Photograph album

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A photographic album, or photo album, is a collection of a series of photographs, generally in a book. Some albums have compartments which the photos may be slipped in to; others albums have heavy paper with sticky substance and on top, a piece of large plastic in which photos can be put between. Older style albums often were simply books of heavy paper which photos could be glued to or attached to with adhesive corners, or pages.

[edit] Online

Online photos can be uploaded and made into a coffee table style photobook. Different online services offer options such as photo editing, varied sizes, varied bleeds, layouts, cover design, colors, etc. Some services even expand the idea of a photo album by allowing a photograph to become part of many photo albums, add comments and keywords to these photographs and use these keywords as the mean to create new photo albums. Some online photo albums provide services such as photo printing and options to upload pictures to your cellular phones.

[edit] Home-printed Photo Albums

Showing photo albums at home is becoming an increasingly popular pastime. With most homes owning one or more digital cameras and inkjet printers, albums can be created as a family or event record, for both a short duration or as part of the family archives. An album can be a record of family history, the development of a baby/child, a wedding, party, holiday. It is often displayed as coffee table book or presented as a gift. It may record a social or business function - or even act as a mundane guide to a product.

Print-your-own inkjet photo albums have distinct advantages over on-line services. Firstly the results are quick - interest value wanes if the producer has to wait. An album can be printed on the evening of an event and taken away by those attending. It can also be modified and added to later.

Printed photo albums are also more interesting than 6x4" (15x10cm) prints, whether printed at home or at a lab. The designer can use a variety of shapes, multiple photos per page (thereby saving cost) and can add titles, text, borders and backgrounds.

Photo album production can be allied to scrapbooking, particularly digital scrapbooking.

There are several software packages for designers of albums. Examples of these are Fotoslate 4 from ADC Systems, Scrapbook Factory from Nova Development and products from printer OEM’s such as HP, Epson and Canon as well as offerings from Serif and Corel.

A comprehensive guide to the design of a photo may be found on the OPUS Albums website "How to design a good inkjet photo album for my digital photos" [1]

[edit] Software

There are many software programs available to organize images in folders or albums, such as Adobe Photoshop Album and Picasa. These programs generally allow for sorting and ordering of different images, tagging the images, and viewing them in slideshows or printing them. These programs commonly allow the user to perform basic edits such as cropping, red-eye removal, and some basic "one touch" enhancements for color and lighting. Some online albums have introduced techniques of separating special effects from the original picture so that the picture is not edited - effects are applied when displayed without destroying the original picture.

There are also many other, lay-up software programs available for making photobooks. These are generally offered free as a design tool but require the user to pay for the production of their printed photobook. These programs are generally not specifically designed for photo editing, more for the express purpose of creating a book that will eventually be printed and bound into a photobook. These programs are generally provided by the company that print and bind the photobooks. Therefore the home printing function is generally not available.