With my standard wedding package I provide all of my clients with their images in full resolution, on a USB flash drive so they can print/ share as many of their wedding photographs as they like. I understand that not every photographer will do this, and sometimes there may be additional charge for this service, but I choose to work this way. I do provide storybook albums by Graphistudio, and my clients are able to view these before the big day, but it is in no way compulsory to purchase an album from me, and of course as weddings are so expensive many clients delay the purchase of a storybook until after the wedding.
The photographs of your special day will look much better when presented in an album….not only because of poor screen resolution when viewing the images on a laptop/ tablet/ TV etc, but because the individual layout of the pages contributes to the overall flow of the design. For example, I might place a close up of the detail on the wedding dress as a background image when I am displaying images relating to the bridal preparations or details, or I might use an image of the sky on your wedding day as a top faded border when showing outside photographs. In general, I use alike colours on the double spreads, and distinctive parts of the day are kept together, so that the book really does flow to tell a story. Another important factor is that when I send you your images they will all be in either landscape or portrait orientation (so think of a standard rectangular photograph), but when I am designing a book I can use different shapes and layouts, so a sunset scene might work best as a long letterbox type image, or maybe the details photos will work best as 6 squares on a page, rather than their original rectangles. This flexibility can also make the images themselves appear better, as I can leave out unwanted items from the original image by changing the shape of the “frame” into which they are placed.