Digital Photographer's Software Guide - Bertemes - Net

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Photo Album Creation
Album software often forms part of a larger program, a good example being Apple’s
Aperture, which gives Mac users all the tools they need to create digital albums. You
should therefore also check out some of the image editors and image viewers for programs
like Adobe Photoshop Elements or Google Picasa, which are renowned for their
photo album capabilities. This chapter covers several other packages that are dedicated
to helping you prepare images for showing on the Web. Most come with an integral
FTP client to save you the trouble of acquiring CoffeeCup, CuteFTP, or other specialist
uploading software, and several have basic editing features like cropping and rotation.
Some provide layouts that are also suitable for printing: the pages forming a real album
when bound together. That said, most of them are fairly basic in what they have to offer.
Photo album software is generally less fussy than digital scrapbooks in its approach to
displaying images. Whereas scrapbooks place emphasis on decorative graphics, album
software tries harder to show your images to their best advantage. This is not to say that
album software never ventures into the realms of storytelling or special effects. It does.
But its primary objective is to get your pictures organized on the page for browsing
online. A good argument can be made in favor of the simple approach: the simpler the
better.
Two packages that exemplify the simple approach are Quixhibit from WilyBeagle
Software and Diji Album from Xequte Software. Either one is capable of creating a
photo gallery that will display your images with clear navigation and acceptable layout.
Often using Flash, far too many photographers attempt to create elaborate Websites
that are slow to respond and challenging to navigate. The advantage of Flash lies in the
extra protection it gives to your images, making it difficult for people to save them to
their computers. Album Creator is a viable option if you really want to use Flash.