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Rangefinder Magazine
March 2004

First Exposure: Flip Album Professional 5.0 by Michael Ayers
It’s Easy, Fun, Fast, and Encrypted

It’s easy, it’s fast, it’s powerful, it’s encrypted, and best of all, it’s fun!

FlipAlbum Professional 5.0 has taken sales at our studio to new heights. Since starting to use the FlipAlbum family of products three years ago, we have created several hundred CDs for presentation and ordering purposes, as well as for the promotion of our portraiture and other photography services.

The FlipAlbum program is quick and versatile; it shows how to create an album step by step with pop-up windows. 5.0 Pro even allows photographers to create a hot link in the lower left corner for access to the studio’s web site!

In its simplicity, FlipAlbum installs quickly on Windows-based machines and has recently become available for MacIntosh users, too. Once the program is booted up, it walks the user through a series of steps before automatically creating a new flip album. The general purpose of FlipAlbum Pro 5.0 is to create a display vehicle for photographs, but this system also allows the user to add movie clips and even audio files or background music. Incidentally, there are a number of FlipAlbum products in this family of programs, but only FlipAlbum Pro 5.0 allows features such as password protection, expiration dates and image encryption. These features are installed for use by professional photographers in an effort to control viewing of photography and allow us to keep our work from being copied without authorization.

My attraction to the 5.0 Pro version began a few years ago because I was looking for program to share my work with my clientele that was easy for me to operate and idiot-proof for the user. All the customer has to do is pop a CD I burned for them into their home computer, and the program starts automatically with an EXE file. Other programs allow photographers to display their pictures, but are not encryptable, require uploading of starter software, and do not look like professional presentation devices.

Special indexes and custom thumb tabs provide quick navigation of all images in a FlipAlbum with just a click. Customers can also look at large amounts of photographs using the table of contents before placing orders with the studio.

That brings me to my favorite feature: the fact that 5.0 Pro actually looks like a wedding album or a proof book! My clients are excited to see this style of format and are already familiar with looking at individual prints inside proof books or albums. Of course, our studio has been proud to be recognized as one of the premiere album builders in the country, so it is a great match to have a computer program that actually looks like an album.

Now for the versatility: 5.0 Pro also gives the consumer many custom options for viewing their images from the CD. My favorite—they can go to the toolbar to convert the entire book into a slide show presentation and allow the whole family to watch all the images. The user may set the slides to change automatically every few seconds or even set up manual advancement of the images using the arrow keys on the keyboard. But the flip album book itself has many unique features including a fully functional pictorial glossary, index, and table of contents, and other features like page numbering, image ID numbers, custom backgrounds, changeable page layouts and special designs for album/book covers.

	Seniors provide a great use for FlipAlbum Professional 5.0 because today’s high school grads are very computer savvy! For the extra cost of a CD and minutes of time, images can be viewed by hundreds of extra prospective seniors!

An option many photographers will use is the ability to post an album to a web site, or to send a complete album through regular email as an attachment. This expands the use of the program well beyond just burning CDs for wedding clients! This creative program also permits the photographer to use the new video CD function so that a special version of a client’s proofs may be viewed on most home DVD players using their regular television instead of a computer!

It’s easy to see why FlipAlbum Professional 5.0 can pay for itself in a short amount of time with regular use. We create a copy for all our wedding couples to show to their relatives and friends, but we also make additional CDs for parents of the couple and special relatives. Occasionally we attach an expiration date or even a limited term of usage to these CDs, which helps family members place orders for finished prints in a timely manner.

But, flip albums aren’t just useful for weddings! Family portrait sessions and senior photography are especially good uses for flip albums, and the best example we’ve ever found for using the 5.0 Pro program is in the area of studio promotion.

For weddings and other special events, the page format can be customized for a beautiful, less institutional appearance. The pages turn forward and backward by clicking on the pages.

When a bride comes into our business to view our albums for the first time she wants to gather as much information as possible, but she is usually in a hurry. So we allow her to view some of our special architectural wedding albums, outline our event pricing and packages, and send her on her way with one of our promotional FlipAlbum CDs. On this CD will be other samples of our finished wedding albums and even a complete wedding from engagement session to reception! I can update these promotional CDs anytime, and it gives our prospective wedding couples a handy tool for completing the interview process and convincing mom and pop it’s worth spending several thousand dollars on wedding photography!

The popularity of these standalone FlipAlbum CDs is overwhelming! We now have clients that come into the studio requesting them and asking for additional copies to show relatives. We offer permanent copies for sale as gifts for grandparents or others who may want a memory of every image we made for an event.

It has changed our way of doing business; it has added more dollars to our profit margin; and it has given more of our life back! FlipAlbum Professional 5.0 is a hit and it’s going to remain our favorite method of displaying our work to the public!

For more information or to purchase a copy visit: www.flipalbum.com/.

A world leader in album design, Michael J. Ayers runs a studio in Lima, Ohio, with wedding clients all over North America. He has received the Honorary Lifetime Achievement Accolade from WPPI and the International Leadership Award at the United Nations. Michael has lectured to tens of thousands of photographers around the world and his work can be viewed at www.TheAyers.com.