News

With about 8500 lines of code, the third incarnation of ProAlbum-Designer is now ready.  For this update, you need to download the zipfile from the download page, i.e., you can not perform this update within the program. Also, for this upgrade there will be a small fee if you purchased ProAlbum-Designer over a year ago. Thus, you need a new activation code so if you have bought or upgraded ProAlbum-Designer within the last year, simply send me the 8 character machine signature and I will reply with an activation code. Refer to the manual for details.

New features in this version:

• Easier to create your own templates.
• Square, Vertical and Horizontal templates included.
• Vision Art and Folio Albums are now supported.
• There’s a “Make cover” option, not perfect but better.
• A new button “Color <-> BW” to make photos black & white.
• Slightly easier installation.
• Faster updates.

There will be minor but useful updates within the next few weeks so stay tuned. I have recently created a Facebook page for ProAlbum-Designer, I recommend you find it and “like” it so you will receive notices on updates. Updating should be easy, simply click on the “About ProAlbum-Designer” button and choose update.

ProAlbum-Designer 2.4.4 adds a small feature to the Update Spreads-command in Bridge. You can now update spreads which were created before version 2.2. It works like this:

• Select one or more spreads in Bridge.
• Choose Tools > ProAlbum-Designer: update spread(s).
• You will be presented with a dialog:
  
• Choose refresh if you simply like to replace images with their corresponding file content. This is what Update Spreads did in earlier releases. Please note that your spreads must be created with version 2.2 or later.
• Choose replace if you would like to replace each layer with another image. Let’s say you have a spread with images Photo-001.jpg, Photo-002.jpg, Photo-003.jpg. In other words, you have layers with names Photo-001, Photo-002, Photo-003.  Replace will then open up Photo-001.jpg (or Photo-001.tif, or any Photo-001.* it can find) in the replacement folder and substitute that in for Photo-001′s layer. It does so for each layer and if a replacement file can’t be found it will prompt for another file.
• All updates spreads are stored in a subfolder named with a date & time stamp. You are strongly encouraged to review the spreads before sending them to the printer!

To update, click on “About…” and then “Update”. Windows-users may have to run Photoshop as administrator (see manual) before doing this.

Alternatively you can also download and install in the usual way from the download area.

Thanks to Daniel K Johansson for suggesting and testing this new feature!

Version 2.4.2 fixes a bug with Check DPI and Optimal Enlarge. It also has preliminary support for Folio Album spreads (covers will appear soon).

To update, either click on “About ProAlbum-Designer” and then “Update”. Alternatively, download the zipfile from http://www.pixbookdesign.com/proalbum-download/

Sorry for another version so soon after 2.3, but I discovered a small bug with the close-to-the-border warning introduced in 2.3. I also took the opportunity to investigate JPEG files from a Canon camera, set to auto-rotate = on. These files aren’t physically rotated but rather marked “rotated” in the EXIF information. ProAlbum-Designer now knows how to turn them once they’ve been dropped as smart objects on the spread. If Nikon shooters have similar problems, I’d like to hear from you!

To update, either click on “About ProAlbum-Designer” and then “Update”. Alternatively, download the zipfile from http://www.pixbookdesign.com/proalbum-download/

ProAlbum-Designer 2.3 is now available. (Sorry, still working on Swedish and German versions.)

If you downloaded and installed 2.1.4 previously, you can just click the “About…” button and you should be able to update with one click. For this particular upgrade you will have enter your activation code again: use the same activation code that you already have or, if you have lost it, send me your machine signature to info@pixbookdesign.com.

If you want do download and install version 2.3 from scratch, please obtain it from the download area. Again, you can use the same activation code. Consult the manual if you have forgotten how to install.

Note: the automatic update feature does not update templates – and there a four new templates in this version – but you can get them by simply downloading the zip file for 2.2 from the download page.

ProAlbum-Designer 2.3 fixes a few things and introduces a few new features:

1. The Bridge menu is now “Make album spread” rather than “Add image(s)…”
2. You will always get the template dialogue (below), even if there’s an open document. To place selected images on top of the current document, use the “Place” button in the template dialogue’s lower right corner.
3. Previously, no warnings were issued when images with bleed, i.e., reaching all the way to the edge of the paper, had borders/shadows. Printing such spreads could result in a partial border/shadow. Now a warning is issued when you try to save such a spread.
4. Previously, it wasn’t possible to activate ProAlbum-Designer without an internet connection. This is now possible.
5. Four new templates have been added, thanks to Peter Nilsson at Ateljé Marie.
6. Downrez now defaults the input folder to your current page folder (as specified in Preferences). Thanks to Daniel K. Johansson for suggesting this.

ProAlbum-Designer 2.2 is now available. (Sorry, still working on Swedish and German versions.)

If you downloaded and installed 2.1.4 previously, you can just click the “About…” button and you should be able to update with one click. If you want do download and install from scratch, please obtain it from the download area. You can use the same activation code. Consult the manual if you have forgotten how to install.

Note: the automatic update feature does not update templates – and there a number of new templates in this version – but you can get them by downloading the zip file for 2.2 from the download page.

Here are the new additions to ProAlbum-Designer:

1. You can now change a number of Preference settings before you pick a template (see right). This includes the album type, the template folder, the spread’s background color and border width and color for all the images. These settings are remembered, making it easy to keep a consistent style for your album.
2. In Bridge, there is now a menu option under Tools called “Update spread(s)“. When selecting one or more spreads and choosing “Update spread(s)”, each spread is opened and all the images are updated by re-loading the JPEG file again. This feature only works on spreads created with version 2.1.3 or later. If a JPEG file has gone missing, you will be asked for its new location. Rather than overwriting the spreads, “Update spread(s)” will save the new spreads in a subfolder called Updated-date-time. If you wish, you can now design an album with small, unretouched JPEGs and later update all the spreads when you have overwritten the small JPEGs with highres, retouched  versions.

This is a default setting in Bridge, but if you have problems getting template suggestions it could be because Bridge doesn’t show pixel dimensions. Here is how you turn it on: go into Preferences (cmd-K or ctrl-K) and select Thumbnails. Make sure Show Dimensions is ticked, then press OK.

ProAlbum-Designer version 2.1.4 is now available, for the moment only in English. Swedish and German version should follow soon. Please obtain it from the download area. You can use the same activation code. Consult the manual if you have forgotten how to install.

The big news in this version is the ability to update to new versions without re-installing. After installing this version, you should be able to click the “About…” button and, if there is a new version, you will be asked if you would like to update. If so, ProAlbum-Designer downloads and installs the new version by itself!

Note that major updates in the future, e.g., going from 2.1 to 3.0, will require a regular download and installation as described in the manual.

These are other additions and bug fixes:

• Fixed a few broken templates and added a few more.
• Templates are filled in the order selected in Bridge. If you are viewing files in Bridge chronologically, images will be added in chronological order. Of course, the orientation of holes must still be obeyed but if there are, say, three vertical holes, they should be filled so that the first image falls into the first hole, and so on. The ordering amongst holes is similar to how words are read in a book: holes on the left side appear before ones on the right side; holes above another hole appear before and holes to the left appear before a hole on the right.
• Images are added to a spread slightly faster.
• CheckDPI no longer reports template holes that are not covered by their images. Instead, these warnings are issued when a spread is saved. Currently, there seems to be an occasional problem with Template-43 which is a full bleed horizontal hole: a warning is issued although everythings looks fine.
• Photoshop (psd) files are now handled properly. There is still a problem with JPEG files coming out of a camera where auto-rotate has been turned off, i.e., where the image has not been rotated but just marked so in the EXIF information. I will be looking into this.
• With the recent introduction of CS5.5, Adobe changed the installation folder names to confuse everyone. With this new version, we hope to better handle upcoming folder names chosen by Adobe.

There is a minor problem with template 26: if you add a border around the largest hole, it will also draw a border through the middle. Please download http://pixbookdesign.com/upload/Template-26-HSSSSSS-Y.psd until the next version is out.

The next version will also fix a problem regarding warnings about photos not being large enough for their templates when thick borders are used. If you get this warning when saving your spread and you can’t see any misaligned images you can ignore the warning for now.

There is currently a small bug in ProAlbum-Designer concerning the “Make Template icon” tool in Bridge.

If you use it, please make sure that you have selected pixels as your unit in Photoshop (see below). This bug should be fixed in the next release.