The Album Page Challenge

While there are literally dozens of books and instructional DVDs on the shelves for the nuts and bolts of digital imaging technique, there is a distinct lack of advice on composition and design. In the world of computer-generated “image files” there tends to be a difference between graphic design and photocomposition. The former is generally the province of page layout programs often incorporating words, illustrations, and diagrams. The latter is, self-evidently, the positioning of elements of the subject at the moment of exposure. These two concepts collide in wedding album page design. Now we have what is predominantly an image (albeit often a composite image) with few words, no diagrams and very few (if any) illustrations. It is however a “page” design; it is placed as a page and viewed as a book. This brings with it the disciplines of story-telling, page to page harmony of both style and colour and the constraints of making all composites fit within exactly the same shape format. Contrast this to a formal wall portrait or image. This can be of any shape of the creator’s choosing, if you want a letterbox landscape you can have, if you want an oval, swept format you can have that also. The shape is completely unconstrained.

One of the problems of composition is that many observers know instinctively what is right, but have difficulty in expressing why they feel that that the shapes and structure in front of them “works”. This is a dilemma for those of us who attempt to either teach or write about the subject. Rules are formulated and then invariably broken by skilled practitioners. However there are a number of “givens” which are worth bearing in mind when you design a page.

1. String colours are more dominant, look larger and are more forward in a composition. Hence • Blues are recessive, reds are forward, that is why blues are so frequently use as backdrops to pages. • Monochromes are more recessive than colour; they attract less attention – again useful as back drops. • Out of focus and/or indistinct features are recessive – useful as back drops

2. Images or features near the edge of a page create tension.

3. For western eyes, pictures read from left to right.

4. People arranged looking into a composition are more in harmony with the page than people looking out. A bride or groom looking away from their new spouse creates all manner of hidden meaning!

5. The “Rule of Thirds” applies to page design in much the same way as to photo/painting composition. This is also true of the other variants such as Da Vinci’s Golden Mean. See Mark Laurie’s thoughts on this topic in this issue.

6. To achieve harmony through the whole album, pick and stick to a theme. The theme can be:

• Colour • Shades or tints of the same colour • Constant motifs (eg all back drops are of the flowers)

• Constant geometrical shapes or background fills

• If the theme is not obvious to the viewer it is not a theme! This can depend on the sophistication of the viewer – some things go right over the heads of all viewers, so this is a tricky area.

7. There is a fine dividing line between an album looking exciting and dynamic and an album looking like an amateur’s first mess! Tread with care, take advice, show it around, before you deliver it!

8. Use a grid or guide system. Pictures that are nearly but not quite aligned look like mistakes! Varying the gutter and margin distances just looks like sloppy workmanship so don’t even think about it! Make sure you include bleed if the composition runs right to the edge of the page. Three millimetres is typical but take advice from your printer.

9. If you use text, keep to the same font and don’t use upper case for stuff that is to be read! If you are setting poetry, learn about typographic conventions before you plunge in. Think about the use of ligatures and swashes for really classy type-setting. Make sure you spell check – we see more albums with spelling errors that you would ever imagine in such prestigious articles. 10. Don’t forget to add your contact details in a discrete place. Remember you are providing your client with an album, not a brochure for your business.

The Album Page Challenge

Making up album pages from other people’s work is always a challenge. We set the task for Dave Simm and Tom Lee himself, both of whom do this sort of thing for a living! Your editor then pitched in with his own session, deliberately using different approaches, software and techniques. The images were plucked from a wedding conducted some time ago and were intended to be a little tricky, no catwalk models, village greens, ancient castles, quaint country churches and Dallas film sets here!

All attempts were timed so that the true cost of generating them could be assessed. All artistic judgments were left to the discretion of the creators, as was the album format (other than the demand for a double page spread).

Dave Simm

The notes made by Dave Simm are set out below.

Church interior image: reduce contrast and lift brightness slightly, duplicate layer to be worked on later. Placed guide line @50% so I could be aware of the page crease.

Bride and father - centre image added, Bellwood torn edge and discarded Bellwood’s background. Cut away the image that overlapped the edge effect.

Two remaining images converted to B+W still as RGB however, dragged the two images into the church canvas and scaled both at the same time. Brought in the centre image and scaled that down too. Then, selecting the duplicate church layer, I drew a rectangular marquee 2” in from the edge, inverted and deleted, drew another at 2.25” and selected Layer>Layer Style> Bevel and Emboss, set the depth to 25 and clicked OK next, using marquee again I removed the two sides of my bubble effect. then merged the two B+W images onto one layer added a bevel and emboss at 15.”

Total time about ten minutes.

Page size 16 x 12 continuous bind vertical book.

I took the hand from the register signing pic and enlarged it to make part of the back ground, I then added a stock template that I had made a while ago, using the Gradient Tool I blended the one into the other and that is now my working canvas for the page.

I then added the rest of the register signing images and rotated to create interest, finishing up with bevel and emboss for a 3D look.

Five minute work time.

Comments:

The backdrop of painted terraced house is a real killer. They are bright, angular, ugly and immovable! There are two options – to kill the background colour or kill back both sharpness and colour. Neither can make much impression and costs about 10 minutes of work time – welcome to the world of urban weddings! Do we like the bevelled frame? Personally I think it clashes with the gothic architecture of the church.

The enlargement of the bride’s hand has revealed masses of over sharpening, probably not evident at the original scale. The blend to a textured backdrop allows the triplet of images to stand out. The angle adds a greater dynamic to the composition and the different scale adds interest. Could we afford to “light” all the votive candles? – love the Registrar’s sandals!

Tom Lee

The desaturated and dropped back tone of the background makes the celebrant priest a feature without too much emphasis. The weights of the four images are balanced by the size and positioning. The top right image shows some of the typical clutter that wedding photographers have to contend with – the crooked music stand, bright blue lamp on the piano, the ever-present “emergency exit” sign.

Note how the quality of this hand-set is better. The motion blur concentrates the interest. All the images tell the story behind the signing of the register. The two sepia images are effective sub-paragraphs of the story and bring the composition across the page crease without the risk of impairing the image.

The bride shows off her train, facing inwards with her face roughly in the upper left third of the spread. The backdrop to the right is heavily motion blurred on the angle, colours matching by default. The story in the cluster of images is told by the picture selection.

Wedding Album

Wedding Album 2

Wedding Album 3

Mike McNamee

This is where the critical gloves can come off! I was seeking to explore the graphic design possibilities of using software other than Photoshop in order to approach the alum design from a more “graphics” angle. First port of call was Adobe Illustrator which was used to modify CorelDRAW initial capitals and flourishes by adding colours from the selected palette. We were seeking an Art Deco look so we used Bernhard Fashion as our font. However this was not suitable for the biblical text as it was too light and thin when used with the theme colours. We selected Cataneo BT and set the biblical quote using InDesign, to take advantage of the optical margin alignment. Swash capitals were added where appropriate. The text was then moved to Photoshop as an object, to preserve the text spacing. The borders were made using a Brush Set made by Miriam Lewis and available from the Adobe Studio web site Wedding Album 4

http://share.studio.adobe.com

Final Thoughts We live in an ever-changing world! The initial concept for this article was for collaboration between a number of different people, using a variety of methods, including InDesign. It came to life after a presentation from Adobe’s Chris Kitchener at the SWPP/BPPA Convention in January this year. The question he posed was how good (or better) InDesign might be as a method of making up album page designs. Since that time CS 2 has been launched and what do we find? Well you can drop a Photoshop file onto another Photoshop file just like you might in InDesign and on top of all that, the new Adobe Bridge offers a way of managing all types of digital assets and dragging them straight onto the page! We will be keeping a weather eye on that concept when, hopefully, we review the new CS suite. We are still a little paranoid about how long it is taking to fettle images ready for dropping into the album - a matter we will, no doubt, be returning to again and again. Here, Adobe Bridge seems to offer some relief with its slick RAW file handling and multi thread processing. First impressions are that Bridge is a bit slow on the uptake but once everything has been cached the benefits might outweigh other factors. The star rating of images on the virtual light box so that they can be sorted will assist the image selection process. Watch this space, and don’t forget that we run a competition for folios – not quite the same thing but close!

Photo Quote: A great photograph is one that fully expresses what one feels, in the deepest sense, about what is being photographed. - Ansel Adams