Given my steep learning curve, I wanted to share these three tips to streamline your online photo book-making experience.
1) Organize your book before uploading pictures
You have choices when it comes to the size and shape of your photo book.
Before you order, consider the number of pictures you want to include and envision how you might like the photographic story to unfold. Those two decisions will help you choose how many pages you need in your book.
The photo book I put together was from a family trip to Ireland.
Organizing by days made the most sense for documenting our adventure.
Our vacation totaled 18 days. The book has 40 pages. Some days were more interesting than others so I alloted more space to those.
I also made pages for activities that took up more than one day. If you've ever visited Dublin, you know the doors are fabulous and need to be photographed. As seen in the photo above, I gave a two-page spread to doors.
You may find giving each person several pages of their own works better for you. Or you may want to arrange by color or place.
2) Choose a template or design your own
My photo book was bought and fulfilled through Photobook Worldwide.
They have an awesome array of templates that allow you to easily drop and drag your images into delightful arrangements. Backgrounds are adjustable, typefaces are plentiful and photos can be cropped.
I, of course, took advantage of very few of the automated features.
In my typical, usually troublesome "I got this!" mindset and my inexperience, I spent far more time on creating my book than necessary. Having developed my own random approach, I will add, Photobook Worldwide's software is highly adaptable and I couldn't be happier with my finished product.
BONUS TIP: Place all your photos on the pages before adding text.
Photobook Worldwide does not allow you to group elements so if you need to move things around you must do it one piece at a time. So, if you have text that goes with a particular photo, you'll be moving and aligning those elements separately every time you move one.
3) Scale matters
Opened, the finished size of my book was 11 inches tall by 16 inches wide.
Meaning each leaf is 11 inches tall and 8 inches wide.
However, viewing the layout on my computer monitor, a page spread (the two pages that face each other) was only 4 inches by 6 inches.
When the font size was 12 points, which is easy to read on paper, I couldn't read it on my screen. Therefore I opted for 22 point instead, so I could read what I was writing.
So.
Well.
Printed, let's just say, my parents will be able to read their book without glasses.
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