Who really looks at albums nowadays, right? Everything’s on Facebook or Instagram now, so what’s the point of buying a printed album?
WRONG! How many times have you dug out your old DVDs (or even better, flash drives or floppy disks?!) during a family gathering? On the other hand, do you grab the old albums, with the old glossy 4"x 6” prints tucked into the plastic pop-in pages? I always grab the hard cover albums when I’m sitting with my grandma and parents, reminiscing birthdays, missing deceased friends and relatives, celebrating births - all the memories of our lives. Plus, having an album to set out on the coffee table, like a book of art or architecture, is a great conversation starter when friends come over, or during cozy date nights!
How does ordering an album work with SHP?
We give clients a few options for creating and ordering albums. Whether it’s for a wedding, boudoir, or family session, you can be as involved as you wish.
Option 1: We choose the photos and design the album for you.
This option saves you time and it’s a fun surprise – if there any photos you definitely don’t want in the album, let us know after we deliver your final gallery, and we’ll make sure not to include those. You can choose to digitally proof the album before we send it to print, or we can send it off to print and have it be a total surprise for you. We’ll send you an email when we’re done designing the album, asking if you’d like to take a look, and move forward from there.
Option 2: You choose the photos and we design the album for you.
This option allows you to be part of the creative process, helping us by choosing your favorite photos. We typically request you choose 80-100 photos so we can choose 50-60 that work well with the layout we design. If you have a specific favorites list (“these are my 10 absolutely most favorite photos, and I’d really love for all 10 of these to be in there”), please let us know, and we’ll focus heavily on those. We’ll send you an email when we’re done designing the album, asking if you’d like to take a look, and move forward from there. If you don’t want to see it before it arrives in print, it’ll be a surprise!
How do I choose my favorites?
You’ll choose them in the online gallery, creating a “favorites” folder that both of us will be able to see. When you let me know you’re done selecting the photos, I’ll begin designing the album.
We’ll work to include as many of your favorites as possible, but we may not be able to fit them all. If you love the photos so much that you can’t keep your favorites list to under 100 photos and would like as many as possible included, let’s discuss album upgrade options.
Timeline for Design
Depending on the route you choose (you help select photos, or we select photos for you), albums can take up to 1 month to design, and an additional 2 weeks to print. For couples who would like to be involved in the design process, we estimate it takes us 1 week to design V1 of the album and to send you the digital pages for you to approve or give us feedback on. We estimate you will need about 1 week to return your approval or comments on the album draft. If it needs revisions/photo swaps, we estimate an additional 3-5 days to make the revisions, and then another 4-7 days for you to take a look and confirm the album is ready for print. Overall, this design and feedback process takes about 4 weeks.
If we’re choosing the photos and sending the album to print without sending you an album draft, this process is cut down to 2 weeks.
Shipping time typically ranges from 1-2 weeks, depending on the season, and where the album is being shipped to.
Other album design info:
Albums are one-of-a-kind printed art – we put lots of love and effort into designing them. If you have a vision for how you’d like the album to look, please let us know up front so we’re on the same page (tee hee, good album design pun, right?). It’s helpful to know if you have strong feelings about including black and white photographs, full page spreads, and whether you like the photos to bleed to the edges or have an empty trim. If you have no preference about any of this, we’ll create an album for you that we would want to print and set on our coffee table to show all our friends!
Our standard album is 10 spreads, or 20 pages, which typically includes 40-60 photos, on average. If you’d like a longer album, or more photos included, please let us know, and we’ll talk through the options for page size and album length.
We use a professional printing service that can creates albums with flat lays. We do choose some photos to stretch across a full spread (on both the left and right page of the album), so the photo is printed across the seam. If you aren’t a fan of this technique, no worries, just let us know, especially if you’re not taking a look at the final album design.
Our default design is on glossy pages. If you’re a fan of matte or silk paper, please let us know before we send to print.
You’re able to inscribe the front of the album with 3 lines of text. An example is:
Daniela & Jacob Layer
Indianapolis Repertory Theater
June 13, 2019
Please let us know if you prefer a certain color for the album. Our album covers are single color, with a leather feel. We are able to customize a different album cover, such as a linen or real leather material, or even add a photo to the front cover. If you’re interested in customizing the album cover, please us know. These options do come at an additional charge, as they are an additional price through our album manufacturer.