Why I'm A Sucker For A Good Template

I mentioned in yesterday's mish-mash of a post that I'm a sucker for a good template.
I bought quite a few last fall whenever a designer I liked would have a sale or coupon code, but like any good sale, it still adds up.

But the longer I do this business thing the more I'm a believer that great templates are essential to me.  I've learned the complicated way over the past 2 years that the end result of the photographs, the products, are where I'm able to make money and please my clients.  And let me tell ya folks, there's no shortage of fantastic products available!

I really really really stink at graphic design but I know exactly the design and style I like to showcase my images.  This is where the templates come in....I can buy beautiful templates for albums, cards, frames and everything else to create a very unique and eye-catching product that my client will love.

Here's some examples for you...this is a 4x8 Accordion album which is one of my absolute favorite new products I just started offering.  I bought this template...

...and turned it into this beautiful accordion album...

Graduation cards are another thing that are so easy to customize and the templates I've chosen for grad cards just pretty much blow the school cards out of the water!  Look how gorgeous...

My true weakness though is album templates...I have to restrain myself from buying every album template by Crave Design.  Here's their French Script Ohh La La which I've made several times into albums for Children and High School Seniors...

Since I'm kinda decent at working in Photoshop Elements I can alter all the text, colors, frames and pretty much rig all these templates up to fit what I need.  That way they're truly unique to the images that I'm creating them for and each client gets the product thats perfect for them. 

Anyway, templates have become a slight obsession and I've shown ample proof as to why I love them. What about you...are you a template junkie?

And since I want everyone to have the guilty habit I do of splurging on great templates, here's a few of my favorite sites for designs....Enjoy~

www.cravemydesign.com

www.jamieschultzdesigns.com

http://www.simplicityphotography.com/design/

NOW WHAT?

I have 3,558 photos in my iphoto Events.

I have approximately another 2,500 photos living in random places in my computer.

Now what?

I happen have an answer to that age-old question.  Actually, I have several answers.

One of the neatest things I've been doing lately is creating photo books.  They're an awesome way to display all those

photos that would otherwise just be hovering in cyberspace for eternity.  As much fun as all this digital photo technology 

is, the ultimate purpose of a photograph is to be printed and displayed...is it not?  That's so deep....

Here's a few photo book options that I've tried personally:

First, Blurb is one of the coolest book sites that I've seen.  It's soooo easy and the software is a FREE download right

to your computer.  

Basically, you just drag and drop your edited photos into their many, many templates.  There's tons of choices of

page layouts, background colors and patterns, and all kinds of special little touches you can add to make it your own.

I recently made this 13x11 wedding book for my cousin's wedding and I was thrilled with the results.

This is a screen shot of what the cover looks like in the Edit mode while I was designing the book.

This is an inside shot when looking at a 2 page spread....

You can see the page templates in the upper left corner, underneath that is the photos I've inserted and along the bottom is my page view of the entire book. I promise...it's easy...trust me.

Blurb definitely has the most templates to choose from and also several sizes.

Here's an 8x10 book that I created to showcase some photos of the creatures....

...and here's an inside shot of one layout....

But I won't leave you hanging with just one option, I've also made a book using my "book" feature on my Mac computer. If you have a Mac, it's included in your iphoto application. I made the large book and was really impressed with the quality of paper and the thickness of the cover. What I didn't like was the dust jacket....it gets beat up really quickly. As you can see from this photo....

Obviously you're gonna want to show off your book but the edges get worn pretty bad with the dust jacket. The cool thing about the Mac book is that underneath the dust jacket is a hard cover with the title embossed on it in foil. Very impressive.

There's lots more book opportunities out there but these two are my personal favorites....I've also made several calendars and greeting cards. I'll pass along my creation wisdom regarding those items in another post!