The photo book supplier albumfactory from now on offers to its customers a revolutionary new tool for the Internet-based design of photo books and similar products: the Online Designer. Most of the functions which hitherto had been executed on the user’s computer, have been moved to a central server. This results in the big advantage that memory-consuming programs need no more to be loaded down and to be installed. The handling is utmost simple: The user selects the desired product type – with regard to cover, binding and size – and then immediately starts with his design work. Another advantage is that the latest version of the designer is always present on the server so that the user does not care about updating of his design tool.

Because the Online Designer is based on an Internet browser and therefore is independent of the user’s hardware and operating system, it not only works with Windows PCs but also with other computers such as Macintosh under OS9.

At the beginning of 2006 the albumfactory astonished everybody with a new type of photo book: using the brand SNAPSHOT, a photo book will now be offered in 20 x 15 cm format (approx. DIN A 5 landscape) with a steel-ring binding to ease turning the pages. A transparent synthetic-cover provides durable protection and that certain "Chic".

A 30-page SNAPSHOT from albumfactory costs only £ 13.90. To illustrate how inexpensive this variety is, when digital photo prints are produced in a high-quality digital printing process, look at this simple calculation: a 60-page SNAPSHOT, with space for 240 pictures in standard size 10 x 7.5 cm, costs£ 25.90– in other words 11 pence per picture. albumfactory gains ground on the cheapest suppliers of classical single prints through this.