, and a HUGE help to everyone involved -- especially your album designer!  
 
So what is the best way to rename your files for the smoothest workflow? 
 
We recommend renaming your files after culling but before delivering a gallery to your client and your album images to Align. Start by sorting the images into the proper order. It's usually easiest to sort by date and then click-and-drag any outliers manually into place. Once the images are sorted, rename all of the files into one consistent naming convention. Some popular naming conventions are: 
 
(Last name of client)_001 
(Last name of client)_(Studio name or acronym)_001 
(Date)_(Last name of client)_001 
 
Make sure that you are using a sequence number at the end that has the highest number of digits that you will need for the job. For instance, if you have 500 images you need to rename, start with "001" at the end of the first image. If you have 1100 images you need to rename, start with "0001". This will ensure that images can be sorted properly by filename. In addition, make sure to either use "_" or "-" and steer clear of any odd characters such as "!" or ":". 
 
And here's how to rename files with a few popular software options: 
 
Lightroom -- on the Library Module (grid view), Select All and click Library -> Rename Photos 
Adobe Bridge -- Select All and then click Tools -> Batch Rename 
Photo Mechanic -- Select All and then click File -> Rename Photos 
 
That's it! Now you're ready to upload the gallery for your clients AND send a selection of the organized and renamed images to your designer! (For tips on choosing the album images to send to your designer, click here.) Your designer will be able to sort the images you send by filename to see the proper order of events. And your client will be referencing file names that your designer has when making their revisions. The great news is -- all of this adds up to a super-smooth workflow!
If you found this post helpful and would like to receive tips like this straight to your inbox, click here to sign up!
And exciting news! If you're a photographer who wants to start offering albums without investing hours of guesswork and trial and error -- we have a solution for you! Check out the Album Start-Up Kit and start maximizing your profit today! 

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Blog post written by: Melissa Jill
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