Zno Designer and Proofer – Streamline Your Album Design Workflow with the Cloud-Based Software

Introduction to Zno Designer

Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Welcome to part two of my look at Zno. If you are a photographer looking to elevate your presentation and delivery game, imagine a world where your creative vision meets the sleek finish of professional albums and galleries. All with the ease of cloud based technology. In the bustling world of photography, your choice of tools can make or break the client experience.

Scott Wyden Kivowitz: And today, we’re diving into another game changer for professionals who are serious about their craft. Zno Designer. This is their album design and album proofing.

Sponsorship Disclosure and Zno’s Role in the Industry

Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Now, this video is sponsored by Zno, but they have no say whatsoever in the words that I share in the video that I share. They have absolutely no say about what I talk about their product, all the words you hear and my thoughts

Scott Wyden Kivowitz: all of my own with [00:01:00] no influence by Zno. But thank you Zno for sponsoring this video. I mentioned this in my previous video about Zno Gallery, but it is not just another name in the photography industry. Zno is a multi threat.

Scott Wyden Kivowitz: They are a print lab. and a software company, and they are redefining how photographers design their albums and share their work.

Scott Wyden Kivowitz: With a direct comparison to industry giants, Zno Designer emerges not just as a competitor, but as an innovator. When it comes to albums, Zno Designer

Scott Wyden Kivowitz: offers a polished user friendly alternative to those other solutions. With the added bonus of turning clicks into prints with its integrated Store and integration with their other software products like Zno gallery. For example. We can create a gallery and then build an album Based on that gallery, which you are about to see in this video.

Scott Wyden Kivowitz: [00:02:00] So what sets Zno apart in a market flooded with options? Stay tuned as we explore the nuances that make Zno Designer not just a tool, but a partner in your photography business. Promising to add value with every photo turned into a story.

Exploring Zno Designer’s Features

Scott Wyden Kivowitz: So let’s head over to the computer and have a look at Zno Designer.

Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Okay, we are back. And in the last video, last article I shared about Zno’s gallery solution, their gallery software. Today, we’re going to talk about their album designer feature, which has an album proofer as part of it, and wall art, cards, and you can do other print products, but it all starts from an album rather than a gallery.

Scott Wyden Kivowitz: So, I’m already logged in. I’m already logged into Zno.

Creating a New Album Project

Scott Wyden Kivowitz: I’m going to go to the workspace and now instead of gallery, we’re going to start with a new [00:03:00] project, a new album project, so I’m going to hit create a new project and right away you’re presented with what album company are you going to use. Because this is Zno, they have their own print lab. We’re gonna do this with Zno’s album features, right? We’re gonna do it with their album prints. And now the categories, we’re gonna choose photo albums and books, but you can see you can add in a variety of things including USB, DVD, do people even use DVD anymore?

Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Proofing products, business and branding, a wide variety. We’re gonna do photo albums and books. And the product we’re going to do, I want to do a lay flat. lay flats are so beautiful.

Designing the Album Cover

Scott Wyden Kivowitz: And then we’re going to do the cover. So I am a big fan of linen. I also like leather, but there’s the leatherette. Let’s see, it’s going to update in a second with that.

Scott Wyden Kivowitz: I’m assuming the preview is going to change in a moment.

Scott Wyden Kivowitz: I was thinking.[00:04:00]

Troubleshooting Design Issues

Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Actually seems like it’s kind of stuck. We’re going to refresh that. I don’t know what’s going on there. Let’s try this again. lay flat. And this time I’ll go to linen. That seems to go. And then we will go with a design collection, UV, foil and emboss, I want foil and emboss, and then the album size, we’re going to do a nice big 11 by 14.

Scott Wyden Kivowitz: I don’t want, I want it to be a landscape, so 11 by 14 that way, and then we’ll call this Mary N. Charlie, and we’ll hit start.

Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Okay, so now we’ve got to add photos. So I’m going to skip this. We’re going to add photos. And I’m going to do it from a Zno Gallery. So here’s the cool part. This is why I started with Zno Gallery as my first video and article. If you didn’t start with [00:05:00] Zno Gallery, you could start from a computer.

Scott Wyden Kivowitz: You could start with a history projects and you can start with the retoucher, but I am just doing it from a Zno gallery and we’re going to choose the church photos, the bride getting ready photos, and the groomsmen photos, 177 photos selected, and I’m going to hit add photos. You can choose how you want to, how you want to group it, so I mean this all from the same day, so we’re just going to do it like that, and yeah, we’re going to, let’s see the previews are all loading, and let’s check out the settings here, so default color background is white, you can change the fonts of what they have built in,

Scott Wyden Kivowitz: I can get too creative with this, it’s kind of scary how creative you can get. I like Zen, it’s kind of cool. And the border, you can do all that, apply to existing. Okay, now, one of the things that I love about the album [00:06:00] design software that I’ve used before, the one that I typically use, but Again, this is, I’m not going to mention their name.

Scott Wyden Kivowitz: This is a, this is a video sponsored by Zno. So I’m only going to be talking about what Zno can do. But one of the nice things about the other one that I have used is that I can do this auto design feature. Now I know how that one works. I’m not sure how this one works. I’m assuming I have my assumptions, but we’re going to see in a second, I’m going to just hit autofill.

Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Your book currently does not have enough pages for your images. Running autofill will add 70 more pages. Yes, I want to continue. Let’s see what happens. It’s going to automatically design the album for me now. Oh, this is just the cover. Oh, that’ll do it. That explains a lot, actually. Okay, so if I want to, I can design the cover now. So let’s just, let’s focus on the cover and then we’ll look at the autofill, what was autofilled in a second. So, we got weddings. Yeah, let me reset that.

Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Ooh, that’s pretty. That’s pretty. Okay, let’s see if I do this one. [00:07:00] That’s a little, a little more boring. That’s, that’s nice. Okay, so I can go in here, I can change this to Charlie and Mary.

Scott Wyden Kivowitz: wE can change the colors. So I can actually change the actual front. Oh, that’s so pretty.

Scott Wyden Kivowitz: I wonder if I can find a color that matches there.

Scott Wyden Kivowitz: No, they don’t have the color, but it’s okay.

Scott Wyden Kivowitz: These are nice. Oh, that’s such a nice green. Beautiful. Okay, we’re gonna go with that. Although these could be changed as well. So I could go back into this and I can change the color of the embossing as well, but I’m gonna leave that. Okay,[00:08:00]

Scott Wyden Kivowitz: there’s also laser engraving if I want to add that. All right, let’s go to the linings. The linings, you’ve got cotton paper, translucent paper, linen, and you can change the colors as well. So I’m gonna leave the cotton paper here. But can I change it? I think I have to, oh there it goes, it did change.

Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Yeah, I like the white. Okay, um, you can add in more debossing and UV printing here. Edit page, all right. So here is what it did right out of the gate. It’s doing the first photo

Scott Wyden Kivowitz: and you can see what it did for the next page. Oh, I see.

Exploring Layout Options

Scott Wyden Kivowitz: This is a smart layout. These are, these are the layouts. Got it. Okay. There’s a lot of layout choices. I can go to the next page and we can see preview the pages. So here’s page three and four. Now to me, I might consider actually cropping and doing something more [00:09:00] like this, because this is a lay flat.

Scott Wyden Kivowitz: So I can click in here. I can drag. We want to undo that. I actually want to I would do something like this. That is more what I would do. And then here’s smart layout. So what it did is actually use every single photo to just, that’s what I was kind of assuming it was going to do, but it is doing smart layout choices based on the photos, which is nice.

Scott Wyden Kivowitz: I just, I assumed it was going to do every single photo, which is exactly what it did. Which is not the end of the world. Just, you just have to know that going into things. So here’s page seven and eight, nine and 10. So he can, he can see it’s telling a story. It’s, it’s doing what it’s supposed to be doing.

Scott Wyden Kivowitz: I would choose one of these. I wouldn’t do both. I’d probably remove this one from it, which again, this is me doing, cause I had, I wasn’t sure going into this that it was going to do every single photo, [00:10:00] even though I did say add all the photos cause some soft word. Imagen Editing, Imagen Community, evergeнаком, Imagen The Design Team, Imagen Editing, Imagen The Foundation, Imagen Etsy, Imagen Reddit, www.

Scott Wyden Kivowitz: imagen. com, www. imagenworkshop. idai

Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Here, I would never put this in the middle because look what it did. It split it in between the two of them. So this is not, this one’s not ideal. One thing that is kind of cool though let’s see, yeah, if I wanted to, I could make that black and white. so You can do that right in here. You can also do sepia if you want.

Scott Wyden Kivowitz: You could add borders to an image if you want other effects, gradient, so I can add a shadow if I wanted to. So, some of it. Thank you. You know just to make it stand out a little more or whatever if you wanted to you can mess around with with that sort of thing Gradient, I don’t know why you Yeah, I [00:11:00] probably wouldn’t do that on this.

Scott Wyden Kivowitz: But anyway, so you get the idea you just things you can do On on the photos to to make them stand out a little more from the other but again I wouldn’t I wouldn’t do this one here. I would probably Just completely remove this one. I probably do something else instead Okay going to the next photo, next pages.

Scott Wyden Kivowitz: So this is kind of cool. Again, I wouldn’t put that in the middle because that just, not so good. Yeah, lay flats, you’re less likely to see the seam as if it was a different type of album, but at the same time you don’t want a face to go right through the, the lay flat. Okay, so, this gives an idea of how this works, right?

Scott Wyden Kivowitz: You can go through each page. You can change the layout. You can navigate the pages. I could, I could go into something like this if I want. So many different choices of what you can do for all the photos, right? And on all the layouts. You can also add your own layout if you want. You can make [00:12:00] a page that’s just text if you want.

Scott Wyden Kivowitz: There’s such a wide range of things you can do. You could show the bleed lines. Right, so I can see where the bleeds would be but this is a lay flat and it’s a full full bleed you know so your your safety is it within the red dots but at the same time you should be okay. You could clear it, you could add a frame if you want, add a portrait frame, add a landscape frame, change your background, add text, things like that.

Scott Wyden Kivowitz: You could add comments. Imagen so this is where you start proofing, which we’ll get to that as well and basically we go through all that. So that’s the edit page, the arrange page.

Using the Arrange Pages Feature

Scott Wyden Kivowitz: If you want to rearrange things, you could do that. I’m assuming. Let’s see what happens. Can I just drag and drop? Yes, I can.

Scott Wyden Kivowitz: So there we go. I can just take one photo from one section if I wanted to and rearrange it into a different lots of things that you can do. As far as that, I can delete a photo. It looks like real easily and look at that auto layout. Very, very nice. I love, I love when things work that seamless. [00:13:00] So, I might actually say I would start with Arrange Pages.

Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Arrange Pages before I even get to Edit Pages. I’d probably reverse these because I feel like this gives you more of an overview of the story versus Edit Page where you dial in all of your settings for each page. So, to me, I would reverse the two up here in this workflow of how you edit the album. All right.

Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Select the theme.

Adding Themes and Decorations

Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Okay, so if I wanted to, I can make a whole theme to the actual book with these different intricate things throughout it, so I can go in, I can add in some themed pages, which to me, to me, this kind of thing is a little more tacky for a wedding, but it could be good for senior photos. It could be good for family photos.

Scott Wyden Kivowitz: As you can see, like this looks really nice for a graduation. I wouldn’t do it for a wedding. Me. But everybody has their own thing, right? Okay, [00:14:00] um, so here’s decoration, so you can add those sort of decorative parts if you want. So I could add in a background to here, and now I’ve got this sort of marbled background.

Scott Wyden Kivowitz: If I wanted to, I could add in bricks. This is gonna look really tacky, but I can add bricks in here. I can go in, I can say, let’s change the bricks to, what is this? Like a wood background. I Can add some leaves, so you can make it pretty tacky if you really want to, but you don’t have to and yeah, okay, so I’ve got this album now that’s fully designed, and I think we’re good to go.

Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Now, how do I go from here? Okay, so I can download the specs,

Scott Wyden Kivowitz: that’s interesting, it’s giving me a PSD of the specs so I guess if I wanted to design something manually, Design service, you can actually hire them, , to design your album for you, which I’m not going to do and then we can [00:15:00] proof it once the proof URL is generated. Okay, so client email, so we’re going to add myself, , and I will add myself, copy,

Scott Wyden Kivowitz: send email. Okay, so I should have an email now. Let’s check that out.

Scott Wyden Kivowitz: I didn’t get the email for some reason, so we’re just going to use the link that it gave me, I’m going to type in test, you can see a logo example, so this can be customized somewhere in here, we’ll have to figure out where that can be customized, let’s make sure we save this. Alright, so now I can go and I can see, here’s the proofer, move to one side, not good In middle,

Scott Wyden Kivowitz: add comment. Here’s a comment added. [00:16:00] Love this. Add the comment. So you can see that the client can add in their comments. Remove this one, and remove this one. So the client, you know, the client can add their comments or if you, if you’re using a an album editor, for example, they can add their comments or you could add their comments if they’re editing for you, whatever it might be, you can work collaboratively.

Scott Wyden Kivowitz: And we’re saving all comments, send comments. So now the comments have been sent. So I should now have in all the comments in here. So if I go back to proof, show comments, aha. Okay, so let’s go to edit page, pages. Okay, so it’s saying, here’s the, here’s the note, move it off to [00:17:00] the side. So let’s do a different layout for this, right? Let’s do one, two, three, This layout or let’s do, I don’t want it to be cropped. I guess it could be cropped.

Scott Wyden Kivowitz: That’s not bad. Okay, that one’s done. Now we go to the next page. I think there was another comment. Love this. Another comment. So now they’re saying remove this one. So we’re going to remove this photo. This photo, gone. This photo, gone. Let’s go back to layout, smart layout. Remove this photo. Gone. We can remove this one.

Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Gone. Just because. There we go. Let’s just make it more concise. There we go. Perfect. Okay. I think that was all the comments. Okay, so it is all done. We can hide the comments.

Using the Retouch Photos Feature

Scott Wyden Kivowitz: So there is the retouch photos feature here as well. [00:18:00] I’m assuming this uses Zno’s retoucher feature. Yeah, I believe it does. I’m going to show this just because, why not?

Scott Wyden Kivowitz: I wasn’t asked to even look at this, but I’m going to just show what the capabilities are. So, they have these AI presets in here. Auto Color, go Vivid, go Auto Details, Auto Classic, Beautify. I actually like that a lot, actually. And now we got Smoother Skin. We could do faces, full body, we don’t need the full body.

Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Shine removal, let’s see what it, yeah, doesn’t really need it. Face contouring, we don’t really need that. Blemish removal, why not. Eyes, we don’t need to enlarge the eyes. Dark circles, eye enhance, we can remove all of those, we don’t really need those. Teeth whitening, sure, why not. And, yeah, let’s see, basic.

Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Basic beauty okay so we got different tabs. Exposure is good… skin color. [00:19:00] Okay. Advanced. Neutral density. That’s interesting.

Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Okay. So we’re just going to hit retouch. So this photo should have been retouched. Quick look at Zno’s retoucher feature,

Scott Wyden Kivowitz: original… Updated. Let’s close that. Okay. Now… We don’t need to clone, so we’ve got the share button where we can share the URL, anonymous, we can even embed this on our own website if we want, that’s a really nice feature. The preview is a nice, large distraction free preview of the, of the album. No notes will be visible, just the album in its beautiful layout.

Scott Wyden Kivowitz: You can save, [00:20:00] and of course, Once the client approves the album. Okay, so let’s go back to here. Let’s refresh as the client. I have to figure out where we change the logo when it comes to the Let’s see, I bet I’m gonna save that and go back to here Ah, logo. okay, so I just added our logo for Zno photography. Now if I refresh this, in theory, this should say Zno photography. If this is done correctly, yay, it does! Okay, so, there was a password for test, we’re going to submit that, go back into here, and now we’re going to approve the album. Okay, album is approved.

Finalizing and Ordering the Album

Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Let’s close that. Now let’s order. There we go. Okay, so we’ve got it all in here. We can see there’s some empty photo frames. That’s okay. That’s just whatever. It’s not gonna let me order because I have some empty photos. I didn’t adjust it. Let’s do [00:21:00] autofix, autofix.

Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Now let’s check.

Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Okay. Now I’m not going to hit approve because I think that it starts the ordering process when I do this. aCtually, let’s see what happens. What happens?

Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Ah, okay, good. So this album would cost me 563. I would probably charge the client over 1000 for it. With a coupon here as well. Add copy and save 10%. That’s kind of cool. You can add a parent album. Add a gift box. Nice. You can add a gift box to it. Edit the gift box, probably put a logo on it. Oh, you can add a photo to it. So you can edit that as well. That is really nice. Let’s see. So if I wanted to do

Scott Wyden Kivowitz: everybody who was at the church that day,

Scott Wyden Kivowitz: we’ve got a big group photo.[00:22:00]

Scott Wyden Kivowitz: A different color. Okay. Custom logo, studio logo. we’ve got a big group photo.

Scott Wyden Kivowitz: A different color. Okay. Custom logo, studio logo.

Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Add UV print, cover logo, got it, page, can you do a photo? Okay, you can’t do a photo, add custom text,

Scott Wyden Kivowitz: nice, save, again this order button, similar to the gallery, it’s not an order button, it’s an add to cart button, that should be adjusted because it’s confusing, um, alright, add parent album. So you can do a mini album [00:23:00] of the same thing. That is cool, without having to do another layout. You can just click this and have a mini album made for parents.

Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Arrange Pages. Okay, I’m just going to hit order because I don’t need to change anything, but otherwise it’s the same exact thing, just smaller. So that’s really cool. Approve.

Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Okay, so now we’ve got one parent album. We’ve got with… 90 pages, okay… So it’s less pages. Oh, there’s plus additional pages… So it did add more… So we’ve got a parent album, we’ve got the book, and we’ve got the lay flat beautiful 11 by 14 album. Then you go to Shipping, you can apply coupon codes… You can see there’s a coupon code, you go to Shipping order your album…

Scott Wyden Kivowitz: And then you can deliver it to your client. Alright. So… That is Zno Designer for albums.[00:24:00] thing, just smaller. So that’s really cool. Approve.

Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Okay, so now we’ve got one parent album. We’ve got with… 90 pages, okay… So it’s less pages. Oh, there’s plus additional pages… So it did add more… So we’ve got a parent album, we’ve got the book, and we’ve got the lay flat beautiful 11 by 14 album. Then you go to Shipping, you can apply coupon codes… You can see there’s a coupon code, you go to Shipping order your album…

Scott Wyden Kivowitz: And then you can deliver it to your client. Alright. So… That is Zno Designer for albums.

Review and Conclusion

Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Boy, oh boy, Zno Designer and Zno Gallery together. You want to talk about a powerhouse. Zno Gallery, as you saw in the previous video, allowed us to easily create a gallery and start from the pre existing Lightroom workflow that we are already used to. You can take it to the [00:25:00] next level when it comes to album design by using Zno Designer.

Scott Wyden Kivowitz: And it’s impressive. Zno Designer They’ve got a lot of features that do rival the competition in the album design space. The proving solution works extremely well. And the ordering system, with it’s little bit of quirks, it also works very well. Now, I have not personally tried their prints, I have not personally tried the printing quality of their albums, but I’ve seen them at trade shows, and they look good.

Scott Wyden Kivowitz: NOw, with that said, here is a recap of what sets Zno Designer apart from the others. Well, Zno is entirely cloud based, which means that their album design system is also cloud based. No software required. That means you can design, proof, and order an album without… You or your client downloading any software. That’s beautiful. You can pull images [00:26:00] from your computer, from a folder, wherever, or you can pull them from a Zno gallery, directly into Zno Designer. You can switch between page layouts and drag and drop, and quickly remove or rearrange and add background and all these other things easily

Scott Wyden Kivowitz: in their system, and of course, it’s a highly competitive pricing model to the competition because Zno is the software and the print lab solution. No third party prints required, but that is an option if you prefer to use another company to print the albums. So, thank you again Zno for sponsoring this video.

Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Am I switching to Zno for my album design? Maybe. I still have some thinking to do, but call me impressed.