There’s something really appealing to me about a professionally bound book containing my own photos, text, and graphics. Perhaps it’s the writer and wanna-be designer in me that loves seeing all my work printed and presented beautifully for others to see. These are just a couple of reasons I love the printed photo books that are becoming so popular these days.
I did my first photo book a couple of years ago right before getting married. I wanted to show off many of the engagement photos we’d had taken, but didn’t want to have them in a traditional album or take the time to scrapbook them. A roommate introduced me to a photo service that would print my digital photos and send them to me inexpensively, and after receiving my photos I got a coupon code for a free photo book (I just had to pay tax and shipping). So I thought to myself, it’s worth a try for about $7.00.
I spent time putting my photos into the layouts, typing up the perfect text, then proofing and editing the whole thing. I must admit there were some slightly annoying things about several features, but on the whole, I loved how simple the concept was. Then it was time to actually order the book. With a bit of hesitation (what if I did something stupid?), I pushed send and then waited for my book to arrive.
Arrive it did, and if I remember correctly, it arrived fairly quickly. I couldn’t have been more pleased with what I had in my hands. It was clean, professionally done, and it looked fabulous sitting at the guest table. I loved that it was easy to flip through without being overwhelming (I’d chosen a 20-page book, so there were just enough photos to make it interesting without going on forever). I loved that it was something I would enjoy looking at for years to come and that it captured my favorite moments. I did find one error in the text (an instance of capitalization gone awry), which I have to live with, but overall the book was a success.
That was my first experience with photo books, and since then I’ve done several others with basically the same level of happiness. With this introduction to photo books, perhaps it will give you some ideas of options out there for printing your digital photos.