Wedding Albums and Blogging Process

We are deep diving into the programs that I use to create my client wedding albums from start to finish plus the program I use to prepare my blogging images.

Album Stomp

Album Stomp is the software I use to create my album spreads for my clients. They choose the images they want for their albums through a selection link I send them through their PASS galleries. Then I’m able to import their selected images into Album Stomp and start laying out the spreads. I start from the very beginning of the day with details and end with their grand exit to tell the story of the day as it happened. It’s a very user friendly software where all you do is CTRL+Select the images you want on a page then drag and drop. They have many layouts to choose from and you can easily crop your images if you choose to do so. You can set your borders, margins, page colors, etc. Then when you are ready, stomp your album by spread or entire album and save to your computer.

Album Prufr

Once I finish the first album draft, I use Album Prufr to send the album to my clients for their review. Album Prufr is linked to Album Stomp so it makes the process easy and simple. It send the clients an email with a link and log in info to view their album. They are able to make comments on each page and request changes to layouts, exchange images, etc. Once they submit their comments, I make changes to the album and then send back for more comments or final approval before I stomp the album and start the ordering process.

Millers

My favorite professional print lab! For ordering albums, start by uploading the design that was created using Album Stomp spread by spread. Once the spreads are complete, then you choose the page material and cover design. They have so many cover materials to choose from like linen, leather, velvet, and more.

My favorite page material is E-Surface, it’s classic and best reflects the true color and contrast of the images. For covers, I give my clients the opportunity to fully customize their cover by choosing their colors, text and materials. If they ask for guidance, then I like a classic off-white linen or choose based on their wedding colors. For fonts, my personal favorite is their Eye Catching font and of course, always go with the thick paper for albums. I also choose to not color correct the images to their printers. I’ve done both options in the past and the prints look most like my images when I select the “do not color correct” option.

Millers has a wonderful turnaround time and has never disappointed on their prints, albums, wall art or books. Millers is a professional print lab for photographers only, but they do have a sister company called Mpix that is available to everyone. That being said, I highly recommend to order your prints through Mpix rather than using sites like Shutterfly or box stores such as Walmart, CVS, etc. I can guarantee the quality and color of your prints will not match your delivered images so please order from a reputable company.

Storytailor

Stomp Software used to have a program called Blog Stomp along with their Album Stomp and Prufr softwares. They recently transitioned over to Storytailor and it makes the blog process so much easier. For curating the images that I use in my blogs, I drag and drop them into the collage section of Storytailor and essentially “press” together images. I usually stick with 1-3 images for a normal post, but I go up to 4-5 images for receptions. I love that they also have several collage layouts to choose from for those larger groups. I’m able to export the sets of images with a custom filename that helps with SEO in your blog post as well as borders, margins, quality and image width. Image width is the most important setting to properly size your images so that they will properly display on your blog on both mobile and desktop.

Once all the images are exported, just upload the gallery to your blog site and start writing! Happy blogging!

First image is of woman in blue sweater holding a cup of coffee and typing on her laptop while smiling in an all white kitchen at 201Lofthaus, a Houston studio. Second image is of woman with blue sweater standing in kitchen holding camera at her waist and smiling