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Scrapbooking

Family Photo Books Skyrocket in Popularity! by Alfred DeBat Everyday the options with digital photography and the internet are rapidly expanding.  Alfred DeBat breaks down your best bets to easily and inexpensively create professional quality family photo books online. Article rating: 5.79

Today you can order attractive hardcover photo books created from your family photographs that look just like commercially printed, full-color, coffee-table volumes. These books, with digitally printed photos on each side of the pages, are based upon layout designs that you select. The final product is completely professional. Printed one at a time, the bound books are ordered singly or in small batches of two or three, in case you desire extra copies for friends and relatives.

Nothing provides a better memory book for any kind of event – birthday parties, weddings, anniversaries, vacation trips, travel journals, holiday celebrations, family reunions, newborns or just a collection of first-class snapshots of summer activities with the kids. Some suppliers include more holiday suggestions beyond Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s Eve, adding picture-rich opportunities during Halloween, Fourth of July and Memorial Day. Most sources offer cover and page design graphics that match the content themes.

You’ll be surprised how professional your family photos will appear after being edited, cropped and enlarged in the book layout. The suppliers of these books provide online templates for your photos. All you have to do is select a template on your computer, then drag and drop digital photos from your computer archive into the appropriate locations. You can visit your local photo retail store or go online for advice and a source for these computer-generated layout books.

You are able to design your entire picture book by selecting individual digital photographs from your own picture library (or from scanned images of regular photo prints in your computer’s memory). The free layout software permits positioning of a single photo or groups of photos on a page layout, plus the ability to size and crop the images to the picture space in the template. All this makes it easy to put your family picture book together and let the photofinisher do all the hard work of printing and binding the volume. Note that the “basic” order of 20 pages means 10 sheets printed on both sides.

The online picture book printers offer an amazing selection of different size volumes and page formats, depending upon the purpose of the books. Here are some of the leading online sources:

• MyPublisher (www.mypublisher.com): Available now for both Macintosh and Windows OS computer users, free MyPublisher BookMaker™ software permits users to organize, edit and enhance photos before creating a book layout employing more than 200 different page design templates. Images are dragged and dropped into the layout after cropping, enlarging and color-improving the photos. The software permits full-page “bleed” photos (images print to the edge of the page without white borders) with a minimum-size 20-page book. Titles and captions can be added to the photos. Eight different book formats are offered: Deluxe, an oversize volume 15 inches long by 11.5 inches high, is available in a linen hardcover for $59.80 (five different cover colors from Ivory to Black). The book can hold a maximum of 120 double-side pages at an additional cost of $2.99 per page. The similar, but smaller, 11.25-by-8.75-inch, 20-page Classic format also holds up to 120 photos at an additional cost of $1.49 per page. The Classic is available in a linen hardcover for $29.80 in a variety of cover colors and in leather for $39.80. Deluxe and Classic covers have die-cut centers which display the book’s cover page photo and text. The soft cover, 7.75-by-5.75-inch, 20-page Paperback PocketBook format holds up to 120 pages and costs $12.95 with additional pages costing 49 cents each.

• iPhoto Books (www.apple.com/ilife/iphoto/prints.html): The iPhoto software is part of Apple computer’s Macintosh OS X, so the service is only available using Macintosh computers that have this operating system. Like MyPublisher, the iPhoto software permits a variety of layouts through templates, including full-bleed photo pages, as well as image enhancement and corrections. However, iPhoto Books formats are different. A series of six different styles, all in an 11-by-8.5-inch format, are available with foil-printed titles on a suede-like cover. Included in the $29.99 price for a 20-page book is a customized photo dust jacket. The same styles and sizes are available in softcover-bound and wire-bound volumes for $19.99 and smaller 8-by-6-inch versions for $9.99. Additional pages cost 69 cents and 49 cents respectively.

• Kodak Gallery (www.kodakgallery.com/PhotoBookOverview.jsp?): The Kodak Gallery Photo Book service markets three different photo book formats: The oversize 14-by-12-inch Legacy ($69.99), the 10.25-by-9-inch Classic ($29.99) and the 7-by-5-inch Mini ($6.99). Legacy covers are available in leather or linen, while, in addition, the Classic also offers the choice a smooth matte cover. Both styles accept a maximum of 40-page double-printed sheets (80 pages). All three formats have die-cut cover windows, which display a first-page photo. The Mini, available only with a flexible softcover, accepts up to 50 double-sided pages. The Gallery layout templates allow bleed photo pages and up to nine photo collages on a single page. Several different graphic design themes and color covers are available.

• Shutterfly (www.shutterfly.com): For both Windows and Macintosh users, Shutterfly Photo Books are available in four styles: 12-by-12-inch Memory Book ($54.99), 8-by-8-inch Story Book ($29.99), 11-by-8.5-inch Classic Book (leather: $39.99; suede/satin/cloth: $29.99) and the softcover 5.5-by-7.5-inch Casual Book ($12.99). An additional 80 pages can be added to 20-page basic volumes at the following prices per page respectively: $1.50, $1.00, $1.00, and $0.50. All cover styles have die-cut windows, and a variety of color covers are offered. Although bleed-page photos are not possible with the Shutterfly software, customers can select appropriate theme graphic backgrounds – such as autumn, winter, sports, travel, kids and birthdays – from hundreds of page layouts.

With all of these online sources, shipping and handling are additional.

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