How I Made a Photo Book of 17 Years of Memories

This is Part Two of a behind-the-scenes look at my making of a photo book to celebrate 17 years of Maine summer vacations with dear friends. Quick recap of part one: How I chose the story.

I’ve got the photos chosen and organized for my photo story, now I’m going to make the photo book.

Before making any production decisions, close your eyes. What does your book look like? Is it large, reflecting a significant story, or small enough for a child to read in their lap? Is it colorful or neutral? Are the pages full of pictures or just one or a few per page? Your answers will guide your production decisions.

Our Maine summer vacations were magical for all of us. My book needed to be physically big to reflect that significance, both of time and of depth. The book will be colorful, but the design needed to be more neutral since the color comes in the photos. As for my chosen 692 photos – while I’ll edit them further, I knew some were full-page worthy and some would be great small, so I needed a good variety of templates.

Now, to choose the online book company: I have three online companies I use for this type and size of photo book – Mixbook, Artifact Uprising, Shutterfly. Each has strengths and each can produce a quality book. I love Mixbook’s dust jacket option, ethically sourced paper, binding quality. Artifact Uprising’s books are simply gorgeous, printed on recycled paper and their books can have up to 200 pages. I’ve been creating Shutterfly books since 2004. I know their design software best, appreciate their book design flexibility and, with their regular sales, their prices are good. So, although I’ve had issues with their binding quality, they’ve been great at replacing books that didn’t meet my standards. I chose Shutterfly.

First step with Shutterfly is to choose the book size, orientation, and cover – mine will be 11×14 landscape, hard photo cover with matte finish.

Then, it’s time to choose the design template. While Shutterfly’s templates are very flexible (if you use the Custom Path option), I recommend you choose a design template that has the basic color scheme, layout options and design elements (borders, doodads, etc.) that fit your book. They have a design template called Modern Indigo. It was the right color scheme, the background options, templates, borders and “stickers” (aka doodads) that were interesting and not fussy.

Another important element is the font specified in the design template. While you can easily change or modify the template’s font, life is much easier (and mistakes fewer) if you like the font choices in the template. This one includes Mrs. Eaves, one of my serif font favorites and Shutterfly offers five versions of Mrs. Eaves. 20th Century is the sans serif font, great for headlines and to pair with Mrs. Eaves’ versions.

With those choices made, and your book saved (be sure to use your title to name the project – otherwise it’s called “my project”), it’s time to upload your photos to the book. I’ve a method for this step that I find so helpful – I only upload photos for one section of the book at a time. It is the only way I can manage so many photos without duplication or being overwhelmed. Then I use the “storyboard” option to generally place the photos in the page order I think makes sense for the story. I can always move them around later, but I love opening a spread and having the photos there.

While is it infinitely easier to have the algorithm (Simple Path option) or a Shutterfly designer (Make a Book option) design your book, I love the puzzle of doing it myself – choosing a page or spread layout that tells my story with the photos I have. Deciding how many photos on this page (or should it be a spread?), matching horizontal or vertical photos to the layout spaces (usually changing them in Custom Path), cropping the photos to emphasize the desired spot, considering the page or spread’s overall design…all things I love, but it does take time, lots of time. But, for me, enjoyable time well-spent.

Here are a few examples of pages and spreads from this book:

These photos are worthy of a larger size.

These photos are best small and grouped to tell the story.

In this book, headlines and subheads were easy. Captions I put in white box stickers, called “embellishments” at Shutterfly, with the text laid on top of the sticker. Harder to do as you must align the text box within the sticker, but worth it to me.

On the left, a headline. One the right, a caption placed on a sticker.

Ninety-nine pages and two covers later I had a book that truly celebrates the magic of our story! 🙂

But, I’m not finished. You see, the last step is CRUCIAL: even though I check and recheck for consistency (border size, font size), cropping, centering of photos and text in their boxes, spelling, etc., you just can’t see everything on the screen. One example is spreads – did any important part of the photo land in the gutter, despite my best efforts? Another example is font size – is it the right size? It is hard to gauge proper font size on the screen. For these reasons and others, I ALWAYS order a preview copy. If there are no errors, then the preview copy becomes the final copy. But if there are things that must be fixed, then I’ll catch them, correct them and then, and only then, order a final copy. Yes, it is more expensive to do it this way, but Shutterfly regularly has sales which help.

And yes! I finished the book in time to give it to our friends while on our 2019 vacation. But I won’t lie – I gave them the preview copy. Just ran out of time…and thought they’d understand, which they did.

I presented the book to them and my husband during cocktail hour and toasted the gift with our special recipe blueberry mojitos. They loved it, and you can be sure they had a perfect copy awaiting them when they got home from Maine.

And a copy for us, too.

If this story leaves you feeling daunted, I understand. But remember, I’ve been creating photo books for myself and others since 2004. I love the whole process and having something beautiful to show and share. That’s all that separates you and me – experience.

I encourage you to give photo-storytelling a try. Need help? Just ask – I’d love to share my love and experience with you. Life’s a story. How do you tell yours? Personally, I choose a photo book!  🙂