11 Tips for Creating the Most Beautiful Photo Albums

Monday 16 January 2023, 20:02 by Hermine Snellink | 8,989 views | 4 comments

This article was translated from Dutch with the help of AI. Read the original.

Creating albums is a lovely activity for some, while others often put it off. Yet it is always great to see the end result, printed and finished.

To help you create your own albums, I want to share some tips I have collected over the years.

Because of my work as a wedding photographer, I create around 40 albums a year. And I have made the necessary mistakes. With a bit of luck, you won't have to make them.

Hence this blog post. With 11 tips that make creating a photo album easier.

1. Check the fold

If there was one thing my clients asked about at first, it was whether any photo information would disappear into the fold.

We now only supply albums with double-page spreads that lay flat, but this trauma has stayed with me.

My rule: no fold through the eyes.
Ideally, no fold through faces at all.

Preferably, the fold should not run through people. Adjust your layout if possible.
If necessary, I place a separate photo on the left and right of the spread, or I leave some white space to the left of the photo, but I keep shifting things until the eyes are 'out of the fold'.

The only exception is when I have a group photo with lots of people. Unfortunately, someone will often end up in the fold, but preferably not the couple or another prominent guest.

If necessary, I enlarge the photo, so I have a little more room to move things around.

2. Take the bleed of your spread into account

After printing, something is almost always cut off the sides of your spread. So bear in mind that body parts may be cropped, and that does not always suit your layout.

You can prevent this either by taking photos with enough space at the sides, or by using white space. Make sure the white space is large enough that it does not stand out when a few millimetres are also cut off here.

3. Less is more: not too many photos on one spread

Sometimes it is difficult to imagine how a page will look in print. I prefer to use around 3 to 5 photos per spread, so that the design remains calm and interesting to look at.

The layout is calmer when photos work well together, for example because of their backgrounds
Exceptions are pages with lots of small details that have been photographed separately. Or think of the signing of the register by the couple, the witnesses and the registrar.

One possible solution is to try to capture the entire atmosphere or the complete moment in one photo. A bit of a holy grail for me, secretly, so I am still working on that.

4. Choose consciously whether or not to tell the story chronologically

The albums I design are chronological nine times out of ten. For a wedding album, I start with the preparations, followed by the photoshoot, wedding ceremony and finally the dinner or the party.

But every now and then it is better to deviate from this rule.

For example, when two photographers worked on the day. The photos of the groom and bride can then become mixed up, and it makes more sense to group them.

Photograph details in a way that makes them work well together
Or the couple may want to open with their favourite photoshoot photo and finish with a photo featuring a sunset.

The same applies to holiday albums: sometimes it is better to combine certain atmospheric images or show them large, while all the foodie photos can go together on one page. In any case, choose consciously what works best in your album.

5. Make sure you do not place the same photo twice in one album

Fortunately, I have not had this happen in a wedding album, but I do have a family album containing the exact same photo of my grandmother with her great-grandchild twice.

Some design programmes can alert you when images appear twice in the album. You can also have someone else check your design, or leave this to the client if there is one.

6. Check your text, size and cover

A colleague recently told me that she had unfortunately had the wrong wedding date printed on a wedding album. You can prevent this by having your client write down the date and then copying and pasting it yourself. This also prevents spelling mistakes in names.

Check one more time that you have the right size and that the chosen cover material is also correct.

Unfortunately, I once ordered a wedding album that was too small. Fortunately, I was then allowed to use it as a sample album.

Or choose a printer who checks your design as well. We have worked with Folio Albums for a long time, and part of their service is that they always check the design for design errors. This can save you a lot of costs later on.

There are also printers who can replace spreads in the album, for an additional cost, or who can keep the book block and put a new cover around it.

7. Good software makes life easier

Use software such as Pixellu Smartalbums to create a design quickly.

For example, I import all the photos from a wedding shoot into Smartalbums and then use the rating that was exported from Lightroom as well. I have already created a small summary of the assignment in images.

These days, you can order albums with lay-flat pages from many album suppliers.
I can then fairly easily turn those selected images into a first draft. I then add highlights that are still missing from my first draft, such as group photos or extra photos of guests, and before long I have finished the first design.

Good software can save a great deal of time. It is even possible to create an automatic design based on the photos you select.

8. Know your limits when it comes to noise and enlargements

Make sure you do not place photos with a lot of noise too large in the album, because you can sometimes see that noise a little too clearly in large photos.

When the rest of your images have little noise, the difference between spreads can be very noticeable. If you are unsure what full-spread photos at 6400 ISO look like in print, ask your printer for a few test prints.

When in doubt, do not print photos with a lot of noise too large.

Bonus tip: Always check your album spreads by exporting them and viewing them at 100 per cent before placing the album order.

We were once told by Jiggy Albums that we still needed to remove some floating dust. Since then, I have checked my files extra carefully before having them printed in an album.

9. Look towards the middle

If you place several photos on a spread, and these are, for example, photos of people watching a ceremony, try to have everyone look 'towards the middle of the spread'. Sometimes you can prevent people from 'looking off the page' by swapping a few photos around.

I often place a large photo of the couple in the middle, without a fold through their faces, and have the guests in the other photos look towards them.

10. The right balance in your spreads

Whether you want to alternate black and white and colour on one spread is a personal preference. Many colleagues choose either everything in colour or everything in black and white. But if you do want a mix, make sure the distribution makes sense.

My distribution is often a maximum of 1/3 black and white, evenly distributed. If, for example, only one of the ten photos is in black and white, I choose the colour version instead, because otherwise that one photo attracts all the attention.

A bonus tip here is that you can also take the end result in an album into account when taking photos. For example, I often photograph wedding details against similar backgrounds, so they also work well together on a spread.

You can also consciously choose to photograph separate portraits of the couple in the same place or not, to bring calm to the album here too.

11. Vary your layouts

This is also a personal choice, but I try to use each spread layout at least twice in an album. I also do not often place two exactly the same layouts after each other.

Again, this is to present the story of a shoot in a calmer way. This is less important in a yearbook.

Those are my tips. I hope they help. You may also design your albums in a completely different way. If so, please leave a comment, so I can learn from it again.

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