> Photo Books – The New Generation
A photo book can fulfill the needs of everyone from the snapshot photographer, to the aspiring amateur, all the way to the professional photographer. A beautifully designed photo book may be the ideal way to share a collection of your best images with others; and professional photographers find that photo books are an excellent solution for creating portfolios that can easily be carried with them and shown to prospective clients. A photo book may even be created with the intent of selling it commercially.
With digital photography, the fact that you don’t have to limit the number of shots you take can at once be a great advantage or a disadvantage. The advantage is that there is no cost factor to be concerned about as there is when using film. The disadvantage is that many digital photographers end up with huge collections of photos on their hard drives, and often wish for an effective way to select and present the best ones.
Even in the age of the tablet computer, a printed book is a very pleasing medium. A book is easy to carry, requires no external power, and makes a wonderful gift. A well-printed book can also have a higher resolution and more luster than some computer monitors. Creating a book is a practical way to combine a handful of prints, and is a great way for pro photographers to assemble a portfolio to show to potential clients.
Books also stand the test of time. We can still leaf through old photo albums without having to make any extra effort or use special equipment. I can’t help wondering if the same will be true for today’s digital image files 50 years from now.
And last but not least, a book has a physical presence—people simply love to handle books and have them around. I could list a whole lot of additional reasons for creating photo books, but the fact that you are reading this indicates that you probably think books are a good idea.
It is easy to imagine that tablet computers and other viewing devices will soon be a permanent part of our everyday lives, but I still believe that a well-laid-out photo book will have its place within the media of the future. A photo book comes alive from a careful and artistic arrangement of a well-thought-out selection of images, and text is an added bonus. The ideas for image and text layouts described in this book (as well as the design of interactive elements) play just as important a role in electronic media as they do in print, because when viewed on an electronic device, a nicely designed photo book will always be a better alternative to a simple folder full of image files.
Figure 1.1: Travel and family events are typical subjects for photo books
The ability to design and print custom books of photos that don’t cost a fortune is a direct result of recent progress in print technology. The invention of digital offset printing has made it possible to print small print runs or single books at an affordable price, giving birth to the idea of creating individual photo books.
The advantages of a printed photo book over a traditional photo album are many. Pictures can’t fall out of a photo book the way they do from a traditional photo album; the options for adding decorative elements such as frames and titles are virtually endless; and design elements such as background images are also impossible to implement in a traditional photo album. Take a look at the example photo books shown on the next couple of pages—Always a Marine, by Clyde Adams, for example—and ask yourself which of these would have been possible using traditional photo album design techniques.
The most common themes for photo books are travel and family—whether simple photos of your kids or of special events such as birthdays, weddings, or perhaps a baptism. But there are no limits to what you can do with a photo book, and it is relatively simple to create an affordable, permanent memento of a day trip or an important party. Professional photo portfolios are another common use for photo books.
How about reviewing your family’s year in a photo book? The years rush by, and you will soon be glad you have a reminder of what you were up to just a few years ago. Or how about going a step further and making an illustrated book of your family’s history? The younger generations love to see how their ancestors lived, and it is exciting to document your life for your children.
Figure 1.2: Clyde Adams printed his book about his father, Always a Marine, using the Blurb service. This is a great example of a lovingly designed family history photo book.
Children like to see their scanned paintings and drawings in print, and a book of memories is a great aid to helping youngsters learn to read. There really are no limits to what you can do with a photo book.
Throughout the book you will find inspiring examples of the very different approaches you can take when creating a photo book. Some service providers offer ideas and galleries on their websites, and the Blurb bookstore and photo book competition page Photography Book Now are great examples that contain loads of fantastic photo books. Other sources of inspiration include the Get Inspired page at SmileBooks and the Picablog at Picaboo.
The bigger your book, the more carefully you have to plan it. The structure of this book follows the basic workflow you should use when creating a photo book, so beginners can dive right in and read straight through. Experienced photo book designers can pick and choose from the themes that interest them most.
Whatever your skill level, it is essential to have a clearly structured workflow from the start. The following sequence has been tried and tested and is a good starting point for most book projects. Consider the basics first, such as how big you want your book to be and how much money you are prepared to spend on it. Once you determine these things, you can look for an appropriate service provider. This is the stage at which you begin to limit your ideas, as various providers offer different levels of service, such as a maximum page size or image resolution. Choosing the service provider for your first project is a big step, but things get easier as you gain experience, and you will probably end up using a small number of favorite providers once you know which are best suited to your personal working style.
The next step in the process is to select and sort your photos, and prepare them for printing. It is a good idea to do this before you start designing a layout, as most photo book software offers only basic image processing functionality, if any.
TIPS & TRICKS PRE-SORT YOUR PHOTOS The greater the number of photos you want to use in your photo book, the more important it is to sort them carefully before you start. This saves a lot of time and effort in the long run.
It may appear time-consuming to sort your photos before you start to design your layout, but this is not the case. It’s just like cooking—making a meal is much quicker if you prepare all the ingredients first. 
Figure 1.3: Photobookgirl created a collaborative cookbook with her friends that contains not only their favorite recipes, but also their favorite photos from the year gone by. The book was printed at Mixbook.
You can develop ideas for your book’s storyboard (i.e., the overall structure) while you are sorting your photos. Photo books are often arranged chronologically, but there certainly are alternative concepts. You can then select the format and other basic design elements of your book. The size of the finished book is the first choice you have to make. Some providers insist that you select a particular preconfigured product right from the start, and it is not always possible to change your selection later.
The next thing to consider is the layout. At this stage, it is essential to work carefully and logically, especially if you are planning a big book. A typical beginner’s mistake is to start laying out the book without first considering things like page numbering or font styles. Most photo book software is quite clunky when it comes to making global adjustments to settings that you have already made. Once you have made your basic choices, the template you’ve created is applied to all following pages.
Figure 1.4: Lutz Schnier used his book about the Hagenbeck zoo in Hamburg to present his best animal photos
It is a good idea to write and edit text before you insert it into a layout. You don’t have to decide in advance exactly how you want to position each picture, but it is always good to have a couple of basic layouts in mind when you start. You can leave designing important elements, such as the cover or the title and end pages, until later, as it is often counterproductive to force yourself to come up with a cool idea too early in the process. You will often find that cover ideas occur spontaneously while you are working on other parts of your project.
Figure 1.5: Cain Cooper used the Blurb service to create his alternative wedding photo book The Wedding of Maureen & Sandy
After you have a couple of basic ideas for the layout, you can begin the real creative work of page design. Try to work one (double) page at a time. This book contains a number of sections that deal with the intricacies of image and text layout and describes how to implement them at various service provider sites.
This book provides a whole range of ideas to inspire your creative thinking, and also explains how to get ideas from books and magazines. The projects outlined in the final chapter also provide a wealth of ideas and show you just how effective the concepts in the rest of the book can be when they are applied to real-world projects.
The final step is to check your book for errors. Using the checklist described in chapter 11 will ensure that you don’t miss any details before you press the Print button.
It is always a good idea to produce a preview. Some providers have built-in preview generation functionality.
Last but not least, always remember to save your finished project—you never know, it might just be good enough to print again later!
TIPS & TRICKS SAVING A PROJECT Don’t forget to save your work regularly. Like all other programs, photo book software crashes every now and again. Some software, such as that provided by Blurb, automatically saves projects at regular intervals, but this is not the case for all of the programs we looked at. It makes sense to save a complete copy after each major change you make to a layout. Most programs use the common Ctrl+S/Cmd+S keystroke to save a file.
If you have made major changes, but are not really sure whether you want to apply them to the whole book, you can save them as a different version with its own name. Blurb offers the Duplicate option for doing just that. I recommend that you name each version using the date and time as well as the version—for example, 2011-11-27_1230_version_A. This makes it much easier to sort your work and find the right file later.
Remember not to create filenames with spaces, as many programs have problems handling them.