This post is the first in a series of How to Make Your Own Digital Photo Book (the Photo Book Girl way!) The series will give you a look at how I create the photo books that I use to write reviews for this site. You’ll get a look at my personal photo book workflow, my top photo book making tips and yes, learn from my mistakes. The goal is to help newbies get started and to share and exchange tips with more advanced photo book users.
Here’s a roadmap of the series. I’ll probably tweak it as we go along, but here’s the plan:
- Photo Book Tools: My Digital Camera Gear and My Computer Lineup
- How to Select and Edit Your Photos for your Photo Book and Photo Book Obstacle #1: “I Have So Many Photos, I Don’t Know Where to Start – Overcoming the Photo Abyss (NEW!)
- How to Make Your Photos Look Better – Edit Your Photos with iPhoto
- Preparing to Make Your Photo Book – How To Edit Your Photos with Photoshop
- How to Find the Best Online Photo Book Printing Company
- What is the Right Resolution or DPI for Photos When Making a Photo Book?
- Top Tips for Making Great Photo Book Templates and Layouts (Photobook America Preview)
- Photo Book Layouts – A Design Tutorial – You Make the Call!
How to Create a Two-Page Spread(most companies have this function built in now so I don’t think I need to do a post on it – Yea!)- The Right Way to Add Text to Your Photo Book & How to Use Your Own Fonts
- Incorporating Non-Photo Elements Into Your Photo Book – A Bit of Digital Scrapbooking Fun
- Q&A: My Photos Aren’t Digital – How Do I Make a Photo Book? Scan Your Photos!
- Photo Book Paper Quality Compared – Which Photo Book Company Prints on the Best Paper?
- Make a Photo Book in Minutes
- How to Choose the Best Paper for Your Photo Book (Part 1 of 2)
- How to Choose the Best Paper for Your Photo Book (Part 2 of 2)
- Six Must Read Tips Before Sending Your Photo Book To Print
- Top Free Online Editing Tools Review
- Multi-Volume Photo Books – Make it a Series
- Photo Book Girl’s Top 7 Tips on Journaling
As always, I welcome you to comment on my posts and feel free to share your tips as well!
Photo Book Girl
______________
Are you looking for Photo Book Reviews or for a Photo Book Coupon or Deal?
Find out how much your book will cost across a possible database of 28 31 photo book companies. Use the Photo Book Wizard!
The best way to not miss any of my reviews is to stay in touch!
Subscribe to my blog via RSS feed
Follow me on Twitter
“Like” me on Facebook
or subscribe to my e-mail newsletter (look for the light blue box at top right to enter your e-mail address!)
Click here for all Photo Book Company REVIEWS!
Have you ever tried Smilebooks out of German?
Hi Kathy, I attempted to but had a problem with the upload for some reason customer service and I were never able to resolve. Very odd. But I do plan to circle back to try them again. Please stay tuned!
I have you used Smilebooks, and have liked every booklet I received, I’m awaiting on two hardcovers and 3 booklets right now.
I had wondered why there wasn’t a photobookgirl review.
I like how you can change the size of photobox, move them around.
will try to tell more, after I receive my latest.
i need a photobook software that i can use to print my own book on my printer please help
Photoshop is a common choice for creating photo book layouts but it can be a pretty tedious process since it’s not like the drag and drop process you may have gotten used to when using the photo book company’s software. Professional design tools such as Adobe InDesign or QuarkXPress which are meant for designing layouts, would make the process easier. In any event, creating a set of templates for yourself will help you save time, but it will require an initial investment of time to set up your library of layouts. Once you do that however you can reuse them for different projects and just tweak them when necessary. There are also companies like Creative Memories, Lumapix, and MyPhotoCreations that sell photo book making software that have a more user-friendly interface with drag and drop capability that makes designing go a bit faster. There may also be some digital scrapbooking software that you may like, but I haven’t done much research into that. iPhoto and Aperture are available for Mac users. I would suggest trying out the free trials where possible to see if you like the functionality. Currently I’m working on using InDesign.
I’ve got some very useful information here about Photo book printing and I’ll be forever thankful to you, Photobook girl! I’m a photographer based in the Philippines and was hoping to find the best value for printing out photobooks to clients. Your wizard helps tons! I have a quick question tho, have you tried personalized calendars? If so, can you recommend any good sites on that? Thanks!
Hi Anne,
Mabuhay to my site! I have tried Picaboo, MyPublisher and Mixbook calendars. All three companies turned out a nice result. Mixbook had the most flexibility for design and to add clip art and other fun elements to the page and to specific dates. You’ll see the Mixbook and Picaboo calendars on the site. Go to the main reviews page for each and you’ll see links to each of the posts. The MyPublisher one isn’t on the site because it was a gift and I sent it directly to the recipient, but she said it turned out very nice. My best recommendation is to play around with the company’s software and see which one offers the most features you are looking for and then print with that one. Of course a promo always helps! Best!
I LOVE your website!! Do you have any tips for turning a blog into a photo/memory book?