Matted Albums: Prints are made and than fit into the album under a mat. Queensberry and Jorgensen have custom made mats so you can lay the prints out scrapbook style and they will cut the window apertures to fit. Zookbinders, Classic, Florentina, Renaissance and Art Leather and others have predetermined mats so the prints have to fit their various mat assortment. They vary between manufacturers and are not interchangeable.

Flush Albums: Use matted album covers and a Zookbinders/Classic type insert. In the old days (20 years to present) photographers shot with a medium format square format camera and made one print per page. Very popular for Bar Mitzvah's. Many years ago more photographers started switching to rectangular medium format and 35mm capture. If a flush album is made then the landscape horizontal prints ran vertical so the album had to be rotated. Not a good solution anymore. With the advent of film scanning and now digital capture it is simply a matter of making the album page a "canvas" and filling the space with images of any kind and size. So today's Flush albums use the traditional album covers and insert pages and have image appear in different sizes and backgrounds using either two sheets of photographic paper or one depending on album brand. Two sheets form left and right pages. One sheet forms a double page spread. Again there are no mats, the images are printed on the paper surface so the photographic print forms the album page when it is permanently mounted to the album insert. They are sprayed with lustre lacquer to protect the prints.

Book Albums look like a book. Imagine a large coffee table book. The binding is square and most often the book opens flat when opened. The images appear in different sizes and backgrounds using either two sheets of photographic paper or one depending on album brand. Two sheets form left and right pages. One sheet forms a double page spread. Again there are no mats, the images are printed on the paper surface so the photographic print forms the album page when it is permanently mounted to a thin mount board. Only GraphiStudio prints using digitally offset printing techniques on real paper.

Magazine Style Albums refer to the style of an album. They are suppose to reflect today's magazine layouts using graphical elements such as type, graphic devices such as squares, rectangles, ovals and other shapes and the use of color to separate/accent designs. Images tend to get sliced up and are more interpretive and not so descriptive. Effect is an main emphasis. Most often these appear in book albums. They however are a style of design so could be bound in a Flush Album. The designers taste and the client wants need to be in harmony to provide the best outcome. If you have a wild designer doing cutting edge design and a very conservative client with no exposure to the world's latest graphic design movements the outcome may be at cross roads with an unhappy outcome. The work is great, but only in certain circles. Obviously everyone wants the client to be happy.

Styles: Problems with styles is that most people are not articulate enough to verbalize what they want or like. They are not Graphic Designers or Art Directors, they just know what they like after the fact. So to have a happy outcome communication is very important. If you have a photographer who is not in tune with what is needed to make a great stylized album that you don't have the raw images to work with. Results can only be improved so far. Another scenario: The photographer shoot and delivers 1000-2000 images. They are great! But the client doesn't see the great shots and leaves them out of the album selection thereby inhibiting the design.

So there are many variables to doing any of the new style albums.

Best Results: Digital Cameras

Best results are obtained from original digital image files rather than film scans. Pro Wedding Photographer use the latest Nikon or Canon cameras. A few use a few other brands.... but why?

Film scans can be ok to good, but are inherently contrasty with digital dust and relatively unsharp as compared to today's optimized digital files (jpg).