I’ve always had an affinity for photo albums, it’s a fond memory I have from childhood, looking through our family’s. I also believe it to be where part of my passion for photography stems from, so I cannot honestly believe it’s taken me so long to create a photo book myself. I mean I’ve had experience creating a printed portfolio and photo albums, but creating a custom bound photo book which is totally your own creation is something really quite special. When Papier got in touch about this project for me it couldn’t be more of a perfect fit and feel I might end up having a small obsession with creating photo books now!
For any fellow photo book beginners, I have a few tips for you.
Start off by creating a digital album of all the photos you want included in the book. I first made an album on my phone and then sent the photos via airdrop to my laptop and popped them all in a folder.
Secondly check they are all either jpg format or png, if they are HEIC a format which is a high resolution that some iPhone photos are taken in, the Papier uploader will not accept it as usually HEIC format means the photo is too large to upload. I used this HEIC converter to JPG, which is super useful. Which brings me onto my next step, make sure all the photos are sized 1500px longest side at the most. Create another album within your first album to put all the resized images to. This way when you upload them to the Papier site to create your photo book they’ll all upload seamlessly.
Next choose your size/shape/design of your photo book, I opted for the large minimalist design in portrait. I like the idea of creating a yearly/annual photo book so am planning on sticking to this format for the years ahead now that I’m well practiced in creating them and all. Now for the fun bit the layout. There are lots of designs to choose from to set out your photos; my favourite for this book was the full page photo with border, two landscapes and four portrait shots on one page.
Then to begin uploading your images and begin the layout of your photo book. For a perfectionist like me this was pretty time consuming but so so worth it!
Once the layout was confirmed I decided on a photo for the front cover and checked over my title (always double check for spelling errors!) and the layout once more just to be sure & then pressed order! Whilst of course in this day and age we are so used to everything being so instant, the (rather short) wait for the package made it all the more meaningful and lasting in my opinion.
I hope this little step by step has encouraged you to start documenting physically again! I promise you won’t regret it when you’re sitting with a cuppa on a Sunday afternoon reminding yourself of the joyful and glorious memories captured that year.
AD | These photos were taken as part of a paid partnership with Papier but I have not been asked to create this post as part of the project. I thought that some of the following tips would be helpful to you if your creating a photo book for the first time also and wanted to share them with you. So voila!
