Vickie P. from our Shutterfly Gallery Guru team, gives us her personal take on what she loves about Shutterfly’s new photo book making features. Bottom line: photo books are easier to make than ever.

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Celebrating Timeless Moments in No Time at All
 
For years I had drawers and boxes full of loose photos. Old photo albums weren’t holding on to the memories that well anymore. I knew I needed a better way to properly enjoy and share my photos and so began my fascination with Shutterfly photo books. The good news is that with Shutterfly’s new book-making enhancements, making a Shutterfly photo book has just gotten easier. 
 
NEW PHOTO BOOK TOOLS AND FEATURES

Storyboard™ tool
What I find to be the most exciting enhancement Shutterfly has added, is the new Storyboard™ tool. With it, I was able to put a book together in no time at all.

First, I looked through my photos for the ones I wanted in my book.

Next, I uploaded them to my account, added them to my book project and chose the new Storyboard™ tool in the pages section.

All I had to do was drag and drop my selected photos on the left onto page 1, page 2, page 3, and all the way up to page 20.

I clicked Done, returned to the Pages tab, to find that my book was pretty much finished! All the hard part anyway. Shutterfly found the exact layouts I needed automatically with no fuss or searching on my part!

And if I want to adjust my layout choices, I simply use the layout feature on the left-hand side of the page.

Easy to change layout and undo feature
Now comes another really cool feature.. While looking over the completed pages, I wanted to add an additional photo to one of the pages. All I had to do was drag it onto the page background and the page layout adjusted for that extra photo!!  It was THAT easy! And if I didn’t like the new layout, another great new feature is the UNDO LAYOUT button, which allowed me to go back to the layout I had before having added the newest photo.

Pictures Tab and ZOOM view
I also appreciate the new Pictures tab you’ll see while making your book. Click on this tab to find a large workspace showing ALL of the photos you’ve chosen to add to the book. This view allows me to EASILY find the photo or group of photos I need, and to drag and drop or remove pictures. And I could easily sort these pictures by date or name.  With the zoom view on hover, I was able to find the shot I wanted, first try. No more accidentally choosing a closed eye shot or a half smile.

Double-row picture strip
Once back in the Pages view, you’ll see now see a double-row picture strip instead of the single-row strip. This adds another level of ease into the creative process of making a book.

New fonts
You’ll also find lovely new fonts available for your captions and journaling. While the tried and true choices of Lindsey, Arial, Garamond, French Script, and Curlz, to name a few are still available and widely popular, maybe the new FREEHAND, LIORAH or PICA excite you as much as they do me! I can’t wait to incorporate the new PICA because I know how well it will work with my many vintage photos. It looks just like an old typewriter key struck the letters.  I also have great ideas for using the new Liorah to caption some breezy nature shots. Shutterfly now offers 22 different font styles to simulate penmanship for captions and journaling. I’ve been able to mix and match them for a fun, spontaneous look and have also enjoyed using one specific font as the default for my entire book.

New page layouts
With over 60 new page layouts, each page can be a new inspiration to tell your story. You can go “green” with the elegant Verde or jazz it up with Daddy-O. The end result is that of a very “pro” look and all done so simply and quickly.

Now that you’ve seen these new features, jump in and make a photo book of your own. You’ll be amazed at how easy it is. And when your photo book is complete, Shutterfly welcomes you to hang it in the Gallery, where you will inspire others to create and share their own masterpieces.