Photo Book Backgrounds

Photo book backgrounds are the designs that are on the pages that you put your photos on in your photo book. These can be combined into groups called themes. A book theme usually has more than one background in it, although some photo book publishers only have one in their themes.

This page sets the tone for your pictures. If you like a very simple setting for your pictures, you might like just a simple white or black page.

Try to set the mood for your book with the pages you choose. A birthday celebration for a young child would lend itself well to bright, cheerful, bold colors. Look for the pages that help to tell the story of your child’s special birthday.

You don’t always need all the glitz, though. For example, if you wanted a sophisticated look to your wedding book, you would look for pages that are subtle or just plain black and white with some full page bleeds of photos that you want showcased. You wouldn’t want bold, busy designs on your pages that would detract from your pictures.

Want some ideas on a particular background? Try these:

Baby Birthday Christmas Easter Fall Graduation

Halloween Heritage Love Pets Pink Heart Polka Dot

Sports Thanksgiving Travel Wedding Winter

All publishers have “free backgrounds” to use when you’re creating a photo book. Some publishers have more to choose from than others, some have their own designers and some are submitted by users.

For instance, Shutterfly's are created by their own design team along with other designers such as Cross-My-Heart, Flair Designs, Karen Foster Design, Pebbles Inc. and Scrapbook Elements.

Shutterfly has a Gallery where users post their photo books. This is nice because it gives you an idea of how they will look in a book. To create a photo book with one of the designs from the Gallery, simply click on the "Make one like this" button. It will then copy the design, styles and layouts of the book you're looking at. All you have to do is add your own pictures and text. Keep in mind this is only if the book you choose is not a Digital scrapbook. In which case, you would be editing a completely blank book.

Picaboo, on the other hand, have most of their designs created by users like you, with only a select few created by their own designers. This group of users is called their “Background Community” and they are free to use. Occasionally, a user will submit one which would work well for one of their themes (ideas) and then will be contacted for permission to use it in a particular theme. This Community gives Picaboo a definite edge when it comes to the number available. When using these pages, depending on the version number of your web browser*, you may have to save the image to your hard drive and then import it to your photo book as you would any normal image. Then it’s simply a drag and drop onto the area of your album page where you want it to appear.

Using Picaboo Backgrounds gives you the directions to use the additional backgrounds in your own photobooks.

Some publishers make access to viewing their backgrounds prior to selecting a photo book, easy and convenient. OurHubbub, Picaboo and MyCanvas are perfect examples. For these publishers, all you have to do is find the theme you’re interested in, and click to preview the different backgrounds. I find this enormously beneficial since I can decide even before starting the photo book whether I like the what is available, and I can start thinking of specific photos to use on the pages.

While Shutterfly offers lots of backgrounds for their many theme books, the process is a little different. You need to actually choose a photo book, choose the size and cover and then click the “Get Started” button. From there you can click the Style button and see the list. Photoworks and Snapfish are pretty much the same way. Most publishers who display their backgrounds this way also make it easier for you to change your choices once your book has been started.

*When Internet Explorer 6 came around, Microsoft added some new security protocols which made it impossible to drag and drop photos directly into a book. The same is true with Internet Explorer 7. With Firefox, the ability to drag and drop was removed for the same security reasons in a much earlier version.

Return to the Home Page from Backgrounds