Online photo books?

TexasPaige · March 2010

I have about a million pictures of my son, and I would love to scrapbook...but seeing as he is approaching 17 months and I haven't done a thing with the photos, I don't see myself doing that. I used to scrapbook in college, but they were very amateur-looking. It was a "how many photos can I fit on one page" thing. I have since seen all these gorgeous scrapbook pages, but it seems overwhelming to buy all the products, get that crafty, etc.

My next thought is to create a photo book online that I can print out into a real book. I think I could come close to keeping up with this through the years. The issue is, I want more of a scrapbook look and more sophisticated/varied layouts than what's on Shutterfly (that's what I usually use for photo gifts).

If you have ever made a scrapbook/photo book online, please share the website and let me know your thoughts!

PenguinKaty · March 2010

I've been using www.Ubuiladabook.com for a freelance project and have been pretty happy with it. The free program you can download and play with is a very easy interface for putting in pictures or placing text, either in preset places or freestyle, and adding backgrounds beyond just the stock selections!

Some drawbacks though...

** the program runs kind of slow, especially with a lot of images
** it doesn't recognize some fonts for some reason
** there is no ruler option, so for what I'm doing (business project) I ended up having to build pages individually in Adobe InDesign to get them lined up precisely, save as flat images and import them from there... however there is a grid option, so with a scrapbook you'll probably be ok - it's not supposed to be super precise!
** very important, all the images, backgrounds, etc. need to be print quality (150 dpi or higher) or the program will yell at you constantly

A few minor setbacks, but I think for you worth a download to play with it and see if you like it. Just make sure you download it to a computer you use all the time that has no chance of exploding before you're done with your project or you're done for - once you start a project on one computer you can't transfer it to another, even if you download the program again - one more setback! Good luck with your project!