@Gary-Howell

Welcome to the Magix user to user forums.

Answers to your questions:

1. PM creates links to the photos, it does not copy them.
2. No
3. In the proprietary Magix Database.
4. No. These "albums" exist only as database files and these are not accessible outside the program.

HTH

Jeff
Forum Moderator

Can the albums be exported to create a separate file?

@Gary-Howell

Hi

. . . . Can the albums be exported to create a separate file? . . . .

That depends on what you mean and what you want to do with it?

John EB

@Gary-Howell

Hi

. . . . Can the albums be exported to create a separate file? . . . .

That depends on what you mean and what you want to do with it?

John EB

My wife and I are going to go through many years of photos, selecting our favorites and putting into albums in the program. Our plan is to then send them off to be printed, grouped as the albums will be, for example "2016" or "Disney 2017". I would like to also save those same collected photos as folders on my computer containing only those photos, viewable outside of the program.

Are these 2 things possible with this program?

@Gary-Howell

Hi

. . . . selecting our favorites and putting into albums in the program. Our plan is to then send them off to be printed, grouped as the albums will be, . . . .

Thanks for the clarification.

Once you have created the album in PM you can right click album name - Save everything to... option to save the album file and copy the images to a selected folder, however the printers will be using their own software and most likely cannot use the album file.

How are you going to specify the layout, size, number of images per page and order of the images for printing?

Have you considered using an online photo album company for creating the printed photo album where you select an album template and add images, titles, captions etc and they then print and send it to you?

John EB

John, Thanks for responding.

The whole process is a developing work in progress. We have thousands of photos from over many years on my computer. My wife wants some to be turned into printed books using an online service, some simply printed to put in traditional albums, and each year's favorites burned to a CD and also available for viewing on my PC (outside of PM).

Will the Burn CD option create discs specific for PM or just a disc containing all of the photos selected to burn?

Will the Export option also create files viewable without PM?

@Gary-Howell

Hi

. . . . Will the Burn CD option create discs specific for PM or just a disc containing all of the photos selected to burn? . . . .

That depends on the disc option you select, select an album then the Burn to cd . . . option and look at the different types of disc you can burn.

PM is not needed to play a disc.

The export option exports the selected album and images in it to another folder specified by you.

HTH

John EB

@Gary-Howell

Hi,

You have a lot of work ahead of you.

Contrary to what Jeff @emmrecs mentioned, the albums are not part of the database and are actually for use outside of PM as well as inside. What Magix refers to as "Album" is a bit of a misnomer. It is actually a compilation of objects, photos, videos and audio files that can be:

1. Exported to create a slideshow. An old version of SlideShow Maker opens to complete the process;
2. Audio can be exported to a wave file;
3. The saved album has the extension .alb that is actually a form of video project that can be opened in most any of the Magix video editors (excluding Vegas products) including Video Pro X (VPX), Movie Edit Pro (MEP), and PhotoStory (PS). You can load the alb file as a project or start a new project and drag and drop the alb file and the objects will show up on the timeline like any other project, most likely with transitions between all video/photo objects. Audio, if any, will be included.

There are probably a couple more features.

The album is not a photo album in a format like an on-line type where you add in photos and text to a template and a book is created that can be printed or exported to pdf.

So, for creating slideshows (a slideshow is usually a video format like mp4), you can compile everything into an album as you are going through the material, rearrange the material in the album, and then either export it by going through the SlideShow Maker, or open it in one of the aforementioned video/photo editing programs. There, you can modify everything, add text, change/delete/add transitions, use effects, add music and narration, etc.

For a print version, I would suggest using Xara Designer Pro X to create either a presentation (web-type) for viewing on a web page or internet browser, or an ebook which is just a pdf document that can be viewed like any pdf file - printed or viewed on a computer.

Xara comes with ebook and presentation templates and many components to facilitate the process. Just modify/change whatever you want, rearrange, duplicate pages and change the photos and text to create an album.

To summarize:

• Use PM to organize photos and videos into categories and albums.
• Add categories to photos/video to quickly get all material for a category - like people, events, places.
• Use albums to compile collections of photos and videos into one album or more as you are going through the material. For example, make albums for say, "Family - the 60's" and "Family - the 70's" etc. Rearrange the material in each album in the order that you want.
• Create an ebook or presentation for each album using Xara, drag and drop the material from the album into the Xara file. Add text, Etc.
• Create a video by opening the alb file in VPX, MEP (Plus or Premium) or PhotoStory. Edit, add titles, narration, maps, etc. Export to MP4 or burn to DVD/BR, put on YouTube or Vimeo.

John CB

@browj2

Hi

Learned something new today re album files in MEP, VPX and Photostory. 👍

John EB

@browj2 @johnebaker

Me too!

Jeff

@johnebaker @emmrecs

Hi John and Jeff,

I've been trying to figure out how I found out about this. I think it was quite by accident, dragging and dropping an alb file onto VPX and it opened.

IIRC, way back when, there was an item called Category or Categories or Database in MEP and one could select a category and everything all files for the category would show up in the Media Pool. I found this useful until it disappeared.

I have created a link to My Photo Albums in VPX, and the alb files show up. Just drag one onto the timeline.

Does this make PM more useful?

John CB

I just created a test album and exported it to another folder on my computer! The photos in the new folder are single .jpg images, copies of the originals. (Insert happy dance!)

@browj2

Hi John

. . . . IIRC, way back when, there was an item called Category or Categories or Database in MEP  . . . .

That is correct - this was when MEP/VPX were using the Firebird SQL Server (pre MEP 2015 IIRC) for data storage while editing, the loading and saving of a project imported/exported that data from/into the project file.

@Gary-Howell

Hi

Thanks for the update.

John EB