02 February 2011

How To: Make My Photobook (Part 2)

Part 1 was all about creating your collages in Picasa. If you missed it, click here. Now we're going to set up the photobook in Snapfish for printing.

Snapfish is one of many different online photo companies around the world. But if it's not available in your location, there will be something very similar.

So without further ado, Part 2:

In Snapfish, you have various options for photo layouts and size of photobook.I personally like the symmetry of a square book (options are 20 x 20cm or 30 x 30cm). I chose to make the custom 30 x 30 cm hard cover book. I think the beautiful collages you will have created look so much better displayed in a large book.



Your blank photobook will initially look like this.



Once your blank photobook has loaded, you then need to upload all the photo collages you want to use into an album. When uploading photos from your computer onto Snapfish, make sure that you use the drop-down for Advanced Settings and choose the 'Large Print Upload' option. This will keep the best possible resolution for your collages.


Once you have all the photos uploaded to an album, click on Add All.


If you have the photos in the exact order you want and don't envisage changing pages around, you can click on the Autofill button before leaving the page and it will fill up your photobook pages in the order of the photos.

Once back at the photobook page, you need to change your Layout to One per Page by looking through the '1 photo' layout options. If you hover over the full page, it will give you the 'Apply to Every Page' option.



Once you have applied the full page layout design, your pages will look like this.



As I mentioned in my Photobook: Part 1, it's really important that you now click on the Safe Area icon. This will show you where the margins are on the page to ensure that your collage pictures and text aren't cut off during the printing process.



That would be a travesty after all your hard work! But hopefully, if you've left a nice white margin around the edge of each collage as instructed in Part 1, you'll be fine - like this example below!


You can save your photobook and come back to it any number of times, but just make sure you save the project before you exit.

With regard to the photobook back and front covers, you can add a photo as normal, and add Snapfish's text over the top. But what I chose to do (since the Snapfish text options are more limited, was just upload my own picture that already had text embedded in the photo and simply ignored their text boxes.



As I've mentioned before, it's also worth signing up to receive the email offers from Snapfish so that if you wait for a deal, you will often get up to 50% off the normal product price.

Here's the link to my completed Exploring Beauty 2010 photobook online at Snapfish.

With regard to delivery options, it's usually cheaper to go for a 'pick-up' at local retailer rather than delivery to a residential address. Check out your closest retail locations when you place your order.

I've also had requests from people to share some of the backgrounds that I've used in my photobooks, and I now have some Web albums saved with these files. I have approximately 200-odd backgrounds in 7 albums. The background files within each album can be downloaded individually or as a whole album. If you'd like to access these, just email me using the link on the right hand side of the blog, or leave me your email address via a comment below and I'll send you the web addresses.

As always, I'm happy to answer any questions. I hope you have fun creating!

1 comment :

photobook said...

If a photo speaks a thousand words, then the one that’s on the cover speaks a million. Choose a photo for the cover that fully captures the entirety of your project. It should be the most eye catching – be it funny, beautiful, or different, it just needs to be compelling if people are gonna crack that first page.

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