Lumapix FotoFusion 3.6
www.lumapix.com

Reviewed by Maureen Shannon, NJPCUG

FotoFusion is no ordinary piece of software. It is an application that turns your photos into stunning artwork. Most software is just a downloaded file or a CD with files and support. This application has a whole community of dedicated users to help you learn how to get the most out of it! If you walk into a room and meet one other person who is using this software, you have an instant friend. It seems all who discover it and use it, react to it the same way. We love it…we are addicted to it, we cannot get enough of it!  It has an incredible following that I knew nothing about until someone introduced me to FotoFusion and now I return the favor by introducing you to it. I will warn you now, it’s not only a great application, it’s also so addictive you can’t stop creating layout after layout.

 Our photos are very personal, the have memories of family and friends, times long gone, places we have been, and our new of experiences. Many emotions come into play as we look at our photos. We want a way to display what we feel when we see them.  I can remember from childhood my father kept photo albums with handwritten captions under each photo he took. He also kept scrapbooks of things he collected from his travels when he was in the service during wartime. Everything special he collected he preserved for all of us to see later on.  A photo is the purest form of art….it is life exactly as we see it.

Because photos evoke so many types of feelings, we design with our emotions when we make layouts or albums using our digital photos. Each photos represents something or we wouldn’t have taken it or saved it for the future. FotoFusion has taken creating layouts of our photos to an extremely professional level, offering many options. If you find something you think would improve it, their technical people are listening and often it’s found in the next build. Updates are released all the time. It has the ability to auto-update or you can download and install it manually.

 Whether we are expressing artistic abilities or having fun with family photos, we can’t help but become totally involved in the process.  FotoFusion offers us the next step in what to do with your digital photos. I have seen many types of scrapbooking software but nothing drew me in like this one does. The availability of extra artwork either for free or purchase helps you to personalize each design to a degree that adds even more of that special touch you are trying to create. Each time someone posts a new idea or layout online, I want to try it. Beauty, artistic expression and creativity have found a new home….it’s called FotoFusion.

Have you tried regular scrapbooking? It can be very fulfilling to turn your precious photos in the books decorated with all types of special enhancements. BUT….yes, it’s a big but, it’s expensive, it requires so many tools, special papers, all those little goodies that decorate the pages, you need albums, you need a giant workspace, special pens……the list goes on and on. You practically need a room just to store all the stuff in. And if you aren’t very crafty or can’t locate the tons of equipment needed, the output isn’t what you expect it to be. I know…I have bags of special scissors, papers, elements, pens, embossers, eyelets and the special hammer I need to put them on the pages, I have tons of stuff and not half of what is needed to make a really beautiful scrapbook. I gave up! I’m very creative but it simply overwhelmed me. I couldn’t deal with it. I can deal with the computer. I can handle the graphics and the things I need to make my special photos into beautiful layouts. If I’m stuck for an idea, I send out and email and the people in the group help me. FotoFusion is the perfect answer to “What do I do with my photos now that I’ve taken them?”

Digital photography has taken the art of photography to heights no one could have imagined. The latest digital cameras are incredible and they have created a need for software that will enable you be do more professional artistic designs with your photos. FotoFustion’s layout possibilities are only limited by your imagination. The average collage software does little more than a few nice arrangements and that’s about it. FotoFusion has so much depth to it that as you discover what it’s capable of you can’t stop dreaming up new  layout designs.  It’s professional without out being difficult.

The community is filled with people so talented that they can’t wait to share their work with you and encourage you when you get stuck or need a little help if you run into something you don’t understand. Rarely have I seen a group so willing to reach out and help each other with no other objective but to share and help.  The following this software has is incredible. That alone speaks volumes. If something isn’t good, it isn’t going to be used or accepted. We are no longer unsophisticated computer users, we know what we want. We are as professional in our work as many “real” professionals and proud of it. There are a number of on-line stores that sell excellent kits for creating the themes along with smaller elements, word arts, and accessories. It doesn’t stop there. They have forums and galleries to post your designs, on-line “crops” to participate in where you can design a layout using a particular kit offered for that crop meeting and then it’s yours to keep. I participated in my first one just recently and emailed and had a reply from my favorite designer! There were people participating in the crop from all over the world. I chatted with a woman in Norway while waiting for the crop to begin. It’s so mind blowing to fathom how many people are hooked on digital scrapbooking.

FotoFusion is multi-featured… you can bring in your photos in through it, choose the layout style, set up your background, mask photos for special effects and add text and elements that will dress up any arrangement you can imagine. It lets you change the border color of an image or remove, add overlays of word art or other design elements.

It has many editable attributes and is nearly a self-sufficient image editor too. It’s fairly simple to understand and you can be using it quite proficiently after only a short time. At first glance, you see it has many features, as you explore it you realize why it is a favorite of so many home and professional users. It offers you many tools to design outstanding collage arrangements. Collages can be created in a variety of styles: auto collage, free-form collage, from templates,  sparse autocollage, or auto jumble of the images.  Besides the templates that come with FotoFusion, there are many more available in the community that is found through their web site. You will also find an unbelievable amount of free kits, masks, and elements to enhance your layouts. If you are looking for a certain style of kit or theme, there are excellent ones for sale in the online stores. I have links to some of them in the “Links” section of my Graphics SIG. I have purchased kits from several of these online stores and have been delighted with all of them. The free ones are also fantastic.

Once you have opened up FotoFusion, selected your collage layout and size, and added the images you want to work with, you can begin to build the design. Each part of the design can be edited to suit the idea you envision. The background can be plain, a texture, or a photo….it can also have its attributes adjusted such as using the opacity slider to make it more transparent, it can be blurred, reduced to black and white, or a combination of adjustments. Similar adjustments can be made to any photos that are in the layout. You can also change the color of the borders, remove the borders, make all the borders the same color. The possibilities are endless!

Multiple tabs across the top open up the creative section, the organizational section, a place to share, publish, process, go to the community, and print. Each of these has multiple features that can do anything from watermark the image to send it to an online publisher and so much more. Like an onion, the more you peel away, the more you find!

Running down the side tabs and palettes are drop down menu’s that deal with the layout. The first tab controls the pages. Here you enter how many pages are in the layout, the next tab is where you can add images that can be dragged and dropped into the design, and the last has the settings for the layout. On the setting tab you can enter text on the background or on an image, adjust the color settings and opacity, add masks, and bring in the elements that decorate the pages. If I could add a copy and paste and a regular style crop….I wouldn’t need to open another application to edit anything! I say regular crop because it crops and zooms in by the drag handles and boxes that surround an image when selected. Resizing and dragging as well as moving forward and back, are also included in the features.

Who’s that cover baby? Why, it’s our William! Want to put your family member on the cover a magazine? There’s a logo and elements for nearly any one you like to be found in the free stuff…personal use of course. But what fun to see your child or grandchild on the cover of a well known magazine. Detailed right down to the bar code. The photo’s attributes are all adjustable too..set the opacity, adjust the brightness and contrast, the gamma, the angle, the blur, RGB settings, and set the black and white or sepia tones. Imagine this cover shot blown up into a nice picture or poster. Are you starting to see what I mean by how marvelous this software is.  The photo of William has a matte over it to create the oval with the feathered edges. Tell me that photo isn’t priceless! The expression on his face is cover shot worthy to me.

Why would you invest in a good camera and not buy software that has the capabilities that the professional designers demand? Professional software no longer means only a photographer can use it, anyone with the desire to create can use professional software. It’s not exclusive to someone in the business! This software meets the needs of the professional and delights the creativity of the home user or hobbyist. We no longer have to accept lesser quality applications to work with.  We demand the best and we can now get it.

You can also create your layouts and then publish them. Have them made  into prints or books. I made a memory book of William’s first year of life. Now I am making others. One for his first birthday and others as Christmas gifts. I found an on-line service that prints soft or hardcover books. I made a test book in a softcover format. It cost me less than $15 dollars including extra pages that I added and I had the printed book in my hands in just about a weeks time. Books can be printed on both sides of the page or on a single side. You pick the design options you prefer. The paper quality was excellent and the photos turned out great. All I had to do was upload the photos, choose the style of book I wanted, select a cover shot, and that was it. Many of these labs even offer to color correct or do other corrections as an option.

Lumapix’s FotoFusion is available in 3 versions. It comes in Standard, Professional, and Studio. My suggestion is to go for the Professional at least. You most likely won’t need the highest end version but the Pro’s always have the best features and will give you the most options for your money.  If you have a digital camera, you need FotoFusion! The Standard version lists for $39.95, the Professional is $89.95, and the Studio version is $299.95

When I recommend something, you know that I mean it and believe me, this is one you don’t want to pass by if you are avidly involved in taking photos and want a fantastic output for them. You cannot miss with this product!

I am hopelessly addicted to digital scrapbooking with FotoFusion now that I have discovered it. I find myself doing layout after layout and trying new designs every time I sit down at the computer. Because so many design themes are available, I have infinite possibilities!

For a complete chart of version options visit the LumaPix web site at: http://www.lumapix.com/pages/products/VersionDifferences.shtml