Family Album Creator

Family Albums and More!

A Review of Family Album Creator

by Brenda Prefling

I have noticed in craft stores, and card stores a new interest in photo albums. These are not just your common everyday type of photo album either. They have art work, borders, and themes galore. It is a real work of art nowadays to create a family photo album. So along comes this program, Family Album Creator, so you can now build photojournal albums on the computer. These are journals with photos, clip art, videos, home videos, and sound effects added.

This program starts off with a tour, where a nice sounding person talks you through each aspect of the program. She begins by explaining each part of the desktop view, and onto starting a new album. She goes page by page explaining how to utilize each tool available. The tour is a good way to get started and to be able to see what sorts of ideas you can use to enhance your album. It is a very simple point and click interface, with very simple instructions. There are a lot of areas to click on, and tools to use to build the album. You would need to have some time to sit and look at each area carefully, to figure out what you would want to use and how to use it.

You can choose three different ways to create your album. There is the template choice that includes baby, wedding, and vacation. These have customized pages already prepared and you insert your personal information. Then there is the custom album choice. This is also with baby, wedding, and vacation, but you have the freedom to design your own pages. The last choice is the personal album. In this choice you create your own album from scratch, including the theme.

There are categories for the chapters such as courtship, engagement, planning, ceremony, honeymoon in the Wedding album section. You may also organize your chapters by Graphic View, Category View, and Date View. It helps you to organize your thoughts, and helps in laying out the order of the chapters. Then you can pick out pictures from the clip art library or video clips from the video library. You can use a screen capture program to capture clips from your own home videos, or use scanned photographs to add where ever you choose. In the Personal album section they also have a section called Memory Starters. These are worksheets for you to plan future chapters on so if something pops into your head for a chapter, you can refer back to that idea.

A very nice feature is the wall safe. If the album is a masterpiece in the making, and you do not want anyone else to be able to look at it, then you can store it in the wall safe and protect it with a password. Or if it is just a private album for your eyes only, the wall safe is a place to store it, where no one can peek. Just do not forget your password, or you will not be able to peek either!!

If you should suffer from writer’s block in a chapter there is help for you in this program!! There is a lightbulb icon called the Inspirator. When you click the button little ideas are presented to help jog your own idea button. You can then add the Inspirator article to your album, and then add more of your own thoughts to that idea also.

Then next you can go to the Family Album Creator’s Media Library to add photographs, videos, sounds and clip art. There are plenty of these to choose from. I clicked through the video clips and they are really fun and interesting. A lot of them are little news clips from way back when, and they were fun to watch. You just search through the choices, find one you like and then when you click on it, it appears on your album page.

You are able to print your album in its entirety or chapter or page. Of course, the video clips and sounds would not be on the printed version. That is one part of this program that I just do not quite get. Really the only way to fully enjoy the album is to view it on a computer. You can save it to a floppy disc to give to others. They would have to have a computer that runs Microsoft Windows, and you would have to have some information about your friend’s computer when transferring the album to a floppy. Or, you can save the album to your hard drive and give it to your friend by modem. I am just not sure if this is really a way that most people would enjoy looking at a family album.

You may also save your album as a screen saver for your computer, or you can share your album on the World Wide Web as a Web Page. There are good instructions in the Help menu on the program to do either of these.

To really make an interesting, fun album on this program it would take a lot of time and patience. If you enjoy working on the computer, and are looking for more creative things to do than just play games, this could be a fun project for you. You could make many albums with different themes for each family member and store them on the bookshelf in the program. When friends or family come over instead of having them watch old slides or home movies, you can plop them down in front of the computer and let them view your family albums!!!

Multimedia Cafe Scorecard

Product:	Family Album Creator
Company:	Creative Wonders PO Box 9017 Redwood City, CA 94063-9017 E-Mail: cwsupport@cwonders.com
Cost:	$39.95

System Requirements:

IBM:
Double Speed CD-ROM drive, 486, 8MB RAM,
12.5 MB (minimum) or 23 MB (full installation) free hard disk space,
256 color SVGA, DOS 5.0 or higher,
and Windows 3.1 or Windows 95, Mouse.

OPTIONAL:
Sound card and speakers, scanner,
digital camera, microphone, video capture card.

Breakdown:

Entertainment Value 4
Educational Value 3
Concept 4
Depth 4
Interface 5

Overall Score: