Make-Your-Own-Photobooks Primer

A Primer is any book of elementary principles. This primer isn't a tutorial for putting a photo book together. Putting a photo book together is very easy -- It is a primer on all the things you need to do before you get to sit in front of the computer and make your photo books.

The basic skill for putting a book together is the ability to drag pictures onto a page. If you can play Solitaire on the computer you have all the skills necessary to put the book together. The hardest parts happen before you put the book together. First, you need pictures and an idea. This can be harder than it sounds. Have you ever tried to find the pictures from an event that happened a year ago?

This Primer is designed to cover all the work that goes into getting and finding your pictures so you can make your own photo book. If you already know something, just jump over that area and check out the next topic.

How to Get Digital Photos

Using your digital camera is the most obvious way to get digital photos. You can also scan your pictures or have a photo CD made when you get pictures developed. You can even take pictures of old pictures with a digital camera.

Digital Camera

At this point we aren't going to discuss how to take better pictures, just how to get the pictures you need for your project.

How Do I Get My Photos off My Camera?

The three most common ways to get your photos off your camera are:

Connect with your USB Cable. Many digital cameras come with a USB cable that inserts into the camera and then inserts into the USB port on your computer. Your computer already has the software loaded onto it to help you recognize and use the camera when attached through the USB port.
Insert your memory card into your computer. Some computers come with a slot for most memory cards. In this case you just insert your card and your computer will allow you to read the card as if it were another hard drive. If you do not have a slot for the memory card you can purchase a reader that has a place for your card and connects to your computer through the USB port.
Use a docking station. Some cameras come with a docking station that connects to the computer's USB port. Check to see if there i s a compatible docking station for your camera, if you like this option the best and your camera doesn't come with a docking station.

How Many Megapixels Do I Need?
After buying a new camera, everyone asks how many megapixels does it have? Just how important is that in making photo books? Only one in a million photographs could benefit from more than 6 megapixels. Amateur photographers may have too much image noise (off-color speckles or rough edges) in pictures taken with more than 6 megapixels. But what about those of you who have a 2 megapixel camera? How do you fare?

An image resolution of 1600 x 1200 can be printed with good results as large as 8 x 10. A 2 megapixel camera will take pictures at that image resolution. And of course, not all the pictures you place in a photo book will be that large. So don't ditch lower resolution pictures. The photo book software will let you know if an image does not have enough resolution. So, you don't need to worry that a picture will come out blurry.

Taking Digital Pictures of Old Photos
If you have a digital camera and need to get a digital copy of an old photograph you can take a picture of the picture!

Using Stock Photos

Sometimes you just don't have the right pictures available to finish off your book. Don't despair -- you can check out Stock Photos to find pictures for your book.

Scanning Photos

If you have prints of pictures that you'd like to include in a photo book you can scan the pictures. You can scan these yourself or have a service scan them for you.

Have a service scan your photos
There are services that will scan your photos for as little as $0.19 a picture. This is a good option if you do not have many pictures to scan and do not need them right away. I have never used a service, yet. I am going to try out a few so I can report back the results to you.

Scan the pictures yourself
There are many types of scanners, but a flatbed scanner works nicely for scanning old photos. I did a crazy project last year -- I decided to scan all of our photos!! 4,000 scans later... Needless to say the project took me months. I used an HP Officejet 5610 All-in-One Printer/Scanner/Copier and it did a fine job. This is not an expensive piece of equipment, so don't feel you need to go out and get the best.

When scanning the pictures you will need a software program to help you with the imaging and scanning. I just used the software that came with the scanner and did not upgrade. It worked fine. And although the project took forever, it was fun to think about the picture as it was being scanned. Now some people would think it would be worth their time to send the pictures to a scanning service, and part of me agrees with that. But, I did enjoy thinking about each photo, and I would never have done that any other way.

More on DIY Scanning and Scanning Services

Organizing Your Photos

Organizing Photos on Your Computer
Saving your pictures to folders saves you time in the long run. Even if you do not label the pictures, you should organize groups of pictures on your hard drive. Using "My Documents" is the easiest way to do this. I never download pictures unless I create a specific folder for those pictures. If my card is full, it may take 3 or 4 folders to organize the photos.

Sometimes a photo could go into 2 or 3 different categories. It is easier to make a copy of the photo and put one in each folder. This could happen if you are on a vacation and take a picture of Uncle Mike. You might have a folder for that vacation and one for relatives.

There is no set logic on how to organize the folders - use what makes the most sense to you and take into account how you may be using the pictures in the future. Go to our How To Organize Photos page for more detailed ideas.

Here are some ways to organize your photos:

Organize by Date
I find a general year archive a good idea. In that year I will include a wide variety of folders, but I have found that I tend to remember which year a picture was taken. This yearly archive will also include several special occasion folders. Sometimes you have a few pictures that really don't fit into your other categories, so you can just put them in the yearly archive. You can also decide if you want to use monthly or quarterly photos.

Organize by Projects
If you have several projects in mind then you can organize by those projects. Family History project, Travel Retrospective, School Daze. You can organize by these projects as you get pictures.

Organize by Special Event
Special events are milestone events that take on a life by themselves. A wedding or the birth of a baby are obvious ones, but any event that is something you might want to commemorate with a photo project could use its own folder.

Organize by Personal Quirks
If it makes sense to you, go for it!

Organize with Photo Management Software

Photo management software will allow you to put tags onto your photos and search the pictures by these tags or keywords. You can give each picture more than one tag, so it can be included in more than one search. For instance, if you have a picture of your daughter's first birthday, you tag that picture with birthday and your daughter.

Here is a review of Photo Management Software