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On the Flip side
A new software makes managing your digital
photos a joy.
By Melvin Seah, October 10, 2001
FlipAlbum 4.0 and FlipAlbum Suite 4.0
$49.95 and $79.95 respectively
Available at Funan The IT Mall and Sim Lim Square
If you have amassed megabytes of digital photos and are looking
for an interesting way to store and present them, try FlipAlbum 4.0.
FlipAlbum lets you organise and present your digital photos with
your PC but with a twist. It offers the experience of a real photo
album, with realistic animated page flipping.
The FlipAlbum interface consists of a menu bar, a row of shortcut
buttons just below it, and a photo album in the middle.
You
can edit, arrange and store your photos in many imaginative
ways using FlipAlbum's in-built tools. |
Although the interface seems intimidating, I was soon using it.
First, I inserted photos into a new album. I found I could either
let FlipAlbum automatically insert all the photos from a folder, or
I could manually drag and drop the ones I wanted.
FlipAlbum automatically generates a thumbnail page, a content
page and even an index at the end of the album. Hyperlinks from
these pages to the actual photos were also created automatically.
That makes it easy to find what you want when viewing the album.
Next, I chose a techno-looking album cover, a nice binder, and
finally, dressed the pages up with a funky border from the clip art
library. Not happy with the default layout created by FlipAlbum, I
started to redo some photos into montages with the built-in editing
tools.
My final touches included adding captions to my photos and an MP3
song to be played as background music during presentation.
Great results
The result was pretty breathtaking. I compiled my first digital
album in less than an hour and showed it to some friends, who were
suitably impressed.
You can create a free account at the FlipAlbum website (http://www.myflipbooks.com/) and upload your
albums there for everyone to view. Simply click on the upload button
on the FlipAlbum interface and follow the simple instructions. For
your friends to view your album online, they'll need FlipAlbum or
FlipViewer, which is free from the website.
Flipalbum Suite 4.0
If you'd rather distribute your albums in a CD to your friends,
you might want to consider the FlipAlbum Suite 4.0. In addition to
all the features of FlipAlbum, this software has an additional
plug-in that lets you export your completed album into a CD.
Tried and tested: Digital album with a difference.
Melvin Seah works in the IT industry.
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