Shooting at Bubbles

Photo-related software is quite the rage at the moment, and with my current Adobe AIR kick, Albelli Photo Album was a natural choice for Winextra to take a closer look at. Albelli differs from nearly every other piece of software you can install in a big way: when you’ve finished using the program, you actually have something you can hold in your hand.

Albelli, created in a partnership between Photobucket and AlbumPrinter B.V., is actually a photo album creation and ordering system.

Acquisition and Installation

The program itself is a free download from www.albelli.com, being based on the Adobe AIR platform written is Adobe Flex. It is compatible with PC, Mac, and soon, Linux. I tested it on Safari, Firefox, and Internet Explorer. A single click on the ‘get started’ graphic and the program installs. After that, it runs independent of your browser.

Features and Use

You can choose from a variety of book sizes and styles, then a sadly small variety of backgrounds. Perhaps I’m spoiled, but I would have liked to have seen vastly more choices. The prices for the books are quite reasonable. I checked with a couple local B&M shops that do similar work, and was rather shocked at the cost. Most of them required at least a week to do the job, you have to drop off the photos yourself, sit there in the shop and use their templates to design your book, then go pick up the album when it’s done. Albelli lets you design, order, and receive your new book, from your desk chair, in about the same seven days.

Yes, I know, everyone hates to pay for things on the ‘net, but stay tuned…Winextra might be able to help you with that as well. Check back in a week when I receive my book. I’ll be posting again to pass judgement on the quality of the book. Even if the software is flawless, the end result needs to be at least serviceable. We shall see.

Back on track. You’ve got quite a few choices on how to get the photos into Albelli. You can drag and drop them from any local or network drive, or log in to your PhotoBucket, Flickr, Picasa or SmugMug account right from Albelli. Thumbnails are loaded into a separate window for you to peruse then drag to the pre-selection screen. You can even log in to all 4 photo sites at the same time, the selection screen is tabbed, you can pull a few images from each. I was even able to drag photos from ACDSee, my preferred photo manager. Easy. Except, you’ve no way to know HOW MANY photos you’re permitted, which varies depending on the choice of page arrangement you make on the next screen. I was a little miffed when I’d chosen a set of wedding pictures that told a good story, only to be informed on the next screen that I had gone over by a few.

After choosing the layout, you add captions to your photos, switch them around, dump images that don’t work out, and bring in others. Again, there are only a few font choices for your captions. The app has multiple tabs throughout this section for changing the page layout on-the-fly, switching backgrounds, either by the page or throughout the book, adding or deleting entire pages and adding custom covers. This part can take some time. You can save a project for later completion if you like.

Then, what may be a big black mark in my opinion. There is only one payment option: Credit Card. No PayPal, no wire transfer, no check-by-phone, no bartering with goat haunches. I was offered a code from an Albelli rep for a free medium book, so all is well. (disclosure, there.) Also, the service, (despite the fact that the company is based in Amsterdam) is only available in the lower 48 states of the USA.

System Friendliness

Since this is an AIR application, it’s designed to run on most any system. Throughout the several days I ran it through, I had no crashes, errors, hangups or conflicts. The only issue I have in this area is the memory requirements. Depending on the number of photos you add to your album, this could get quite high, since perhaps each photo resides in memory for the duration of the project. With 20 images, usage was over 230,000k. The program itself only takes up about 3 megs on disk, and can be uninstalled from Add/Remove Programs. All files were removed, but the Albelli directory stayed behind.

Check back next week for a short missive on the book when it arrives, as well as a few free codes for any readers who’d like to give Albelli Photo Book a whirl.

Pros: Multi-OS, Multi Browser, professional fit & finish, clean intuitive UI

Cons: Narrows selection in places, lower 48 USA only, no choices for payments.