Sunday, January 23, 2011

Off Topic - Photobooks

With a massive collection of digital photographs taken from our recent visit to Egypt, I wanted to put together a photo book for my father as a souvenir. I thought that it would be a simple matter of finding a company with some good software that would let me do what I wanted to, but it took me several attempts and a considerable amount of wasted time to find something that did what I wanted it to.

In the end I used thephotobookstore.com, which lets you download an application and build a fully customized book, with your own photos and text, and a variety of backgrounds, photo frames and text options to make it really personalized. I formed some of my pages in Photoshop, like the one on this post, then saved them as JPEGs and uploaded them as images into the software (it only accepts JPEG format images).

My photobook turned up today, around a week after I ordered it online, and I am chuffed to bits with it. I don't normally plug commercial companies on the blog but this company worked out well for me and I thought that it might give others a good place to start if they are thinking of making a photobook. The company is not cheap but it offered the best solution that I could find.

If anyone has other photobook recommendations do post a comment because I would love to check them out.


2 comments:

Vincent said...

I haven't tried any of these yet but there are some great ones built into Flickr:

http://bit.ly/faCCuC

Of course you'd have to upload the photos to Flickr first but that's not a problem if you have an account. You can make the photos private if you want and Flickr is free.

There is also Lulu:
http://bit.ly/dUBUyb

And Snapfish:
http://bit.ly/eiPghz

I've not tired any of those above but I've made a book using a local Stationary shop, Officeworks. I downloaded their software and used it to create the layout. I was able to choose the quality of the paper and what sort of cover and binding I wanted.

Depending on where you live you might also have shops that help you make a book that is quite affordable.

Andie said...

Thanks a million Vincent. I'll check those out.