Launched in January this yr, Fundy Designer V11 is the most recent iteration of the Fundy album design (and extra) software program that first noticed the sunshine of day in 2008. It’s geared toward marriage ceremony, portrait, and social photographers searching for to develop their product choices with minimal extra workload or complication.
The software program simplifies the creation of high-quality albums, wall artwork, and playing cards, and in some instances allows photographers to design and order merchandise immediately from their chosen labs. The inclusion of a web-based proofer throughout the Professional Enhancements package deal ensures that shoppers can swiftly approve designs, facilitating a seamless transition from approval to order placement.
Fundy Designer: Specs
| Value | $290/yr, ($29/month annual lease) |
| Integration | Works with over 150 labs worldwide |
| Create | Albums, wall artwork, playing cards, magazines, slideshows |
| Professional enhancements consists of | On-line Proofing, Design Library, Pores and skin Retouching, Social Design App |
Fundy Designer: Key Options
Fundy Designer V11 integrates right into a photographer’s current workflow, accepting rated photos from standard software program like Picture Mechanic, Adobe Bridge and Lightroom. Photographers can export their edited photos as JPGs to a folder, then import them into Fundy Designer.
The numerous addition to V11 as compared with V10 is the arrival of the brand new all-in-one ‘Design Wizard’. The place V10 has an ‘Auto Design’ characteristic that creates an album with a single click on, V11 can now prolong this to incorporate wall artwork and card creation as nicely.
Fundy Designer: Interface
The interface of Fundy Designer V11 is logical and intuitive. Step one after launching the software program is to import photographs by tapping the ‘Add Picture’ button. I discovered it took simply over 90 seconds to import 135 photos (1.98GB).
With some photos imported, you’ll see thumbnails alongside the underside of the display screen and you’ve got the choice to make picks and rankings or hit the Design Wizard button right away..
Whereas Fundy Designer can work with the rankings which can be utilized in different software program, you can too add them rapidly throughout the software program itself. Merely double-click on any of the thumbnails to open the picture browser and begin clicking on the celebs and hearts as you want.
If you want, you can too choose a number of photos as ‘primary’ photos to occupy an entire web page in an album, choose the quilt picture, mark photos to be proven as panoramas throughout two pages and group photos to be proven collectively on a web page. There’s additionally the choice to tag photos to point what they depict. When the shoot kind is ready to Wedding ceremony, for example, there are alternatives equivalent to Location, Particulars, Bride Getting Prepared, Groom Getting Prepared, and so on. Different shoot varieties embrace Portrait, Seniors, Occasion, Boudoir, and two customized choices.
When you’ve completed tagging and grouping photos, clicking on the album icon returns you to the primary web page with the thumbnails alongside the underside and the Design Wizard button. Hitting that button opens a brand new window to pick settings for the album, wall artwork, and card creation. By default these three creation choices are set to ‘on’, however they are often turned off should you desire to simply create one or two of the product varieties.
When you haven’t tagged or ‘favorited’ the photographs you’re engaged on inside your enhancing software program, it’s price doing so in Fundy Designer. It’s additionally helpful to have given some thought to which photos would work greatest by themselves, with different, and as panoramas and tag them accordingly.
Fundy Designer: Efficiency
Fundy Designer selects some default settings for every of the merchandise you need to design, however there are dropdown choices obtainable to vary the format, cowl type, and design type of the album, and the format and design type of the wall artwork and playing cards. Clicking on the ‘Superior Choices’ hyperlink offers you additional management, together with the flexibility to pick the lab with which you want to print your work.
GraphiStudio, Millers, and Renaissance Albums are listed as ‘Direct Labs’ for album creation, which suggests you possibly can order the product with them from inside Fundy Designer. There’s additionally an in depth listing of different labs together with Bay Picture Lab, Bobs Books, Digitalab, Loxley Color, nPhoto, and plenty of extra, which aren’t absolutely built-in however have merchandise listed for choice so their dimensions are imported. Nonetheless, if the lab you want to use isn’t obtainable, use the Customized Measurement possibility within the Album Firm window after which set the size of the album you intend to create.
That is additionally the place you might have the flexibility to set the variety of photos you need to embrace throughout your most popular variety of pages.
The listing of labs obtainable to make wall artwork is shorter than the album listing, and there are none listed for the cardboard creation, however once more, it’s potential to set the scale you need to print.
After you’ve completed choosing the settings for the album, wall artwork, and playing cards, click on on ‘Design Mission’ after which the icon for the product you need to see. I created a sq. album with 40 pages and 60 photos from 135 equipped by Scott Johnson of The Edge Pictures and the preview was seen as quickly as I clicked to see it.
The album design isn’t set in stone, it may be tweaked till you get precisely what you or your shoppers need. Clicking on any of the spreads within the album places a yellow field round it and divulges a number of icons that let you make fast modifications like shuffling the photographs round or shifting the unfold to a unique location within the album. You can even drag photos from the thumbnail bar onto an expansion and the software program adapts in order that every part suits properly routinely.
Double-clicking on an expansion opens its preview and permits additional modifications equivalent to altering a picture’s side ratio or alignment.
When you’re proud of the album, you possibly can transfer on to the wall artwork and card designs by choosing them from the menu bar on the prime of the web page.
By default, the wall artwork is proven in opposition to a default background picture of a room to offer it scale. There’s a number of room photos to choose from, or you possibly can put them on white or black. Alternatively, you possibly can add a picture of your shopper’s rooms and scale every part appropriately. As with the albums, you possibly can swap photos round and alter their print measurement and the like. The concept is to assist shoppers see how your photos may look on their partitions and to encourage them to order extra or bigger prints.
When all of the enhancing is completed, click on on the export icon within the prime proper nook of the display screen. This reveals choices to add your creations to your chosen lab or obtain the information able to add to your lab. You can even create a design proof to share with shoppers, export it for internet use, or reserve it as a design set for future use.
Fundy Designer: Verdict
The Design Wizard is the standout characteristic of Fundy Designer V11 and with slightly steerage, it creates handsome, neatly organized albums inside seconds. It additionally makes creating a gorgeous wall artwork design and playing cards really easy that skilled photographers can create them on the off-chance of constructing additional gross sales to their shoppers. That is backed by Fundy Software program’s wonderful drop zone expertise that makes it straightforward to maneuver photos round and ideal a design or tweak it to a buyer’s preferences.
Whereas Fundy Designer V11 is almost definitely to enchantment to marriage ceremony photographers, it could possibly additionally open up new income streams to different photographers who might not have beforehand thought-about promoting albums, giant prints, or playing cards. Crucially, it doesn’t add an enormous quantity of labor and may slip into an current workflow.