Photo Book Virgin – Tips & Ideas – The Update

It’s been 4 months since my post, “Photo Book Virgin – What I Haven’t Tried Before… Tips & Ideas” and I’m happy to report that I’ve checked off all the items on my “gotta try someday” photo book list.  Here’s the update:

Flush Mount Professional Wedding Photo Book

I wrote about wanting to make a flush mount or lay flat wedding photo book.  I happy to say that I made my first lay flat wedding book with AdoramaPix recently.  I was very impressed with its thick pages printed on real photo paper and being able to design across a full two-page spread without having to worry about the image getting cut-off in the spine or gutter of the book.  Just as important as the end result, is the design process and the experience of using a photo book company’s software.  It was extremely easy to take a single photo and stretch it across both pages, using the “Fit to Spread” button.  What’s great is that my 50 page 8×10 book only cost $100.00 including shipping and the protective coating option.  Check out my full review, if you want to read more about my AdoramaPix wedding photo book.  Look here if you want to see the latest deals on AdoramaPix photo books.

Portrait Photo Book

My AdoramaPix photo book was portrait-oriented, so I checked off two “to dos” with one book.  What I liked about the portrait style book is that a single photo stretched across a two-page spread fits better than in a landscape book.  Let me show you an example:

Below is the original photo showing the image in its entirety.

Next is the image adjusted to fit across the full two-page spread of a landscape oriented 10×8 photobook. (spread would measure 20 inches across and 8 inches wide).

Notice how a lot of the original image at the top and bottom is cut off?  It looks fine, but the flower arrangement has lost a lot of its breathing room and looks a bit cramped right?

Here’s the final layout I did for my portrait oriented book.  This book is an 8×10 book (meaning 16 inches across and 10 inches wide) and I overlayed three photos on top.

As you can see, a bit of the top of the original image has been trimmed off, but no where near the amount lost when doing a two-page spread in a landscape book.  Keep in mind that you will always have some degree of image loss due to cropping after the printing process.  As the majority of my books are landscape oriented, it was interesting to design a portrait book and come up with new layouts.  (You may be interested to know that out of the 274 photo books in our database, 138 are landscape oriented and 48 are portrait oriented, leaving 88 square shaped photo books.)

Autofill

I tried the autofill function on a new book I made with Kodak Gallery.  It was the free 5×7 book that I posted about recently.  Autofill was ideal for a small book with just a single photo per page.  It could be useful for other books however, and it did help get those photos into the book quickly.  You can still rearrange from there.  My review on Kodak Gallery will be coming soon!

Digital Scrapbook Photo Book

I made two scrapbook style photo books with Artscow, one of a trip to the Cayman Islands and one of my engagement photos.  I used some cute heart embellishments and tags for the captions and had fun trying out the different stickers and do-dads.  I also used Mixbook recently for a guest book for a 90th birthday party.  For that one, I used a theme that had decorative frames, swirls and borders and I found that quite fun to put together too.  I have yet to post my reviews of Mixbook and Artscow, so those will be coming soon as well.

_______

Writing this post reminds me that I need to get to writing those reviews huh? It’s been great fun so far trying out all these companies and getting feedback from all of you.  I have heard from several folks asking about various companies that I haven’t tried yet, so rest assured, those are in the works!  Be sure to fan my Facebook page to stay up to date on the latest.  I post new deals and tips there first – so hope to see you there!