Back in August (gasp! August!) I was asked by Savannah Brentnall of Shutterfly to try out their photo book service and share the results here on this blog, plus give a few books away to some blog readers. For a multitude of reasons, most of September and October flew by and I didn't get my book made. The free codes expire at the end of November.
Eek.
But good news, you can win this week and still have time to make a book to order by the end of November, because guess what? It's that easy. Even for a complete digital photo book dummy like myself.
I've been familiar with the high-quality of Shutterfly's photo books since 2007, when two glorious specimens arrived on my doorstep in Mountain House, California: the two digital books digital genius Anna Aspnes made for The Scrapbooker's Almanac. I was completely in awe, because good heavens, they were incredible. They also had the unfortunate effect of making me very scared of Shutterfly's photo book service, because I had no idea how one would even begin to make something even half as amazing as what I was holding in my hand. Did I mention Anna Aspnes is a digital genius? She is. Wow. I still shake my head that she agreed to be a contributor in my book, because I know how to do two things in Photoshop: 1.) put text on top of photos and 2.) apply a drop shadow to something about 60% of the time. (The other 40% of the time I fail at this simple task, for reasons only known to the Photoshop Elements elves that change the directions, or undo my work... or something).
Anyway. Back to August. I said yes, because really—I shouldn't be scared of Shutterfly. Shutterfly seems quite friendly, in fact. Friendly enough to reach out to a digital dummy like me! Here's the thing: you don't have to be Anna Aspnes to pull off a beautiful photo book. I mean, it helps, definitely. But there are LEVELS of photo books available: the level at which someone like Anna works, where you wave your magic wand at your computer screen and end up with print-ready art, and the level where there are instructions and options and helpful little built-in guides that make the process fun, flexible, and quite easy.
Here is the part of this post where if your name is Kattie or Richard or Beverly, you should close the window and go do something else. You've been warned.
I decided to make my photo book with the photos we took at the Inauguration; I had already selected the ones you see here for the album I posted in January, and I had more photos on my computer that I uploaded to Shutterfly. It took a while, because I uploaded the original size photographs—I am not much of an instruction reader, so there is a very good possibility that it took me far longer to upload than it needed to (plus it's possible that our cable internet isn't as fast as other services).
After that, I poked around a little in the "make a photo book" section and found that there are a few ways to make a book, plus lots of sizes and options (different covers, different sizes, etc.) I decided to try "custom path" to put it together. It didn't take long to discover the storyboard tool, which allowed me to arrange and rearrange pictures in order; when I didn't have the right picture in the right place, I just dragged it to a different page and saved it. A few times I decided to upload a few extra items to fill out the book so it would be 20 pages, and this was also easy to pause the process and go upload a few more photos to the project album. Next came captions; I borrowed some of the writing I had already done back in January to include underneath the photos. All of this took me approximately two hours, but keep in mind that I am like a blackbird and the internet is my shiny thing, so I am sometimes (all the time?) easily distracted. But still, I had the makings of a (very simple) photobook in a small amount of time!
Here's what I really like about Shutterfly's service:
• It was very easy to figure out, even for someone like me who has never made a photo book online before.
• There are many options for fonts, colors, designs, and styles.
• If you choose, you can allow the storyboard tool arrange your pictures on the page in a basic format like I did.
• It is easy to go back and make changes, add photos, rearrange photos, etc. without needing to start from scratch.
• I am impressed enough that I might work on learning how to do some "quickpages" or digital templates made just for photo services like this one.
• I already know the books are good quality, because I've seen Anna's in person. It shouldn't take too long to receive mine in the mail, and I'm excited to see them, too!
• It is extremely easy to make duplicates to give to other people, and it looks like my book will be saved on the Shutterfly site for as long as I want it to be there.
Minor criticisms:
• The space for captions was small—only about four lines per page. This might not be a problem for someone less wordy for me, but I had to cut out a lot of detail to fit into the caption box. Of course, if I learn how to do actual print-ready pages to upload, I can include as much writing on a page as I want.
• The shipping is expensive. At least in my book.
Would you like to win a free photobook? I have three to give away! The special codes must be used by November 30, so if you're headed out on a three week tour of Europe maybe let this one go by. But otherwise, if I can make a book in one evening, so can you! Leave a comment if you'd like to be entered to win; I'll close the comments on Thursday night, just after my hour and a half of Project Runway and Models of the Runway, so about 9:30 Mountain Time. I'll be sure to share my finished product when it arrives!
