Wedding album software: FundySOS Album Builder?Any good?

I am looking for a top quality software tool to design my wedding books.

I've been using Yervant PageGallery 4.06 so far but I'm sick and tired of the limitations of that piece of software.

Someone pointed me to the FundySOS album builder.

I would like to know if any of you guys use this software and would recommend it?

What are the pros and cons?

I know there is a trial version but I would like to hear some experinces before I spend a lot of time learning to use a new software.

Thanks in advance.
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best regards
Michael

http://www.lumapix.com/extreme/ext_overview.shtml

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If I knew how to take a good picture I'd do it every time.

I have yet to find anything that can match what Photoshop does. No limits, you are free to create any style or design you want.

PS and a good designer

what about http://photojunction.com/ ???

You prefer Fotofusion I take it. Why?
How does it compare to the Fundy Album Builder?

PenguinPhotoCo said:

http://www.lumapix.com/extreme/ext_overview.shtml

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If I knew how to take a good picture I'd do it every time.

Click to expand...

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best regards
Michael

Yeah.. and a lot of time...
I'm trying to save time..

slowhands said:

PS and a good designer

Click to expand...

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best regards
Michael

You can do anything in PS, if you live long enough.

In FF you open an entire album at once - 2 page spreads, cover sheet if you're dong a photo cover, etc. Drop the pics on the pages, resize/crop/zoom (all fully and always editable). Want to edit a pic? Right click and open it in PS, edit, and it's updated in the album.

Bride wanted a 12x12 for herself and a 4x5 for mom? No prob - resize the whole album with 1 click and type in the new size and click again. Done. It will proportinally keep the layout the same on every page - just a quck check to make sure the zooms you did on images are OK.

I can do an album design (70 images, 30 pages or so) in under 2 hours, and with one click email it to a bride for approval, or one click and create hi res JPGs of every page (or 2 page spread) ready for printing.
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If I knew how to take a good picture I'd do it every time.

see my 'time is money' replay.

I don't know fundy, never heard of it.

I can do an album design in under 2 hours and make any changes a bride may want in 10 minutes - and email her a proof with 1 click (ok, maybe 2).

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If I knew how to take a good picture I'd do it every time.

It is so completely intuitive, you will wonder why other programs couldn't be designed to be so user friendly.
It is pricey though and the Scraps facility can be a pain.
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x

I've been wondering about this myself.

I plan to return to shooting a few weddings/yr in 2011 and am preparing to do so.

I've been using http://www.smugmug.com to host my personal pix and printing and plan to upgrade to pro account for weddings and choose either of the printing services.

In the past I used Renaissance wedding albums along through Albums Inc and hope to use it still.

The final piece here is putting it all together and I would like to know if I can use LumaPix FotoFusion and how to go about it?

I use Corel PaintShop Pro X3 for image editing. I don't have the time or need for Photoshop but will go to Nikon NX if need be.

So long story short could I use Corel PSP to edit with FotoFusion and how do I order the prints through smugmug and package with Renaissance?

Also I just downloaded the trial version of FF and am currently watching the very helpful videos.

Any and all help welcome as I haven't figured out how to put together a physical wedding album using the web.

Steve

There are 3 versions of FF - the cheap one (skip it) the medium one is a good plate to start and the if you're a pro or use it a lot ofr multi page things then get the extreme.

Expense is relative - LR, CS4, Office...heck, I"m buying (another) 70-200 2.8 IS Mk2 on Sunday for $2275 - that's way more than all that software put together.

Time is money and FF saves time so it's really going to make you money compared to many other ways to design albums.

OK, you open the program and surf over to the directory with the pics in it. They sit as thumbnails in a window. The main pane has your page (or two page spread). There is a palette with your pages and another with the tools for the 'frames' - as you drag and drop images onto the page each is put in a 'frame'. You can move, layer, and adjust most everything about a frame (borders, shadows, gradients, color, contrast, zoom/tilt, aspect and many more. You can add text to the page or a frame.

If you do something in photoshop and save it as a PNG file (so the BG is transparent) you can drop that on the page and it can then be played with - add shadows, layers, etc (great for logos, cut out people or objects,shaped text made in photoshop).

If you want to edit something in the frame you right click and on the pop up meu select edit (you choose the program you want to use - you can have more than one). It opens in photoshop (in mycase) and then I save it when I'm done and it's automatically updated in fotofusion.

When you're ready to print the album or send it off to whomever, you can 'export' it to files (each page as a jpg, or tiff, or PSD) or 'share' it via email (again, many choices -you can send a small watermarked proof or every thing hi res and ready to print out). You can also choose sharpening choices, color space, etc.
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If I knew how to take a good picture I'd do it every time.

Thanks for the info.

I'm starting to get a clearer picture of how to get my digital images into a printed wedding album.

So you're saying I can make the entire album layout then export it to say smugmug's printing service?

So what exactly would I get back? pictures printed the size needed then I place them in an album (Renaissance)?

Or do I get an actual completed wedding album?

I know I sound like a complete dufus but I have only shot weddings with film and had the prints made then I matted them and put them in the album. I've been away from shooting weddings for a few years but am returning in 2011 after getting lots of requests lately.

I'm just trying to figure out how to do this digitally. I wouldn't be insulted if hand held step by step instructions were given
I'm sure it could help others down the road as well.

Thanks,

Steve

Fotofusion is the best album software..period! Spend the extra and get the Extreme version. You can open up an album template and auto-populate it in about 20 seconds. Of course you will have to tweak it a bit to your liking, but this sofware will pay for itself very quickly when you see how much time you will save. I've been using it going on three years now and my clients love the layouts.
http://www.lumapix.com

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BobT

You get back what you order...

what you get out of fotofusion (or any album design sofware) is a jpg file equivalent a page.

So you take your image files and lay them out 'ditigally' on each page then output that page as one file.

The end result is something like this
http://www.pbase.com/cpphotography/wa_tami_and_john

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If I knew how to take a good picture I'd do it every time.

AlbumDS (Album Design) is pretty good too. I like it better than fotofusion myself.

This designer uses FotoFusion to layout all types of albums, books, brochures and flyers.
A very versatile piece of software.
http://www.cherylanndesigns.com

Ron Rosenzweig said:

This designer uses FotoFusion to layout all types of albums, books, brochures and flyers.
A very versatile piece of software.
http://www.cherylanndesigns.com

Click to expand...

WOW..that is great designing work..love it. Album DS has over 2,000 pre made templates and you just pick the layer you want the image to go in to, double click on it and it automatically sizes the image and places it in the selected layer on the template..so easy and good...

I hear Album DS is pretty good, but I'm not sure I should make the investment. Is it really worth it? Also, I'm not so sure about design, since I'm new it could take me forever.

If I don't have the time, how can I find a good designer? Any suggestions on some? Or maybe some good templates?