Photo Book Q&A: Fonts, Aspect Ratios and Page Counts

PhotoBookGirl here, or should I say PhotoBookMom! This is my first post since becoming a mother and I still can’t believe it!  He’s a week old today.  My little “Bean” (as my husband and I have called him since we found out we were expecting), is asleep enjoying a full tummy, but will probably wake up soon, so here’s just a short post! This is one of my photos when still pregnant with my mom and aunt. Funny that I’m kinda missing my belly, but I have something (someone) so infinitely better now!

Here’s a few questions as of late:

Q: What is the font that you have been using in your Photobook America Hawaii book and your recent honeymoon photo books?

A: This has been a question that I’ve been asked at least once a week so I thought I’d post it!  It is: P22 Cezanne Regular.  Love it! It’s a great font that I later realized I saw a lot in a Canadian home magazine from years ago (not realizing at the time) and more recently I saw it used on on the signage of a huge condo development in town.  I’m a huge fontography fan and this font is my latest obsession.  If you Google it, I believe there are sites you can download the font for both Mac and PC.

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Q: Hi – I recently found your site. I have a question for you. I want to make a photo book where I have the option of keeping the entire image and the original aspect ratio and tell them to scale the image to fit the page. Do you know which publishers let you do that? Most of them seem to give you a picture box in which you need to put the photo and then position it as best you can, with the rest being cropped.

A: Hi DM,

I recall that Photobook America and MyPhotoCreations I believe has a scaling option just like you mention, but I can’t remember the name of the feature.  I think it’s called “Fit to picture” in Photobook America.  Blurb should have it too.  There may be others but I can’t think off the top of my head which ones.

The way I have gotten around it in other programs is to zoom out until you get the whole photo. You won’t be able to get a full bleed all the way to the edges but that’s very difficult and depends on what size and orientation of book you pick, but you get to see your whole photo that way.

Hope that helps!

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Q: I wanted your recommendation on making a photobook or an annual family yearbook.

Initially, I was considering making an annual family photobook, fairly causal, of various pictures of the family and my kids for that particular year.

But when I finished one year, it turned out to be only 25 pages or so.  I’m guessing a 25 page book would be very thi(n), and it probably makes more sense to combine 2, 3 if not 5 years for a family photo journal?

If 3 years, I would guess it would probably be more like 90 pages, which seems like it would fill up a book?  With only 25 pages, a hard cover would probably be thicker than the pages of the book?

Would appreciate your thoughts.  I’m not saying thicker is better, but seems like in a 25 page photo(album), a hard cover would be thicker than all the pages combined?

Charles

A: Hi Charles,

Most photobooks have a base page count of 20, so I wouldn’t necessarily say that it would look bad if you had a 25 page book. The thickness can depend on the type of paper that you select for your book – the premium upgraded papers are usually thicker and in some cases limits the max. number of pages you can add.

The number of pages can also depend on what book size you’re picking.  You’d probably have more pages if you were doing a smaller book size.  The larger my books are, the more photos I can put on the pages without each photo looking too small.

So I guess there are a number of factors.

With that said, I think at least 40 to 50 pages seems more substantial and feels better in your hands, but that’s just personal preference.  I have several 20 page books and I don’t think they suffer any from being smaller in page count.  But if you want to combine two years, that would work – or you could pick more photos perhaps or do more single photo layouts to highlight a photo you are particularly fond of.

If you’re on Facebook, we have a lot of discussion that goes on there – please consider fanning my page! Fan my PhotoBookGirl Facebook page

Hope that info is helpful!

PBG

(Side Note: I think a helpful place to start if you’re just beginning on your photo book adventure is my multi-part series on “How to Make a Digital Photo Book“)