Assemble your photo scrapbook with FlipAlbum

Assemble your photo scrapbook with FlipAlbum - 06/12/02



Wednesday, June 12, 2002

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Assemble your photo scrapbook with FlipAlbum

By Tom Gromak / The Detroit News

FlipAlbum's unique interface allows you to build digital scrapbooks with the look and feel of the real thing.
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   Forget the magnetic plastic pages, picture holders and double sided tape. I've seen the future of the photo album, and it's eBook Systems' FlipAlbum and FlipAlbum Pro.
   These inexpensive and easy-to-use software programs ($49.95 to $149.95) do what dozens of others try: They give you the look and feel of the timeless act of assembling a scrapbook of your favorite photographs. But they do it inside your PC, either with pictures collected from the Web, scanned from the shoebox in your closet, or taken with your nifty new digital camera. And they do it with drag-and-drop simplicity.
   I've tried a handful of other digital scrapbooks, and found most to be somewhat kludgy to operate, especially if your ultimate goal is to share the pictures over the Web. Most rely on HTML - hypertext mark-up language - the code that's used to create Web pages, including the one you're reading. HTML is tough to master, and even tougher for WSYWIG software packages that try to create complex layouts while hiding the complexity of the underlying code. They're even tougher to use if you want to go back later and insert a picture into your project or take one out.
   FlipAlbum instead relies on a proprietary scheme for recreating pictures, layouts, text and sounds, all of which can be displayed by any user with a Web browser and a small plug-in. Instead of a simple slideshow design, like the ones we use here at Detnews.com, the FlipAlbum formatted book resembles the real thing, with decorative covers, pages that really appear to flip, and even the simulated sound of the rustling of paper.
   Assembling the books is easy. You can select a folder full of images for automatic import, or you simply open a new project and drag your pictures onto a thumbnail page on the inside of the front cover. Each time you drag a new picture in, the software automatically puts it on a new page. Once your book is full, you can go back and annotate pictures with text, sounds, and additional graphics, and you can change the background colors of the pages. The only thing missing is the smell of mucilage and magic markers.
   From a series of buttons along the top of the screen, you can print your album onto dead trees, or upload to your own server or to a free server operated by the folks at FlipAlbum.com. You can share with friends via the Web or e-mail with the free FlipViewer browser plug-in.
   The software does fall short in one area, however: Its controls aren't always intuitive, making complex edits and designs difficult at first. I'm notorious for leaving the manual in the bottom of the box and attempting to figure out software on my own, and it took ages to discover how to resize the boxes in which annotated text is placed (it takes very precise mouse placement over the lower right corner of the text box to get the resize arrows).
   The same goes for changing the default "Flip Album" name on the album cover. Windows95 and all its successors have trained a generation of PC users that a right-click on an object will bring up a context menu of meaningful actions that can be performed on that object. But you don't get cover options by right clicking on the cover. They're tucked away on the program's menu bar under options/more options. Once there, you can select jpg-formatted images for the front and back covers and can even select binder styles to simulate old wire-ringed notebooks. But it turns out that the "Flip Album" text is part of the default cover image and can't be changed unless you're good with Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro.
   Still, I found the software fun to use, and infinitely more satisfying than other digital photo albums. If you're a snapshot pack rat it's likely you will, too.

Tom Gromak can be reached at tgromak@detnews.com