Launched in January this 12 months, Fundy Designer V11 is the newest iteration of the Fundy album design (and extra) software program that first noticed the sunshine of day in 2008. It’s geared toward wedding ceremony, portrait, and social photographers searching for to broaden their product choices with minimal further workload or complication.
The software program simplifies the creation of high-quality albums, wall artwork, and playing cards, and in some instances permits photographers to design and order merchandise instantly from their chosen labs. The inclusion of a web based proofer throughout the Professional Enhancements package deal ensures that purchasers can swiftly approve designs, facilitating a seamless transition from approval to order placement.
Fundy Designer: Specs
| Worth | $290/12 months, ($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 present workflow, accepting rated photos from widespread 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 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 choices and scores or hit the Design Wizard button immediately..
Whereas Fundy Designer can work with the scores which might be utilized in different software program, you too can add them shortly 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 too can choose a number of photos as ‘most important’ photos to occupy an entire web page in an album, choose the quilt photograph, 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 sort is about to Marriage ceremony, as an example, there are alternatives comparable to Location, Particulars, Bride Getting Prepared, Groom Getting Prepared, and many others. Different shoot sorts 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 principle 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 choose to simply create one or two of the product sorts.
For those who haven’t tagged or ‘favorited’ the pictures 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 finest 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 fashion, and design fashion of the album, and the format and design fashion of the wall artwork and playing cards. Clicking on the ‘Superior Choices’ hyperlink provides you additional management, together with the power 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’ll be able to order the product with them from inside Fundy Designer. There’s additionally an in depth record of different labs together with Bay Picture Lab, Bobs Books, Digitalab, Loxley Color, nPhoto, and plenty of extra, which aren’t totally 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 choice within the Album Firm window after which set the size of the album you propose to create.
That is additionally the place you have got the power to set the variety of photos you need to embrace throughout your most well-liked variety of pages.
The record of labs obtainable to make wall artwork is shorter than the album record, and there are none listed for the cardboard creation, however once more, it’s attainable 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 Venture’ 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 Images 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 purchasers need. Clicking on any of the spreads within the album places a yellow field round it and divulges a number of icons that will let you make fast adjustments like shuffling the pictures round or shifting the unfold to a distinct location within the album. You too can drag photos from the thumbnail bar onto an expansion and the software program adapts in order that all the things matches properly routinely.
Double-clicking on an expansion opens its preview and permits additional adjustments comparable to altering a picture’s facet ratio or alignment.
When you’re proud of the album, you’ll be able to transfer on to the wall artwork and card designs by choosing them from the menu bar on the high of the web page.
By default, the wall artwork is proven towards a default background picture of a room to offer it scale. There’s a choice of room photos to choose from, or you’ll be able to put them on white or black. Alternatively, you’ll be able to add a picture of your consumer’s rooms and scale all the things appropriately. As with the albums, you’ll be able to swap photos round and alter their print dimension and the like. The thought is to assist purchasers 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 high 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 too can create a design proof to share with purchasers, export it for internet use, or put it aside as a design set for future use.
Fundy Designer: Verdict
The Design Wizard is the standout characteristic of Fundy Designer V11 and with just a little steering, it creates handsome, neatly organized albums inside seconds. It additionally makes creating a sexy wall artwork design and playing cards really easy that skilled photographers can create them on the off-chance of constructing further gross sales to their purchasers. That is backed by Fundy Software program’s wonderful drop zone know-how 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 more than likely to attraction to wedding ceremony photographers, it will probably additionally open up new income streams to different photographers who could not have beforehand thought-about promoting albums, giant prints, or playing cards. Crucially, it doesn’t add an enormous quantity of labor and might slip into an present workflow.