Suggestions anyone?

[eadams Profile]

I am finally getting around to making a wedding album for my daughter. I am going to use an online printing service to have the album printed. I put this chore off for years because most of the photos are pretty bad. My daughter had hired a professional photographer to make a digital film of the wedding, and so most of the photos I took have this huge man with his huge camera in it. The photographer filmed the bride and groom from the front, so all my photos of the wedding just have the back of their heads. We figured that we could extract stills from the film and display them as photos, but it turns out that the quality of the film is very poor. The individual frames of the film are blurry, so it is impossible to extract a nice sharp wedding photo from them. Since the film camera was so huge and the film quality so poor, I suspect that it was really old first generation digital equipment.

OK, enough ranting for today

I was able to take a few shots of the inside of the church before the wedding started. I am undecided on whether I should just put them in the album as is or apply some vignette or frame to them first. Another consideration is: should all the photos in the album have the same treatment for the sake of conformity? I am attaching a sample photo and would be grateful for any suggestions!

Thanks, Eve

Church_pe.jpg (92.79 KiB) Viewed 3341 times

[andrewb2012 Profile]

Hi Eve,

If you are thinking of getting your album printed using an online printing service - then most of these services require you to download their album creation software. These programs are very easy to use and contain many styles, backgrounds, frames and themes - WEDDING album styles & themes are inherent and generally very nice to view. So there is no need to use other software. Although, you could create your own page styles in Smart Photo Editor, at this point in time you cannot create albums. I've had a number of albums printed and often the companies offer an online edition free to share - here is my latest which is just a random collection of images created in the main in SPE. My chosen style is very simplistic as I was only wanting a visual record of some of my work for posterity, but styles and themes for weddings are often quite stunning.

http://www.albelli.co.uk/share-online-p ... 6347f92c53

The above link shows my album which can be viewed 'full-page', but it also contains information about Albelli the company I used. There are many such companies online.

As far as poor quality screen captures from video, you don't give enough information on how you achieved this. One thing to note is that a printed image often looks better than on a computer screen. The printing services companies will most likely have built a WARNING into their software that tells you that the image is poor and will likely not print well. I don't know if you have come across a wonderful program called EVERNOTE which allows you to make screen clips that you size yourself - the resultant image, text or 'image & text' is saved as a NOTE. Any images that you view in Evernote can be opened in photo editing programs. You can use Evernote for free up to defined usage limit (very generous one) but you can also pay a monthly subscription if you need to exceed this limit. This subscription can be cancelled at any time.

I would suggest that any images that you upload to a photo editor from Evernote be increased in size and resolution. If you feel that the image is not up to the quality that you are looking for, then why not try a 'Soft Focus' look - SPE has such effects if you want.

If you are using the printing service's own software - I would suggest that you do not frame any image before making the album - simply use the frames (and sometimes masks including vignettes) from within. Note, sometimes you have limited control over cropping - some album programs crop images to fit predetermined templates, whilst others allow you to resize frames etc to fit the image.

SPE does have a number of effects that can save a poor photograph - maybe not exactly what you wanted, but better than not having the image at all. For example, there are 'soften' effects, that can make poor images look good even though your preference would have been for a sharp image. Likewise, a 'watercolor' or 'pastel' effect might make a poor image more appealing.

At the end of the day you can only do so much with poor images, but it is worth a try for precious memories.

Good luck with your endeavours - I hope you can realise a FINE WEDDING ALBUM for your daughter.

Kind regards,

Andrew

[eadams Profile]

Thank you for the tips, Andrew! I have looked into a few online services available in my area, and I am not keen to use any of the wedding themed templates (containing graphical elements) I have seen. I am tending towards a simple white background to put the photos on. It was actually your album on the Albelli site that gave me the idea to use a plain background, and even though you have a mixture of different image treatments (some with simple frames, some with artistic borders, some without borders), the album is beautiful. Albelli is available in Germany, where I live, though it is not one of the better known offerings.

Your tip to use the vignetting/border functionality available within the photobook software is a good one. I'll look into that!

Regarding the video images - I believe that Photoshop was used to extract the individual frames. Your tip to use some kind of watercolor effect on the blurry photos is great - I'm sure I can find an image that can be used in this manner. I'm not familiar with Evernote but it sounds quite a bit like OneNote which is one of my favorite programs.

Thanks for your help,
Eve

[andrewb2012 Profile]

Hi Eve,

Meant to say - the first time I used photo-book services I just ordered a TEST album with a basic cover and at the LEAST price and no add-ons - I wanted to check the quality of printing, quality of paper and so on... before ordering my main album. Very often, first time buyers are offered a discount which makes the test album quite cheap. Just a thought!

Regards,

Andrew

[eadams Profile]

Thank you, Andrew, that is a very good tip!

Eve