Online Digital Photographic Processing

Dublin and Cambridge. 12 January 2007. – The personal, coffee table style photo book is rapidly developing into a very popular photo print product and is about to overtake the traditional 10x15 cm / 6”x4” prints as the most common photographic printed output. Rarely has the development of a consumer product progressed as quickly. FotoInsight, a leading Internet photo service launched photo books from an online facility with limited editing features one year ago. Today the company FotoInsight is introducing a revolution in photo book software – a time saving fade-proof record of precious memories for print. It allows novice and inexperienced users to layout their digital images in full colour double page spread, move, crop and edit pictures to any size and add text freely within the photo book, on the cover and on the book spine.

FotoInsight’s Managing Director Klaas Brumann comments: “Our customer’s expectations have been growing rapidly. We have decided to provide photo books only through our software, which we is compact download. Our free software provides a photos book draft within three minutes. To the astonishment of most, it looks just like a professionally laid out coffee table style photo book.” As photo books can be made with up to 98 pages, which can take in excess of 500 images the software also helps to improve the online upload to the photo book production facilities used by FotoInsight. Andy White, Internet Sales Manager at FotoInsight's production partner Standard Photographic Ltd states: "We are extremely proud to launch this exciting new project with FotoInsight in Ireland and other countries. The photo book is far and above anything else on the market. This is a major step forward for both companies."

With the launch of the photo book software FotoInsight broadens its photobook range. It now starts with photo booklets (from €7.95) and offers linen cover as well as full colour soft and hardcover options in roughly A4 size or squared, all in all 64 different sizes and shapes. All photo books (square and A4) are available with an editable full picture soft or hard cover or with a linen cover and a very durable channel bind. Channel bind covers use a revolutionary spine forming one of the strongest binds available.



The Photo Book Software

The software for the photo book starts with an easy to use assistant. According to FotoInsight the assistant provides a photo book draft layout within 3 minutes, already with a professional look. This helps to create a printed photo album with hundreds of images quickly. Such layouts can still be fully edited; adding pictures one by one or complete folders, a time saving option. The application provides graphic images for backgrounds; nicer though it seems to use own pictures as a background of a page or a full double page spread.



Instead of using the assistant to create a layout, pages can also be designed individually. This allows rotating and skewing images freely. Any picture can be spread across the page or double page from edge to edge, set on its own or as a background. For example land scape and panorama pictures look great across two A4 pages.



FotoInsight also sets a narrow white line around pictures in the book to set them apart from photographic backgrounds, just as usual in professionally edited coffee table style photobooks. The software provides a useful image editor, to edit individual images. It includes tools to move freely, rotate and label images and to adjust brightness, contrast or saturation. The editor in the software also covers red eye removal and automatic contrast adjustment; plus an undo function. It comes handy that the edited images can be saved as a jpeg.



When saving the photo book project the CeWe Photo Book software presented by Fotoinsight offers a different approach. Instead of embedding the image files into a lay-out file (as would happen with a pdf-file for example) the software creates a sub-folder where all images are copied into as jpegs. This has the advantage that each individual photo can be post edited with any digital imaging software. It also allows to batch process these images with other applications.



In the age of the digital camera and camera phones people snap away happily taking lots of pictures to remember their special events. However generally these digital images languish on computer hard drives and the personal memory fades as to who, why, where and what the pictures were about. This is why recently photo albums have seen a revival. FotoInsight have combined the digital age with the growing interest in printed photo albums and taken this to the next step with the Photo Book – bringing all kinds of new layout tools and making it easier and cheaper to create a  memorybook with friends and family. According to FotoInsight it doesn’t only print photographs in high quality, but also text is clear, sharp and easy to read. Great for those who like to add ample text to their images.



Convenience and flexibility

FotoInsight offers an independent online photo service, fully flexible to be used with images from any digital camera. According to FotoInsight’s management the online service offers superior quality at lower costs when compared to inkjet printing. "Quality is our priority. All materials we use are subject to extensive testing and are guaranteed by their manufacturers to last 100 years. This guarantee extends to photo printing on real photographic paper as well as to the CeWe Photo Books", emphasises Dr. Rolf Hollander, CEO of FotoInsight's production partner and Europe's largest photo finisher.

FotoInsight offers an extensive array of award-winning photo print and photographic gift items for the consumer, business, photography, and graphic arts markets. From Cambridge, Mr Brumann comments: “Photographic memories must never fade. Our technology is smarter, providing long lasting Memory Books in superior quality.” The professional production process keeps costs low, so that FotoInsight can offer printed photo albums starting with the 14x13cm photo booklets for only €7.95 - plus €4.99 for postage in Ireland, the UK and most other European countries. Top of the range of 64 models are the 22x30cm photo books with up to 98 pages. FotoInsight offers a volume discount when ordering 20 or more photo books of the same format and size.

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Contact information
FotoInsight Ltd.
Cambridge, CB4 1ZP, UK
Skype fotoinside
Tel. +44 8700 114911
pr (at) fotoinsight.com 

Labels: baby book, double page spread pictures, frameless, photo books, photobook, printed photo album, text on book spine, Wedding memory book