Creating and Printing Photobooks

[NicoleScraps]

*If this is not the best section for this to be in, please feel free to move it*

When creating a photobook, you need to decide what size book that you need and the company/printer that you want to use.This is first and foremost the most important information to start with because you will need to research their print specifications and bleed information.
If you are going to make a photobook simply by uploading your photos, and using a premade template offered by the company that you have chosen, then most of the information to come will be completely useless to you.
Just skip to the end where I have linked photobook review comparisions.
But if you would like to know how to make a each page of your photobook from scratch to get exactly the right look, then I have lots of details and links for you.

Bleed/Print Information
This topic is very hard to accurately and completely cover, since every photo book printer is going to be just a little different. To sum it up, if you are going to make a photobook with the full bleed printing option (edge to edge printing), you need to check the printing details offered on the website of the company that you have chosen. They will offer minimum resolution guidelines as well. Here are the details for Shutterfly, just to give you an example of what you need to look for.

Photo Books Details

As you can see, with an 8x8 book the pages are not truely 8x8. This can easily become a major issue if you don't know these details before you start making your pages. If you do not adjust your pages according to their specs, I can promise you that you will get cropped edges. It may get cropped at the binding, maybe at the top or bottom or outer edge. Who knows? Like I said, they are all different. This could potentially RUIN your book especially if your photos are placed near the edges of your pages.

Tool Kits
If you want to skip over finding out all of those details on your own, you can purchase a tool kit. This lady creates the most wonderful Tool Kits for Photobook Printing. She has one available for just about every company. You'll just have to dig around in her store to find the one that you need.

Scrapbookgraphics.com :: Studio Girls :: Wendyzine Scraps

The tool kits include either an action to resize your already completed pages to the company's print specifications or a template created to the company's specs for you to build your pages from.

Making the Pages
You can certainly design your own pages by placing photos on a canvas in your photo editing program and rearranging/resizing to get the look that you want.But there are designers out there who have made templates to ease this process. To find those designers, you're going to have to enter the world of scrapbooking. In case you were not aware, scrapbooking is a huge industry. The digital scrapbooking industry specifically has exploded with growth over the last few years. There are literally hundreds if not thousands of digital scrapbooking shoppes all over the internet. With the varying skill levels of digital scrapbookers, there is a huge market for templates. Maybe a person does not have time to design a page from scratch. Or maybe they have the time, but just do not have an eye for designing a page. To the best of my knowledge, digital scrapbooking stores are the best places to find templates for photobooks. There may be a sites/shops that cater more to photographers, but I do not know of any.
Templates are typically offered as a layered psd file for use with photoshop or photoshop elements since those are the two most commonly used programs for digital scrapbooking. However, some designers offer templates in TIFF format so look around for that, if that is your need.
Here is great link explaining the basics of how to use a layered PSD template just in case you don't already know.
Digital Scrapbooks - Photoshop Elements: How to Use a Template - Part 1
I would add though, that templates are meant to be a jumping point. Basically, they are to inspire the look of your pages. They are totally customizable. If there is a part of the template that you do not like, just delete it or alter it.You can go for a simple and streamlined look by simply painting the background with your chosen color. Or you can get a little fancier with textured or patterned backgrounds, word art, clip art, etc.
A great resource for free backgrounds, word art and other elements is this blog. She posts links to freebies just about every day.
HAND PICKED FREEBIES

Links to templates
When I compiled this list of links, I chose only templates that were not too fussy and fancy. Basically I was looking for templates that focused on the photos. I figured that most of you would want a clean and simple photobook as opposed to a "scrapbook" looking photobook. Templates typically come in 12x12 and can easily be resized to a smaller square. If you are creating a portrait or landscapre orientation book (8.5x11) those templates are generally few and far between. When looking at templates, you might want to think in terms of "can I crop this to 8.5x11?" if that is your desired size.

Project 365: Template Set No 2 - ScrapMatters

Scrapbook Basics: Filler Pages v2 - ScrapMatters

Completely Clustered 2 - ScrapMatters

Together Forever 2 Photo Cluster Templates - ScrapMatters

Lots O' Photos Blocked Templates - ScrapMatters

The Year In Review No. 4 Template*::*Templates*::*The Digichick Shop

Fuss Free: Verbosity Album*::*Templates*::*The Digichick Shop

Photo Clusters No. 1*::*Templates*::*The Digichick Shop

2010 Weekly Template Pack*::*Templates*::*The Digichick Shop

Full Page Collages No. 3*::*Templates*::*The Digichick Shop

Story Book Album II*::*Templates*::*The Digichick Shop

Oscraps*::*Shop by Category*::*Fast & Easy*::*Around the Way No.1 (a template album)

Oscraps*::*Shop by Category*::*Fast & Easy*::*Double Shot Album 1 (quick pages)

Oscraps*::*Shop by Category*::*Fast & Easy*::*Gridlocked No. 1 by Biograffiti

Memory Scraps :: Templates :: a week in your life template no 1

Memory Scraps :: Templates :: projects 365 templates no 1

Memory Scraps :: Templates :: Simple Block by Q Studio


A couple places to find some great free Templates

simply yin
I love how she warps the images and shadows. Gives the page a very 3 dimensional look.

Manda Girl
She has some great ones, with nice shadowing and usually lots of photos.


*Important*
Terms of use
Just as you a photographer want people to respect your ownership and copyright of the photos that you take, these designers have licenses in place to protect their designs. Each template will come with a terms of use document explaining HOW you can use it. I will give you a very basic run down of the *three most common license agreements, but if you are unsure about a particular template, please check with the designer.

Personal Use License (PU)- this means that you can use the template or other item for yourself only (your own personal pages, pages you will give as gifts to family, friends, etc). You may NOT use it for profit in any way.

Scrap for Hire or Scrap For Others (S4H or S4O). This means that you may use the template for creating a page or photobook that you will sell to a client. You may not sell or distibute the actually template itself, only a finished product.

Commercial USe (CU)-In a nutshell, you can pretty much do whatever you want with these.

*Licenses vary by designers, so please take the time to read the terms of use before you purchase!

You certain can make you own templates if you have the time and vision in your mind of what you want your page to look like. It is really quite easy. Just use your shape tool and save so that you can use it over and over again.


(my text is too long, moving down into the 1st response area)

[NicoleScraps]

Photobook Reviews

I cannot personally review and compare every company...I have not used every company. But here are some links to some great comparision reviews.

Digital Home Thoughts: The Great Photo Book Round-Up Review: Who Makes The Best Photo Books?

Digital scrapbooking tutorials, reviews, and resources » Blog Archive » Photobook Printer Reviews – 12 Different Companies Compared

Here are some threads about photobook printing in Australia and NZ
Australian Scrapbookers: Where do you print books? - DigiShopTalk Forums

Another option for Australian and NZers looking for photobook printing - DigiShopTalk Forums

Great Album Printing Option 4 New Zealanders! - DigiShopTalk Forums

And in the UK

photobook printing in the UK - DigiShopTalk Forums

Sorry if I did not include your location. I have no way of knowing where everyone is from on this board, but the US, UK, and Australia seem to be the most common.

And lastly, if you are interested, here are some links to a few photobooks that I have made. *These are my PERSONAL photobooks. They are just examples of what can be done.
This is what I am doing with my P365 photos. These pages were made with templates.
P365
This one is from our recent vacation in June. I was going for a totally different look here. More clean and streamlined. I did not use templates for this, but just designed the pages using shapes.
Virginia Beach Album
They apparently have changed their sharing methods on inkubook. I can only share to places like myspace and facebooks. So sorry I had to use slide.com. It's a little annoying, but you get the idea. It helps to click "gallery view" once you get over there.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask. I do not claim to be an expert, so if you have any additional information, feel free to add it.

[NicoleScraps]

I was going to go back and fix the typos, but I just don't feel like it right now. Sorry.

[Saralonde]

Thanks, Nicole, for all the work you put into this. I'm sure it will be helpful for a lot of people.

[NicoleScraps]

Originally Posted by Saralonde

Thanks, Nicole, for all the work you put into this. I'm sure it will be helpful for a lot of people.

You're welcome. I hope it is helpful

[FallsCity]

Great post, thank you...saving this thread for sure.

[AnneWynne]

Excellent post. Thank you for all of your hard work putting this together. Love the links to more info.

[toasted75]

Awesome Nicole - I *want* to do something like this with photos of the kids, but the time factor is a bit daunting - this should be a great help, thanks.

[BigVinnie]

Great, now you've given me something ELSE to go out and try.

Just kidding, thanks for all the work you put into that.

[dirksmith]

Thanks for the article and all of the useful links Nicole.

My own experience of creating a photobook with photobox.co.uk was that it was a very laborious process especially with regard to adding text because the text editor they use isn't very good at replicating how it would look on the printed page.

My project was to take a picture of my beard growing for the 'Fiddler on the Roof' show I was in. From start to finish it was 126 days of beard growing and therefore 126 photos. I didn't use any templates of my own or embellishments but loaded the pictures onto their A4 book which has several options of page layouts. I opted for a simple black background and added white text.

One thing I liked about photobox was that each image you added was graded for quality depending on whether you wanted it to be full page or several smaller images on a page. They have a green smiley for a top quality image, an amber for ok quality and a red frown face for poor quality. If it's poor quality for a full A4 page then you can change that page to a two picture template and the image is assessed again.

I entered a competition on photobox with my derek's beard photobook and won £500 first prize. If you would like to view it (best full screen) please follow this link: Derek Smith photo gallery - Derek's Beard Photobook - a photo gallery powered by Photobox


Regards

Dirk