Making Quality Photobooks for Any Occasion-Using Photobook Canada (or Worldwide)

One of the companies I like to use for creating photo books, is Photobook Canada. This an international franchise with locations all over the world. (Photobook Worldwide)

This company requires the download of their software- “My Photo books Editor” to edit your layouts in. Many other companies like Pikto in Toronto use very similar versions of the same software. The difference really comes down the sizes offered by that company, and a direct link for uploading your content to their servers for production.

Why Photo Book Canada vs. Walmart or Costco?

Well, I guess if you’re trying to save money, the obvious choice would be the latter two choices. But if you want quality and a great degree of control, Photobook Canada is the way to go. (They also deliver) Photobook Canada offers quality paper and secure binding, but besides that, the software offers automated options for those of you who are either in a hurry to design a layout, or not comfortable with design. I would suggest sorting your photos for publishing into a separate folder-that way you know that you have the nice poses etc. and that way you can just ’select all’ when opening photos in the software.

Using the Software:

Once you have installed the Photo Book Editor, you will choose between either, ‘Create New Book’, ‘Fast Track’, and ‘Open Saved Book’. So for those first timers, just ignore the third option for now, but once you have started a book and want to go back to it, this is what you’ll select.

So once you have selected Fast Track for making an automated book, you’ll have to choose what orientation you want your book to be; Landscape, Portrait, or Square, this will really depend on your photos and the purpose of the book. Think about what size your are going to have and how many photos you want on each page.

I’m going to choose ‘Kids’ to showcase both of my boys because one is turning 3 and one is 7 months old, I really don’t want to use Baby Boy for my older child. I really just want to show the variety of backgrounds available within the software. When you’re doing it for yourself, you can toggle between the themes to see the different styles. After selecting the theme, you’ll be prompted to select your photos. You can choose between 41 and 1497 images! The book I selected will contain 40 pages (20 sheets double sided) and in most cases you can add more pages for an additional fee.

So I’ve decided to use pictures from Christmas, only because they were nicely sorted in a separate folder already. After you select them, you’ll have a chance to preview them, rotate and re-order them if needed.

I didn’t have to rotate anything in this example, so I just clicked okay. Now I have the option of putting a caption on either the front cover, or under the first picture of the book. I’m choosing front cover for this book.

And now here’s the summary of my book before the software creates the book for me:

It takes only a few moments as it creates your book, and once it loads, you can get busy previewing and making adjustments that you see fit. Here is a quick glance of the workspace with some points of interest. (right click-view image if you can’t read my notes-sorry)

Each photo on the page is within a ‘frame’ – you can move each frame around, and within each frame you can zoom your picture and move it around to have ideal cropping. You can add more frames to pages, and then you can drag photos to be set in the frame-or as a single or double page background. You can add text on any page and there are text editing tools -just like any word processor. When you are moving frames around, make note of the edges where the paper will be cropped during production, you’ll also notice grid lines to help you align frames. It is also possible to rotate frames to be set on a diagonal, if you want to add some creativity to the layout.

There are also some image enhancement tools, with B&W and Sepia Filters. You can also select a photo as a background and there is a handy ‘image fade’ tool that makes the image as a background less distracting -if you’re adding more frames on top. Plus there are enhancements to brighten or sharpen photos. While these tools are great to have in this software, if you have access to a photo editing program like Photoshop or iPhoto, you should make these adjustments ahead of time there, as these actions slow down the program and don’t have same customization that Photoshop has.

This is where I’m going to stop my exercise of making a photobook, because once you select ‘Send to photobook’ the wheels start turning as your book is being processed. What happens is each page will create a pdf for you to PROOF before sending to the printers. This can take some time depending on your computer, so this would be a good time to go make a tea, or throw in a load of laundry, or eat…whatever you like.

Very Important:

I strongly recommend taking the time to view EACH page zoomed in to check for any mistakes…especially for spelling, because one you have approved the Proof and uploaded you cannot ammend anything, and any mistakes on the layout or design will not be covered under any guarantees by the company. Photobook Canada has 2 options for sending to the printers, you can upload to their servers (provided you have a fast connection) or save to a disc and mail it to them. The second option obviously adds to the time in receiving your actual book, so uploading is faster in the long run.

You will most like be asked to create a profile, and will have to provide your payment info, but all is secure, so not to worry. You can also order multiple copies of the same book, which is handy because otherwise you have to go through the proofing and uploading process all over again, which so time-consuming.

I have created 2 books with this company and I have been happy with the process. The first one I made took an unusual amount of time, so when I contacted them, they informed me that when the book went to Quality Control, they noticed the binding was no good, so they remade the book. For my inconvenience, they gave me a gift certificate for a free book of the same size and type. I thought that was great customer service. The second book was a large (and I mean huge) landscape book and the quality was great and the book arrived in only 9 business days-just like promised. For more info on this process click here.

Here is a glimpse of the Worldwide site. Note the countries offering the service.

Keep on the lookout for deals, Photobook Canada constantly has promos, for example, my second book was 40% off if it was ordered before a certain date…which was awesome for me because I had to add 4 more pages which added to the cost. Some international franchises also offer additional products like boxes or cases for your book. Canada doesn’t offer any of those at this time, but I’m sure they will one day.

You can also become a fan on Facebook and get informed first of promos they have.

Don’t be afraid to play around with all the setting, you’ll find tonnes of inspiration when you know the full scope of the software’s capabilities. Let me tell you how amazing it felt to get my first book in the mail, and see how great it looked. I was quite proud.

I just want to make an additional note for more advanced users. If you are very Photoshop-Capable, I would suggest getting the specs for the book and creating a layout in photoshop so that you can take advantage of all the tools and layering abilities in Photoshop. Just save each page layout as a jpeg and when you create the photobook, just add the jpegs as single or double page backgrounds. I find this save a lot of time, as my first book was using solely the software, whereas my second book was made using Photoshop alone. I still spent a lot of time in Photoshop, but the program offers so many more options not available in the Photobook Editor.

Have fun making your memories stand out using a product that is made through a digital process. I like to think of this as digital scrapbooking.

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