German album manufacturer “Albenmanufaktur” is one of the Album-company’s making it easy for their clients to design, sell and order albums.
In a few weeks the”silverbook designer” will be a part of the order process and I am sure that the combination of the design & sales tool and their beautiful range of albums will be a very successful combination!
As a active partner of this album manufacturer we are happy to give 10 wedding photographers the option to test the Silverino album with the velvet paper option. In return Albenmanufaktur will get a honest review of their product which will be published on the photographers blog.
Here are the instructions how to proceed:
Prepare about 20 album spreads in the size 7205 x 3602 pixels (sRGB) – everything between 15 and 25 spreads is fine!
Prepare a cover image 2008 × 2008 pixels for a square window or 3142 width × 3579 px height for the acrylic front plate which i recommend!
You are very welcome to try our Rapid Album designer in order to design your spreads, I will unlock your design free of charge at the end of the process!
Some simple rules to make your RAD design easy and fast: Save all the necessary pictures in ONE folder on your hard-disk, make sure they have at least 5000 pixels on the long side, and do NOT change the file-name while you are working with your design. If you do not have a RAD account you may sign up here: http://rad.pub/scripts/start.php The FAQ section answers more questions.
Create an Albenmanufaktur account here: https://www.diealbenmanufaktur.de/customer/account/create/ and go through the order process.
Important:
You MUST choose one of the following cover material options only: matt linnen, vinylleahter, baroque style.
You MUST choose the velvet paper option!
I recommend the acrylic front plate cover option. Get used to add text like names and dates directly om the cover photo in order to avoid embossing!
The velvet paper option is great for colorful light pictures – not so very well fitted for images containing a massive amount of dark/deep blacks.
Use the code silverinomatt when you check out! This offer is valid until sunday march 5.th
Please send us a link to your published review whithin 2 weeks after you receive your album. 2-3 pictures and the mentioning of the name “Silverino Album & velvet paper” is part of the deal!
Feel free to give me a call between 11.00 and 21:00 – best via skype (screensharing) or mobile phone 0705835430
My skype name is volkerstroehlein
If you have questions and think that your colleagues would also benefit from the answer put your question here on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/album.design.software.RAD/
Today we introduce four new features to RAD:
1) Client editing
The “Share Album” button now shows a dialog with two tabs: “Web
Proofing” and “PDF Proofing”. PDF proofing is new and is described below while Web Proofing is used like before to create the link to the flipbook. (See attached photos.)
Web Proofing now also lets you decide if the client can make changes to the album spreads! If you specify this option, a password is required. On the flip-book page, your client will then see a icon that looks like a wrench in the lower right corner. When the client clicks on the icon, she is taken to the designer where she is asked for the password. If the password is correct she can edit the album spreads, just like you, and with your templates. You don’t have to worry about your client ruining your design as a new version is created. Upon Save&Exit, the client is sent back to the flip-book where she can see the changes immediately. The language used in the designer is determined entirely by your own RAD setting.
To try this cool feature out just click on the picture to flip through the album, then click on the wrench symbol and use the password “albumdesign” to make changes in the album.
We hope this can be useful, for instance if you have a stubborn client who is better off designing their album, or if you are two or more designers cooperating on an album.
2) PDF proofing
PDF proofing is available from the “Share Album” button and lets you create a PDF document with one spread per page, with your banner at the top and optional watermarking.
You can either download the PDF document and send it to your client, or simply send them the link to the PDF document, which is kept on the RAD server.
The PDF document is created from the thumbnails so it is not necessary to upload the high resolution files to create the PDF document, which is kept small enough for you to mail it as an attachment.
Example: http://rad.pub/proofing/000028312124846982/album.pdf
3) Crop detection
This feature is very appreciated by our partners, album manufacturers who are offering a white label version of the software to their customers:
RAD can now detect if you have cropped and re-uploaded photos used in the album. Also, if you cropped your photos and uploaded them as high resolution files in order to export the spreads on the server, this is also detected. Warnings are presented for each of these cases.
If you get a warning you should “Edit spreads” and re-design the spread containing that photo.
Suspicious photos are shown with a yellow “?” in the manager’s flipbook, but you may be asked to reload the manager page to see them. In the near future I hope to improve the manager so reloads are not necessary.
4) Export thumbnail verification
If you upload high resolution files with the intent of exporting
spreads on the server you will see small thumbnails of each spread as they are being exported. As a security measure, you will now be asked to click on each thumbnail before you can download the zipfile with the spreads. You can do this easily by clicking on the first spread and using left and right arrow keys to navigate between the spreads. When a spread has been checked, a checkmark is placed under the corresponding thumbnail.
Today we introduced the new “Gallery” feature which lets you share a gallery of the album photos with your client. They can click on the photos they wish to add to the layout and you will then be able to see which ones they have selected in the designer. It also works the other way, so if you have created spreads, the gallery marks the photos used in the album with a star.
Have a look at the video preview below and see if it’s time to kiss that Smugmug/Zenfolio/etc account goodbye? See a example gallery here.
After several false starts and almost 4 weeks of toiling at the computer with many sheets of note paper filled with lines and numbers, hundreds of little test programs executed and a couple of thumbs twiddling away whilst waiting for Photoshop to render a font we are finally back again, ready to launch the text tool tonight.
Getting text to work has been a real research effort. After all this time you are probably expecting something supercalifragilisticexpialidocious but it is still just a simple text tool so that you can put some letters in your photo albums.
Why did it take so long? Text is rendered differently in HTML, HTML5 canvas, Photoshop and ImageMagick. In our previous attempt, Kjell assumed that HTML5’s middle-of-the-font line was half the height of an “M” but it was discovered that this metric, called the x-height, is not only slightly different (and varies with each font) but also something which you can’t query in Photoshop. So Kjell had to employ some clever HTML tricks to calculate the x-height in the designer and pass it on to the Photoshop script.
The second problem came up when we discovered that about half of the fonts on my Mac don’t exist in Windows. We now have a common set of fonts that everyone should have, and also a number of Google fonts which can be used for free. If you export spreads on the server, you don’t have to do anything, but if you use one of the Google fonts and wish to run the Photoshop script to build your spreads, you must first download the Google fonts and install them on your computer. Visit the FAQ section if you need more information how to do that.
The video shows how easy it is to work with text in RAD:
We are very happy to announce that UK based Folioalbums has chosen us to supply them with their own branded version of our album design software!
Folioalbums has a outstanding range of fine art albums and their matted albums are among the best money can buy. Supporting photographers in their effort to design and sell albums is a very smart move for every album manufacturer. Folioalbums decision to offer RAD to their clients makes us very proud! If you are a professional photographer looking for stunning albums combined with a fast end easy to use album design solution, an intuitive order system and excellent customer service – than you should head over to Folioalbums website!
We just updated the Rapid Album Designer with a simple and elegant Album Proofing system and decided to offer this feature completely free to you! Our business model is based on the idea that we only charge you for our service if you manage to close a deal with your client. Presenting the layout is a important step in the sales process, so it is in our own interest to assist you as good as possible along the way. Giving your clients the option to click anywhere on a page, write their request in a speech bubble and send it to you with a few clicks will save time and eliminate misunderstandings! It is very easy for you to review the changes and update the layout, nevertheless it is smart to inform the client how many changes they can request in the agreed price.
If you like to see how intuitive it is to flip to a beautifully designed album click on the picture below and leave some comments directly on the spreads. The Flip-Book is fully responsive and fit´s perfectly on any device.
Lots of love and a big hug goes to our friend JULIANA WIKLUND – a great wedding photographer with a wonderful personality – for letting us share the pictures from her latest destination wedding. can you guess where the shooting took place? If you like to see more of Julianas work and see if you guessed right, you can visit her HOMEPAGE.
The new big feature is the option to design your album cover. Placing your image in relation to the spine has never been so easy. Watch a short video to see all the new options:
Welcome to RAD! The best way to learn RAD is to start with a new project containing, for example, some finished JPEG photos from your last wedding or portrait session.
After you log in, you will find yourself in RAD’s manager.
Note: you can always come back and import more photos later!
Click on “gRAD” and test the auto layout function visible only in the very beginning of your project!
The “Edit spreads” button opens our first version of the designer wich works really smooth on a tablet or mobile. Those 2 options are fully compatible with each other, feel free to test both.
Spend 15 minutes to watch the gRAD tutorial below and enjoy designing your albums in the future.
With gRAD’s unique spread overview you can design your albums in record time – but you need to learn the tools!
So far, everything you’ve done is completely free!
We hope you like the fast and easy workflow. Many of our photographers use RAD to quickly design an album and surprise their clients with an electronic flipbook a few days after the event, often leading to an unexpected income.
Since 2019 you can order good quality, inexpensive photo-books directly whiting RAD, please check out this link to learn more: RAD Base albums
If you have any problems, first look at our FAQ. If that doesn’t help, don’t hesitate to contact us.
For information about the latest developments and updates feel free to join our FB group
Happy editing!
After many weeks of silence we proudly announce RAD 2.0 .
Migrating the whole system to a very powerful server was essential because several album manufacturers will get their own “white label” album design tool in the first quarter of 2015.
We implemented some essentials for professional looking design, without raising the learning curve.
See the new features in the video: