J A Designer Software (JAD)

J A Designer Software (JAD) Norma Walton

This is a computer aided design tool, developed specifically for the Jorgensen range of albums. The program is similar to others from Spicer Halfield, Albums Australia and Qeensberry, but this is the only one I have used so far. The software can be used to design a reportage style layout with multi aperture mats or a magazine style album with full page prints, however it doesn't include templates for the magazine layouts.

www.jorgensen.com.au

The software can be used to design every detail from cover to cover, print an album summary with pictures and even order on line. Images and mats are dragged onto the page, giving you an instant visual overview. The trial download gives you 96 ppi resolution images, which works very well on my rather old PC., but the program is very memory hungry. Jorgensen recommend running it on Windows 98, NT, 2000 & XP or Mac OS X 10.0 with 300Mb, 500Mb RAM and a minimum of 250Mb free space. The download is 7-12 Mb and does take some time to download and install. I have had a few problems loading the program but this is probably due to not enough RAM on my PC. The software can be used for the complete range of albums Download

Once you have downloaded and opened the program select "new album" from the task bar, this opens a dialogue box where you select your album and enter the number of pages (2 sides per page)

Select "album" again and "properties" , from this dialogue box you can design your album, choosing cover, pages and mat colours etc. The cover chosen here is for the Pro-bound Panoramic album.

"Edit cover inlay"allows you to design the inlay for your cover and save the design for other albums. You can also use one of the mat designs for the cover.

One very useful feature is the "print album summary" which gives you a printout of the album features and a thumbnail print for reference.

Several cover styles are available for most albums, with a few specific to certain albums. Most of the images shown here and below are for the Art Album

this is an example of a finished
metal covered album

Before you can add images to your album you need
to load them into the program

Here you can set categories such as close-up, groups, portraits etc. It can take some time for all the images to load into the program (Images need to be at roughly the size you want to use) A good time for that cup of coffee you needed! A new feature is the greying of used images..very useful when dealing with a large number of similar images.

Once the images are loaded you simply drag and drop. Select the thumbnail view of the album and drag an image from the store into the inlay position. If you are using the program in its default setting you will see the mat selection, album view, page view, control panel and the image store.

These albums have a very wide range of mats to choose from. The standard mats can be used for more traditional presentations as well as reportage, the computer cut mats offer very creative multi aperture designs or you can design your own custom mats.

"Mats" on the task bar allows you to select mat colours and to create or edit existing custom mats you can choose from multi aperture or almost full page

page view panel

Its a very simple procedure to just drag the mats you want onto the blank pages and then drag the images in. Once the mats are in position you can move them around or change them. You can change the order of pages and images at will until you get just the design you want. New double page spreads or single pages can be added This program really speeds up the design of an album

Page view also shows the print and aperture size

A number of the albums allow the use of "flip pages"

a small icon in the corner of the thumbnail allows you to drop an image onto both sides of the page.

It is also a very simple procedure to add keylines to an image. This illustration shows how a page would print as a composite image.. The program automatically allows an overlap beneath the mat.

One of the most useful features of the program is the ability to print out an album overview or to export the thumbnails as a file. The main drawback of the printout (under "album-print summary with pictures") is that the thumbnails are very small and do not work well as a story board, but it does have other uses.

"Image-export images" gives several options. There is the option to print one or all images. "Export Composite Mat Prints" is a new feature which enables you to print all the images for a page on one sheet

"Export Mat Images" enables you to save a proof exactly as the page will appear with the mats at a lower resolution than the printable image

When Album overview is checked it produces a contact sheet or storyboard file which can be printed or published to CD or the web. This is ideal for showing to your clients as well as for your own records and reference

Quick order allows you to send your order direct by e-mail (if you purchase the full copy)

What the program does lack is the ability to publish your completed album to CD or the web for your clients to view. Another slight niggle is that it doesn't automatically calculate your mats for the order. The quick order dialogue box does give forms to select the number of each mat you want, this is where the printable overview page becomes essential, it numbers each mat used so that you can easily identify which mats to order. You can easily save these forms by pressing the "screen print" button in Windows

Overall a very efficient design tool which just needs a little adjusting to make it a first class design tool. I shall certainly be using it in the future. At approx. £150 it isn't too expensive and you can, if you want to use it for design purposes only just use the demo version which can be downloaded from the Jorgensen site. The only suppliers in the UK are SWPM in Paignton , the advantage of using Jorgensen over Queensberry is that they do carry a certain amount of stock and it is useful to have a UK contact if things go wrong.