Designing matted albums

There are dozens of album design tools on the market, and almost none of them can be used to free-design matted albums.

The exceptions are PJ and two others. A few more have workarounds where you drag and drop images on to templates that match pre-designed mats … but that’s hardly creative.

Why do so few programs have this ability?

First, it’s quite hard. Hard to create a layout on the fly, and simultaneously capture all the data to create both the prints and the mat. And hard, when you’ve got the data, to ensure that the resulting layout meets all the album vendor’s requirements … and can actually be manufactured!

It gives most people a headache just thinking about it.

Second, matted albums no longer feature on most photographer’s radar. Not everybody agrees that’s a good thing, and that may be an opportunity for bespoke album makers and their clients. Provided their software can capitalise on it.

There is a lot to choosing an album design tool but the power to design pretty much any album out there is surely important.

Warm regards, Danny

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