You have a growing collection of digital pictures, so
wouldn't it be neat if you could show them in an album,
as you would your regular prints? That's the main
premise behind FlipAlbum, an application that lets you
place images in virtual album pages, then flip through
them on your computer screen at the click of a mouse
button.
The albums you create are 3D visual representations
of a photo album, with a cover, table of contents, and
album pages. Clicking on the left or right "page" turns
it over, or flips it (hence the name), with an animated
sequence that looks like you are flipping through the
pages of an actual book.
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The album also permits quick access to the table of
contents, or specific pages. Pages can be bookmarked,
and a slideshow feature lets you sit back and view
images while the software automatically turns the pages.
Albums can be posted to various Internet sites,
including one managed by eBook Systems.
A FlipBook viewer is needed, but a basic one can be
downloaded for free from the FlipBook site.
With the Suite and Professional editions, a CD
creation utility is also included. You need to use
separate CD recording software to actually burn the CD,
but the FlipBook utility assembles the images, a
FlipBook viewer, and an autorun program, so anyone can
just pop the disc you've created into the CD drive of a
Windows-based computer and view the album.
Additional features of the Professional version are
aimed at commercial applications. You can prevent people
from printing images from the CD, something that
photographers might want to implement: they could send
images to prospective clients on spec and still protect
their images against unauthorized use. The CD can also
be set to "expire" after a certain date.
The Professional edition also allows commercial
distribution of FlipBooks, which means the program could
be used to create and distribute product catalogues, for
example.
FlipAlbums can be customized using "themes" that
consist of coordinated covers and interior pages of
various designs. Some themes are included for common
events (weddings, graduation, vacation, and birthdays,
for example) and you can buy more themes or learn how to
create your own on the FlipAlbum community site.
Building a basic album is very simple: select a
suitable theme, open a folder of images, and FlipAlbum
automatically creates thumbnails, table of contents,
index, and as many pages as necessary to show the
images, with one photo per page. You can change themes
at any time, and add images from other folders by
selecting each folder in turn, then picking the images
you want to import.
The program places small thumbnail images on the
first pages of the album, followed by the table of
contents. It automatically generates an index that is
placed on the last pages of the album. You can change
the order of the images by either dragging a thumbnail
or a table of contents listing to a new position.
The thumbnails, table of contents listings, index,
and images themselves are linked, so a change to one
updates the others--for example, reversing the order of
two thumbnails causes the order of the actual images to
change, with the contents and index orders updated as
well.
You can also add annotations to the page, as well as
multimedia components such as video or music clips, or a
voice comment.
The program supports a number of still image
(including GIF, TIFF, JPEG, and BMP), motion (AVI), and
sound (WAV and MP3) file formats.
The program allows you some flexibility to manipulate
the layout--for example, resizing images and placing
multiples of them on the page--in much the same way
you'd lay out a page using desktop publishing software.
However, we found this confuses the table of contents
and index. If pictures X and Y were on separate pages
and you move them to the same page, the contents page
doesn't have the intelligence to adjust for this: the
new page with the two images retains the name of one of
the original images, while the reference to the second
image stays with the original, now-blank page.
The program uses the existing name of the image files
to create the album, so if you want meaningful labels
like "Frank and Jean," rather than DSC00034, it's best
to rename the image files before importing them into
FlipAlbum.
Also, while the program will resize the images to fit
onto the pages, it doesn't actually alter the file size.
If you populate your album with a lot of
high-resolution images, the FlipAlbum will become
unnecessarily bloated. We found that reducing images to
640x480 kept the albums small, while providing more than
enough quality for onscreen viewing.
FlipAlbum includes a competent image editor that
allows you to correct minor image defects like red-eye,
alter brightness and contrast, and add effects.
Overall, FlipAlbum makes very attractive virtual
albums. The program is easy for anyone to use, but also
adds some advanced features and allows customizations
that make it a good tool for commercial applications,
too. This one will definitely stay on my hard drive for
a while.
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