#1: Tell a story

You’ve shot an event, so think chronologically.
Use Memento’s timeline mode to auto-arrange photos into layouts in sequence.
Let your client experience their special day all over again in your album, still pictures in sequence to tell their story.

#2: Less is more

Only use your best photos in your album.
Keep ‘em big and bold – don’t overload pages with a pile of little pictures.
Two or three photos per spread maximized the impact, and let’s your client know why they hired a pro to make them look good.

#3: Keep it simple

Set a style for your entire album and stick to it.
Don’t overembellish, mix color and texture schemes, or apply effects randomly throughout the album.
Use image position to create dynamic layouts – try an off-centered position with large margins.
Negative space frames your photos, not more photos.

#4: Never go out of style

Keep your color scheme classic: black and white or neutral backgrounds and frame borders let your images shine.
Exception to the rule: if the event was a color riot, design to suit the occasion.
Inspire your album by the colours you know your client loves.

#5: Save your style, save time

Once you’ve established your own style, save it.
Set up your own custom styles and palettes, create your own go-to library to make more albums your way.
It makes presenting options to your client a breeze – one click application to get a new perspective on your layouts.

#6: Judge your book by its cover

Many printing companies let you make photo covers now.
Make an emotional impact by using your best portrait, or most dramatic shot. Don’t clutter by retelling the story inside, or offering alternative shots of a portrait session.

#7: Stay organized

Give all your event photos a distinct name – some combo of date and Occasion usually work best.
Keep the images in a single folder, and sort them out in Memento. If you like, use Lightroom ratings to presort.
Easy access saves time and prevents confusion.

#8: Add flexibility to your workflow

Don’t over-process or retouch your photos, and never crop them.
Memento lets you adjust cropping and zoom, then undo those choices without losing any of the image content.
Apply color effects in Memento, rather than reversioning your images in your editing software.
If you do need a little retouching, use Memento’s direct-to-editor feature to fix only the photos that made it into the album, rather than the entire set.

#9: Make it personal

Use text to embellish your book.
Song lyrics, poems, recitations or quotes will add context to the album and bring back even more memories.

#10: Offer alternatives to boost your sales

Memento makes it easy to version your albums.
Add extra pages, offer additional sizes for bridal party gifts, make wall portraits, and other items.
If you don’t need to invest much time, it doesn’t hurt to upsell.

How it works
Quick-click your photos into separate page groupings based on the event’s natural flow – it’s like editing a film of your special event into scenes. Simply show Memento Pro where the splits should happen: fully designed layouts instantly appear, showcasing your photography while recounting the story of your special event.

Invest your time wisely and build albums the smarter way!

How to build a photo album the traditional way

• Spend over an hour sorting your collection of photos: rank them, separate them into folders, rename each file to split up events, etc.
• Import the photos into the software, displaying them by date/time.
• Drag photos onto pages in small groups OR use an autotool to dump photos onto pages strictly by date/time OR use the same old templates you’ve been using for years.
• Spend over an hour rearranging the photos to get proper layouts, moving images from page to page to get the chronology correct and to feature your best images.
• Spend more time customizing your project with background colors, effects, styling on page-by-page basis.
• Spend more time and money to proof/review your project with your client.
• Go back to the drawing board if the client proposes changes or requests a new size.

How to build a photo album efficiently with Memento Pro

• If desired, quickly add image rankings to your photos in your image editor. No sorting or renaming required.
• Add images to your Memento Pro project. If you want, sort them first by ranking to make sure you’re adding the best images to your album.
• Use Timeline Mode to view your images chronologically, then click between photos to divide them into page collections. The page collections will instantly appear in fully-designed layouts. Your best ranked images will automatically appear in more prominent frames.
• If you want, try out new layouts on individual pages using quick layout tools – it’s just one click. Drag single images from one collection to another to break chronology – a new layout will appear on that page.
• Restyle the album with presets. It’s just one click to change one or all pages.
• Use Memento Pro’s proofing/review tools at no extra charge. Get immediate feedback.
• Implement the requested changes in seconds. If you need to resize the project, the layouts will auto-adjust.

Most photo albums are built to tell a story – an event broken down into discrete visual sections on a page-by-page basis. A special event – a wedding, a graduation, a special party – starts at home, moves to one or more venues, and concludes with departing shots. A memorable trip moves from site to site, building little stories at each venue.

When making an album of your memories, you want to preserve the natural chronology of these smaller events. The challenge of creating event-based albums is the process of getting the photos in the right order on the right pages. You could invest hours of time sorting, ranking, renaming and adding photos to – not a rewarding task from a creative or efficiency perspective!

Memento’s Timeline Mode takes the hassle out of the album building process. Your event’s natural chronology of your event are respected, allowing you to build professional quality album layouts in seconds. Just click on your photo collection timeline, and pages appear with your sorted images. It couldn’t be easier. Build more and better product faster, and invest your extra time and income in more rewarding parts of your business.

All your available layout options in one convenient view

It’s easier to make decisions about what looks best for your photos when you see them in place, already in a layout. Instant inspiration is yours in the layout preview window.

Keep the layout preview opened so you can see new photo layout options at a glance. Conveniently, you can move this to a second monitor to maximize your Memento Pro workspace. You can keep sampling layouts until you get it just right. There’s no one-way trips in Memento Pro.

Add and edit photos on demand

Powerful image spacing control

Consistency is the key to professional photo album design. Memento Pro lets you build photo albums with consistent margins, printer’s guidelines and inter-image spacing, without limiting your ability to customize your pages.

When you start an album, choose from among preset product sizes that will set your margins, safe and bleed guidelines for all pages. Apply custom margins to the top, bottom, edge and gutter of your pages to achieve a personalized look. Once you apply photos into a layout on your pages, the layouts will respect your margins and guidelines. There’s no need to individually position photos on your page. Measured application of guidelines on all pages ensures ensures consistent results across your pages, avoiding amateurish, haphazard image placement.

Other photo album software may provide grid-style guidelines, but a good layout isn’t based on uniform squares. Memento Pro offers instant on-screen alignment guidelines to help position images and text on your pages. As you move one or more image frames on your canvas, guidelines appear to assist you position them relative to each other and your canvas. You’ll know when images are centered to each other, to their edges, and to the page margins. Images will snap to the bleed, safe, and margins, ensuring that you’ll get the look you need. You’ll be able to position images dead-centre to the page and to each other without effort.

Inter-image spacing controls also let you change the distance between adjacent images. Image and text frames magnetically snap to each other on your Memento Pro canvas. Once images share a common snapline, you can change the spacing between them, then apply a new layout to reset the spacing between them. Multi-select a group of images on your page to resize them as a group – the new arrangement will still respect your inter-image spacing settings.

Using margins creatively will make your photo albums distinct from others. Amateurs overcrowd their pages with images, leaving no room for the individual photos to be contemplated.

Try setting an extra-wide top and/or bottom margin to create a dramatic use of negative space on your pages. Be generous with the amount of empty canvas space left around your images – it will make your best photography stand out more. While a jumble of photos is fun for a page or two in your album, featuring your best photos with ample background around them will bring them the focus they require.

Memento Pro will set your margins consistently across your entire album, but you can still customize your margins on individual pages pages, Any images snapped to their margins will redistribute automatically. Experiment with your layouts by dragging one or more margin line on your page. You may find your own personal style.

The trend towards minimalist photo albums has not wained in the past years. Pro-photographers seek to highlight their imaging skills rather than cluttering their pages with scrapbook-style arrangements. However, an elegant decoration or two applied thematically to your albums can truly make them stand out.

While some picture album software includes a hodge-podge of graphics often sold as add-on packs, Memento Pro includes a select and unique collection of decorations that respond with your styling choices. Located in the Photo Collection area, choose among several dozen classic, elegant embellishments for your pages. Should you apply a new style preset to your page, the decorations will automatically update to your match the color scheme of your page.

What’s included?
A collection of decorative lines will serve as delicate punctuation marks under your pages.
Vintage labels can add rustic appeal to your cover and photo captions.
Lace appliques double for classic wedding ornaments or funkier mandalla style graphics for portraiture work.
Classic flourishes can be used as small corner embellishments or larger canvas-sized decorations.
Half-tones provide modern graphic flair to your pages.
Overlays add depth and sparkle over and behind your images.

The Memento Pro advantage

You could use a tool requiring an advanced degree in design, spending hours building albums on a page-by-page basis, wasting your valuable time to create photo products for your customers instead of generating more business behind the camera. Or you could build albums and other products in a powerful Photoshop alternative that offers all the benefits of non-destructive editing without compromising your creative choices.

Memento Pro offers a non-destructive resolution-independent environment so your final product is always the quality you require. Low-resolution proof documents and high-resolution finalized renders are created immediately from a single project file. You can resize an entire album in one click, out of ratio – all the images and text follow the new album dimensions.
Images can be dynamically resized and recropped on your pages without ever affecting the source image file. Use the same image multiple times in the same project, applying it as a background image with filtered effects in one instance, splitting it into a mosaic in another. You can always undo any changes you’ve made, resetting the photo to full-frame without effects. Don’t waste time in your image editing software making size and color variations, when you can pan, zoom, and crop images on the fly. Create taylor-made pages without the fuss!
Personalize your photos without needing to undo previous changes. Apply the image filter effects similar to those found in Photoshop. Blend photos into their backgrounds with gradient edges and background filters. Apply borders with different edge effects in a click or two. No more sifting through buried menu items or launching images into separate tools – all the options are at your fingertips, with what-you-see-is-what-you-get effects applied directly on your canvas.
Text frames resize and update dynamically in this powerful alternative to Photoshop. Simply drag the frame handles to resize and reshape text frames to fit your layout. You’ll be able to make creative page titles and captions with little effort. There’s no more layers to copy or deep menu options to expose. Click on any item on your canvas, all the options available to it are highlighted. Copy/paste to recycle the frame settings with new content without dealing with layers. You can use Memento’s style presets to keep your look consistent – no more per-menu presets to deal with.

Better than PSD Templates
Some “pros” recycle a set of psd templates to speed up album creation. Wouldn’t you rather create personalized products for your clients based on their unique needs?  Templates set image position in stone, and recustomizing them to fit your images takes more time than building from scratch. Photo orientation, the number of images you need to place on a page, and photo cropping is all predetermined.  Furthermore, Photoshop template packs can cost a pretty penny.

Wouldn’t you rather have a system that let your immediate needs dictate your options?  Don’t be caught in a time warp, using the same cookie-cutter templates over and over again. Memento Pro lets you edit your layouts dynamically: apply new layouts instantly until you find the one that best suits your photos. You don’t need to worry about losing resolution or re-importing photos into your software because they were cropped or flattened with effects on them. Build an instant collage, or automatically set your best images to be featured. Simple changes don’t require a fresh start. You’ll keep track of which images you’ve used and the number of times they appear in your project. A Photoshop template can’t track image use across a multi-page album project.

Choose Memento Pro – you’ll get the results you need with minimal investment in training, with no add-on purchases.

Customize styling in one click

Memento Pro album design software gives you an array of power tools to get your images onto pages in full layouts in the quickest possible manner. If you want to go that extra step to customize your album design, Memento makes that easy too.

Style presets bundle attribute sets for image and text frames, background colors and shapes into one quick-click application. You can restyle a single page or an entire book, setting photos to black & white or sepia, changing frame border widths and colors, updating text fonts and sizes, and applying a background color. Simply click on the style swatch of your choice, and watch your page automatically update to create a new look.

In addition to the presets that are packaged in Memento Pro, you can create your own custom style gallery. Create a custom collection of special looks for your albums, suitable for the type of photography and events you cover. Specialize in country or beach weddings?  Create a style set that complements the natural colors and rustic themes. Do you cover teen events, such as proms, Bar Mitzva and quinceañeras? Make your own electric or candy-colored palettes to match these dance parties. Are you a family portrait photographer renown for creating a special look? Extend your personal touch into the photo products you offer by coordinating your albums to your photography, backgrounds and themes. No other album design software can be tailored to your workflow in such a manner.

The Style editor lets you to designate color attributes for all the components on your pages. Set up separate styling for feature image frames and regular image frames – make your best images pop with custom border colors, widths, corners and opacity. Choose a default color for style-sensitive decorations – watch these smart graphics update automatically if you change your page styling. Text frames can be set to show different fonts, sizes and other attributes for titles, sub-titles and regular text. Choose a default color for your background as well.

Set up a five-color palette so you can get to your colors of choice immediately for fine-tuning individual elements on your page. You can make your albums your own very quickly and consistently when you aren’t hunting for colors.
You’ll always get a consistent look across every page – no more manually setting individual editors to make multiple presents, or keeping a notepad next to your workspace to remind you of your project preferences.

Create a slideshow of your best images packaged in a custom layout to send to your prospective clients or share on social media.
Update your project as often as you like with new photos and layouts so your newest and best work is featured. Simply reupload and share the new link
Slideshows present your work as 150 DPI resolution jpg renders of your spreads, uploaded directly to the cloud
Once published, you’ll receive an email with the custom link to the project. The uploads last for 90 days and are free with your Memento subscription.
They can be viewed on any browser on any device.
The auto-transition frame rate is customisable and you can add a custom background color to complement your designs.

Present your portraiture clientele with a custom link to their private slideshow. They’ll share it with their friends and family, so be sure to add your studio logo to your pages for an added marketing boost.
Take your event photography game to a new level: make a quick project using Memento’s suite of book-building autotools on site, upload it as a slideshow to the cloud to share immediately or even project it at the event. Share the memories as they are happening!

Visit our Knowledge Base to find out how to create Slideshows
Visit our Knowledge Base to find out how to create a quick photo Slideshow

When you want to share your work with current or prospective clients without soliciting their direct feedback, web albums are the way to go.
Create a web album of your best work to share on social media or on your website.
Web albums present your work as 150 DPI resolution jpg renders uploaded to the cloud.
Set a custom background color to complement your designs. Once published, you’ll receive an email with the custom link to the project.
Follow the link to flip through the pages on any browser on any device. The uploads last for 90 days and are free with your Memento subscription.
Update your project as often as you like with new photos and layouts so your newest and best work is featured. Just update the link to keep the presentation fresh.

Not sure what images will make it into the album? Why waste time color correcting or fine-tune editing the originals, when you can make the changes after your project has been laid out?
Memento Pro allows you to export your albums directly to psd format.
Once rendered, you can open the layouts in Photoshop where you will find every element on your page saved to a separate selectable layer.
You can target individual photos for retouching easily.
PSD export is also useful for album manufacturers requiring this format, or photo retouching services offering color correction services. Collect your rendered psd files into a zip compressed package and transmit them to the end recipient. You won’t need to bother packaging up individual image files and fonts.

Most pages in your photo album require a structured formal presentation to highlight your photography and the subject matter. However, a page or two of more randomized, casual shots can add some fun to your albums. AutoCollage and AutoJumble allow you to make such pages in seconds.

AutoCollage combined with AutoJumble is a great way to use up all those “extra” images. Candid moments from an event – dining, dancing, social mixers – can be quickly added to a single side, juxaposed with more formal presentation of a featured photo on the other.

Simply add a collection of photos to your page – we suggest seven or more for best effect. Select the AutoCollage tool then apply a collage to either side or the entire spread (respecting or ignoring the gutter). Your images will be positioned in a best-fit grouping within your margins. If you don’t care for the results, reapply the collage to re-randomize it. All elements on the page can be tweaked – pan or zoom individual images, or swap image positions manually. Play with the spacing tool as well, to create a collage with zero-inset or even overlapped images.

AutoCollages can be resized as a group. Try resizing and repositioning a group to a region on your page. You can even rotate the group for added effect.

Add more whimsy to your album page with the AutoJumble tool. Your images will be randomly but realistically rotated as if they were casually thrown on your page. Apply the effect on a per side or one both sides of your page. Control the amount of rotation variance as well, to achieve a more subtle or more dramatic effect.

Visit our Knowledge Base to find out more about AutoCollage

Visit our Knowledge Base to find out more about AutoJumble

Let’s start with a simple fact: sample books sell your services. Don’t miss out on new clients who aren’t familiar with your work.

Have a sample album or two available for consultations with your potential clients. Show them a high-value printed version of your work – you’ll increase the chances of being booked by demonstrating end results. Once booked, these customers are more likely to choose a value-added package including prints and albums. Show it to them, they’ll want it – trust us!

if you are starting out, the cost of sample albums may seem high, but marketing efforts will pay for themselves in the short term. Clients may not know what they want until they see it.

Provide them with package choices – larger and smaller books, hard cover and soft cover. Suggest a classic formal album for the couple, and smaller consumer-quality keepsake books for their bridal party. They’ll love the personalized touch you can offer them.

Here are a few more tips & tricks…

• You don’t have to build a full 40+ page album from a single wedding. Use only your best showcase photos to make a demo album with 20 or so pages.
• Demonstrate stylistic diversity, so your couple can pick what suits their tastes. Let them know you are build this product specifically for them.
• Get sample albums from more than one manufacturer if possible. Present cover options – metal, acrylic, leather etc., but highlight the more expensive version for a better perceived value.
• Bigger is better: get larger albums. Bigger impact equals more sales.
  Present smaller companion albums as add-ons for bridal party gifts.
• Keep the layouts simple – showcase your photography skills. It’s not a scrapbook or a demonstration of photo layout effects.
• Use timeless colors and styles you are proud to show as your own. If the customer wants something different, they may suggest it, but don’t encourage them to choose a style you don’t appreciate.
• When creating more than one album, be sure to make each unique. Choose different wedding shoots or at least different locations. If you shoot weddings from multiple cultural traditions, show off your adaptability. If the client keeps seeing the same photos, same poses, and same venues over and over, they might get suspicious that you may not be flexible to their needs.
• Albums are not only for weddings. Add engagement sessions, family portraits, seniors, babies, bar mitvahs and quinceanera to the mix. Maybe your couple is there to book a wedding today, but other milestones will come, so suggesting a long-term relationship early in the game can only help future bookings.

Help your bride and groom give the gift of memory to the people who helped create their very special day.
Bridal party gift albums are a breeze when you use Memento Pro. You’ve invested your time in designing the couple’s high end album, so why not repurpose for it for reprinting in smaller or soft cover version thank you gifts?

Open your wedding album, and save it under a new name.
Under Settings, update your album product.  Ideally keep your choice to a similar aspect ratio – keep square format albums square, or landscape books at the same orientation.
Once you’ve applied the new album settings, Memento Pro will automatically fit your layouts into the new format.

Do a quick check to make sure the new smaller format has adapted perfectly – is text still at a 11-12 point legible size? Do photos on collage-style pages seem a little too small now?
You can also customize the album if you want – maybe add a few more candid-style shots of the bridesmaids, or add more pics of mom & dad for the parents.

Re-render your project, and submit it to your printing company of choice. It’s that easy – twice the amount of sellable product for the smallest of time investments.

Build more albums, better with Memento Pro.

Photo albums come in all shapes and sizes. To better accommodate longer or narrower album formats, Memento Pro has added new layouts to suit these styles.
You’ll find a better range of options when applying layouts to books with a 3:1 landscape ratio, or a 1:2 portrait ratio. Your photos will shine in layouts specifically built for a-typical album styles.
imilarly, squarer pages with large top-bottom or side margins will benefit from these new format layouts. Photos will fit better within the layout region – no more elongated image frames that need to be re-proportioned.

Make a statement without any effort! Memento Pro has just added new, exciting decorations to its ever-growing collection.
As always, these smart decorations will auto-adjust to your album’s style. Change the color scheme, and the decorations will follow suit.

Check out the new overlays, including ever-popular bokeh effects to give your layous extra (lens) flare and sparkle.
You’ll find more border lines in a hand-drawn sketch style, perfect for rustic weddings or family albums.
For a more whimsical or edgy look, we’ve added an extensive collection of paint splatter and brush stroke effects.

Give your clients the personalization they crave with Memento Pro.

For an extra special service touch, offer your clients a proof book.
Proof books are a great way help your clients with the photo selection process. They can confidently choose photos for their album or to order prints.

Be sure to offer them an array of your very BEST photos from their session – don’t overwhelm them with choice.

1. Select the Proof book tile on the Projects tab
2. Choose the album dimensions then add photos to the project’s collection
3. In the Book Editor, click on the Wizard Icon to launch the Proof Book wizard.
4. First, add the title to be displayed at the top of every page, and the text to watermark your photos, if desired. These options can be left blank if you want to keep it simple.
5. Select the number of photos to display per page.
6. Choose to show file names under each image. We recommend this option – you’ll be able to talk to your client more easily if you’ve named the photos.
7. Decide how the images will be flown in the book. Choose Mixed orientation to combine portrait and landscape images on the same page. Or choose to group the portrait  images first, followed by landscape…or vice versa.
8. Last, choose the sorting options – by File date/Time or File name.
9. Apply a style to simply give your proofbook a custom look
10. Once you’ve completed the book, you can use the Memento Review App to send the project to your client. For a more detailed view, render a pdf file, and send it to them by email or file transfer service. If you really want to impress, get the book printed.

My name is Marios Iosifides and I am a wedding and portrait photographer based in Cyprus.

I used to outsource all my album design needs to freelancers. This workflow was time consuming and sometimes my needs and requirements would not be met: I had to send the work back and forth a couple of times for changes before agreeing on the final design. This process was taking too much time with deadlines running and customers waiting.

Memento Pro really helped to change all that, and reduce the design time to the bare minimum. I am now designing albums by myself in a super-efficient, creative and fun process with no prior experience or training whatsoever.

There is no such thing as not meeting my style and needs anymore, as Memento Pro offers multiple tools to get to my ideal end result. The whole design process adds approximately 1 to 2 hours maximum to my workflow, which is really exciting. The time saving started even from the very first time I ever used the software!

I am a perfectionist who no longer has outsource anything since everything goes through me. This make makes me happy and my clients even happier.

Memento Pro is highly recommended to anyone who is looking to start designing their own albums. Truthfully, this product is what I’ve been missing from my professional arsenal, hands down!

Design alternative layouts with extra or featured images. Encourage your clients to add a few extra pages to the album they’ve already purchased: make collage pages of unused images, or special featured featured image double-spreads. Maybe that 20 page album turns into 30 or 40 pages…

No album in their chosen package? Generate one in seconds using the album wizard. Show them just-how-AMAZING a keepsake they are missing.
If they’ve purchased a single album, suggest companion albums for their family and bridal party. Do a quick album redesign to focus on the bridesmaids or groomsmen, or retool your pages to create a special family-focused album. Resize to fit a smaller, less expensive album. They won’t be able to resist such a personalized gift opportunity.

Present a collage of candid shots, group dancing, outtakes and bloopers – the photos that may normally get left behind. Your clients will be delighted, and you’ll have one more frameable print to sell for a casual, personal approach to their big day. Or make a simple layout of their portrait session and present it as a large-print item. You will be surprised how the perceived value of a large print is much higher that regular printed photos. It’s not just photos, it’s art!