Photographic album

A photographic album, or photo album, is a collection of photographs, generally in a book. Some book-form photo albums have compartments which the photos may be slipped into; other albums have heavy paper with an abrasive surface covered with clear plastic sheets, on which surface photos can be put. Older style albums often were simply books of heavy paper which photos could be glued to or attached to with adhesive corners or pages.

Showing photo albums at home is becoming an increasingly popular pastime. With most homes owning one or more digital cameras and inkjet printers, albums can be created as a family or event record, for both a short duration or as part of the family archives.

Too often a collection of photographs can end up in boxes, or on a bookshelf of unlabelled volumes. To craft them into a properly ordered family tree where each person has their own portraits, and to group pictures in age order requires a lot of effort. The benefit of reordering a photo collection is that a person's life can be related to the people around them in a pictorial way.

Printed photo albums are also more interesting than 6x4" (15x10cm) prints, whether printed at home or at a lab. The designer can use a variety of shapes, multiple photos per page (thereby saving cost) and can add titles, text, borders and backgrounds.

Photo album production can be allied to scrapbooking.

There are several software packages for designers of albums. Examples are Fotoslate 4 from ACD Systems, Scrapbook Factory from Nova Development, and products from printer OEM’s such as HP, Epson and Canon, as well as offerings from Serif and Corel.

Coffee table books get their name from the intended purpose of being placed on a coffee table for the entertainment of guests. Coffee table books are photo books, and come in various sizes from very small to very big. They are printed books, They have soft, thin pages like normal books. A coffee table book is typically larger and is bound in a hard cover, whereas a smaller photo book is normally bound in a soft cover. The print quality of photo books varies from photographic paper prints to inkjet prints on normal paper.

Digital photo books have digitally printed pages as opposed to albums that consist of traditional photos. Both flush mount albums as well as coffee table books are printed digitally. The photos of flush mount albums are printed on photographic paper, which is comparable to the quality of traditionally developed photos. Coffee table books, on the other hand, are printed with inkjet on ordinary paper and are therefore of a lower quality. Digital printing gives the album designer a vast number of design possibilities, for example magazine-style or montage albums are only possible with digital printing.

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