‘ A Book Of Flowers‘ by JeannieM26 displays gorgeous floral photos within digitally scrapbooked pages (click here for more information on digital scrapbooking) along with various quotes by flower lovers. What I appreciate about this book is the care Jeannie took in creating the perfect backgrounds and finding the perfect words. “Flowers…are a proud assertion that a ray of beauty outvalues all the utilities of the world”. This quote pulls me into the accompanying photograph because the sentiment speaks to me in such a personal way. When I look at a thing of beauty like a flower, I breath easier and set aside the logisitics and worries of my “real” life. Thank you Jeannie and Ralph Waldo Emerson for taking me to my happy place

‘ Flowers, Art, and Whimsy‘ is another gorgeous study, this time from a modern point of view. Gone are the gentle floral backgrounds and romantic quotes. This time it’s sleek and black and magnified. I love the images where author MalibuSeaside distorts the images through round glass globes. Very cool.

Finally, we take our floral fascination to the extreme by focusing on a single type of flower, the orchid. CarolynL172 takes us on a tour of the ‘ 2008 Orchid Show‘ in NYC, which is non-stop orchid fun. This orchid-obsessed photographer lovingly captures every leaf, every blossom, every color imagineable. We also get to see amazing orchid displays, such as these beyond-beautiful arches made entirely of orchids.

Do you want to make, or have you ever made a flower photo book? If so, tell us about it by commenting on this blog. And if you have a photo book you’d like to share, we welcome you to post it on Shutterfly Gallery.

‘ A Dramatic Love Story‘ by FullColorLifeofKia is definitely more than your average wedding book, because it includes the author’s entire circle of theatre colleagues - everyone who travelled  in a National Tour of ‘A Christmas Carol’. Not only do we get to go on the author’s journey of courtship, we also get to experience bright lights and curtain calls. I especially love that the bride and groom played husband and wife in the show. And the best part of this story is that the actress playing the bride and groom’s daughter, also played their young matchmaker in real life.

In the inspirational photo book ‘ Team Alabama 2008‘, Saras327 shows us her group’s strong commitment to Team Alabama and the game of baseball. I love the on-field action shots, and the off-field moments where team members and families are relaxing together. The last page with the players in a pre-game huddle gives me goosebumps.

One of my favorite books in Gallery tells the story of a retired dentist and his wife, who help families across the world stay healthy through a  Worldwide Dental program. This volunteer team makes a huge difference to many families and their children, and you can see it in every page. So much hard work, and so many smiling faces.

What groups do you belong to, and how would you capture those team experiences in a photo book? Let us know by commenting on this blog. And if you have a photo book you’d like to share, we welcome you to post it on Shutterfly Gallery.

Shutterfly Gallery is bursting with photo books that use words to enhance the story. Here are five original and evocative ways to tell the story behind the pictures.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  Capture through captions
Adding captions is an easy way to connect a moment to a particular season or event. This works well for all types of photo books—a year in review, the trip of a lifetime, holiday time or a family reunion. Captions can be as simple as a date or name and as elaborate as excerpts from your journal.

Through their eyes
Some stories are best told by the stars of the photo book. Greg_Z gets inside the mind of a toddler and tells this year-in-review from the perspective of his two young daughters Amy and Julie.

Quotables for notables
saraS272 recorded quotations from politicians, poets and naturalists found on signs throughout the park on her recent trip to Yellowstone and used them as captions for her shots of the majestic scenery. The effect creates an homage to this wonderful national treasure.

Lyrical miracle
Put your photo book to music by writing the lyrics to a favorite song under the pictures. KarenB43 uses the lyrics of “ In My Life” by the Beatles in A Book for Mom, a photo book she created to celebrate her mother’s life. The pictures coupled with these poignant lyrics turns this photo book into something extraordinary.

Literally literary
Aspiring children’s book authors can let out their inner Eric Carle by writing a story to accompany their pictures. DeborahL109 does this beautifully with charming rhymes in her photo book A Trip to the Zoo.

Take a look at ‘ Beach ‘n River Inn‘. From the first page I’m hooked because the “before” picture is so dramatic. We’ve got collapsed shutters, severely damaged siding, bare grounds. How could this possibly turn into a decent living space? Then I turn the page and see signs of paradise. Outdoor redwood staircase , nice looking deck, greenery, hard wood floors. This is looking good. As I continue through the book I see lots of before and after images, room by room, and am amazed that these people have been able to turn something so damaged into something so beautiful.

‘ Home stylist portfolio‘ is also great fun, because the transformations are singificant, but the process doesn’t appear to be overwhelming. I see tired looking rooms turn into magazine-worthy living spaces. And no hammering was involved. Just a few plants, a furniture adjustment, and a lick of paint. Amazing changes with little hard labor. That’s my kind of transformation.

 Finally, we have ‘ Sam’s Wedding Album‘. To me, the most captivating pages in this book are the before and after images…from the girl in curlers to stunning bride.

What before and after experiences do you like to capture in photographs? Let us know by commenting on this blog. And if you have a photo book you’d like to share, we welcome you to post it on Shutterfly Gallery.

Local nature walks NATURALLY inspire us to capture these beautiful moments in pictures. Here are a couple of my favorites. All right, so one of them isn’t necessarily your local city park. But boy, is it beautiful!

In ‘ Amber Lillian goes on a Nature Walk‘, Mae_2 takes us on a journey through the local forest with her husband and two grandchildren. What I love about this book is how Mae shows her family engaged in the environment around them. We don’t just see pretty trees and mountains and skies, we see people holding fallen leafs, frogs, bags of collected maple leaves. We see two granddaughters looking out at the lake. These type of ‘people in nature’ shots make me feel like I’m right there, too - holding my own bag of leaves and enjoying the cool breeze off the water.

 Another gorgeous nature book is CLM17’s ‘ Autumn‘. It’s not about people, but I still love looking at it, because the scenery is absolutely amazing. I appreciate this book because it focuses on one theme and digs into it. We dive into everything in nature that reminds us of Autumn…from misty forests to bright orange folliage to mossy stone to breathtaking lakes. With every turn of the page I feel myself longing for late October, when the leaves start turning and the air is crisp and fresh.

What are your favorite nature images to capture? Let us know by commenting on this article. And if you have a photo book you’d like to share, we welcome you to post it on Shutterfly Gallery.

I’ve been digital scrapbooking for about a year and a half now. I don’t consider myself an expert by any means. At best I’m an intermediate. Using the ski slope analogy, I can probably get down the greens without falling, but I’m likely to fall on a blue square and I certainly don’t think I have any business being anywhere near a black diamond.

The first time I opened up PhotoShop I was completely befuddled. I didn’t know how to even start. I had a disk full of digital papers and elements and photos I wanted to scrap and I had no idea how to get them together. I consider myself pretty technology savvy, but PhotoShop is a very powerful tool and IMHO does not have a very intuitive user experience out the gate.

I went into work the next day and got someone to show me how layers worked and then I was on my way.

My first layout was a complete scraplift. I took this design created by Heather Preckel and made my own version. The photo was supposed to be b&w, but I couldn’t figure out how to do that so I settled for sepia toned (which sort of matched the brown in the word art anyway).

Scraplifting: Scraplifting is a term used among scrapbookers, to describe the concept of copying the designs and ideas of another’s layout and using them as your own.  It’s an excellent way for a beginner to ‘get going’. Click here for more on the art & etiquette of scraplifting.

PhotoShop Elements

At the recommendation of Renee Pearson, author of ‘ Digital Designs for Scrapbooking’, a terrific book for beginners that became my bible, I switched to Photoshop Elements, which is far easier for the digital scrapbooker just starting out. The only thing I’ve ever wanted to do, that Elements can’t do, compared to Photoshop, is curved text.

Layers

The very first thing you need to understand when working with any of the photoshop programs  is the notion of layers. Click here for a good tutorial.

Layered Templates: I love using layered templates. It’s a quick and easy way to create a page fast, especially helpful if you are creating a 20+ page book. With layered templates a designer has taken the time to create a good layout and you can make it your own by ‘clipping’ your own papers and photos to the predesigned layers.
Here are two good tutorials on working with layered templates with step by step instructions and screenshots .
Ali Edwards
Taylor Made Designs (includes a free template to download)

Quick Pages: Quick pages are an even faster way to digitally scrapbook. Someone has done all the creative design work for you and all that is left is adding your own photos and journaling. The cover of my Photography Workshop book was done from a quick page from Paislee Press  & the Queen of Quirk.
SAVE for Shutterfly photo books

When you are happy with your page, the last thing you will need to do is convert the .PST (PhotoShop) file into a JPEG for upload to Shutterfly.
File > save as > JPEG

I typically save at the highest resolution possible (12) which will look good even in our largest size book or scrapbook page, the 12×12.

 
Upload the JPEG to Shutterfly. Place it in your book just as you would a full bleed photo. Don’t forget to turn off vividpix for each image! Click here for tutorials.

But if you aren’t ready to jump into all of this, our Creating Keepsakes books are a really quick and easy way to get that digital scrapbook aesthetic, without the learning curve of PhotoShop.

Additional Resources for Beginners:
‘ Digital Designs for Scrapbookers’, Renee Pearson
Digital Scrapbooking Magazine
‘Digital Scrapbooking 1-5’, Simple Scrapbooks

Online Stores (great places for inspiration and digital assets)
Designer Digitals
Digital Design Essentials
Heather Ann Designs
Jen Wilson
Oscraps
Scrapgirls
Shabby Miss Jenn Designs

Blogs
Ali Edwards
Jessica Sprague
Paislee Press
Taylormade

Making Shutterfly photo books has been a wonderful hobby for me over the last several years. My interest in photobooks first began by making an 8×8 Story book. It was a Father’s day gift for my husband and was easily and quickly to put together into a lovely book. Hundreds, if not thousands, of jpeg files of daddy and daughter photos were already stored on my computer and easily retrievable.  The book was put together in no time and arrived for Father’s day. It made my husband the most proud father in the world to receive it and is still a favorite in our household.

But since making that simple Father’s day tribute, I have taken on a much more intensive task, this time embarking in time travel in an attempt to document and discover my family’s past generations. I wanted my children to know their great grandparents, great aunts and great uncles, as well as their grandparents in their youth. The means by which that could all be made possible was with Shutterfly photobooks and some modern digital technology.

I set out to find as many stories and forgotten photos of relatives that I could possibly discover. I have always personally believed that having a photo to tie in with a story about someone, leaves a greater impression. It’s easier to know someone when you can put a face to the name. And so began my quest to find such things.

My first discovered treasures, happened to be a glamorous but severely creased photo of my 20 something year old mother and a darling childhood photo of my 90 year-old Aunt Lila, who was born in 1916. I was thrilled to have found them. Both photos were beautiful, but Lila’s was very faded, torn and tattered and my mother’s was almost in pieces, the creases being deeply embedded. Both were in great need of restoration.

My project began with scanning each at a resolution of 300 dots per inch or dpi. Next, I began filling in the missing bits of each photo with a cloning technique that copies good portions of the picture into the areas that are creased, torn or missing. After filling in all the damaged areas with good matching ones, and adjusting Lila’s photo for contrast and density, the faded old photo became vivid and sharp! I digitally added a subtle touch of hand coloring and this photo literally looked as if it had woken up from a long sleep!

My mother’s photo had a glamorous makeover by cloning out each crease and adjusting contrast and color for a beautifully balanced black and white result. Both photos could now be enjoyed by everyone as they were no longer forgotten treasures, stored away in a dark closet. They could be placed into my Shutterfly photobooks for all to marvel over!

I have found by trial and error, to obtain the best result, scan your photos at a decent resolution depending on the size of the photo you are working with. For instance, in my Classic Photo Booth book, I was working with many small photos of approximately 2×3 inches. Scanning at a resolution of 600 dpi gave me a wonderful result that allowed each photo to work well in photo templates as large as the full 8×8 page. I scan photos 5×7 and larger at a resolution of 300 dpi and have had wonderful printing results.

Personally scanning and restoring vintage photos might not be for everyone, but with Shutterfly’s recent partnership with industry leader, ScanCafe, it doesn’t have to be! ScanCafe, provides a scanning and restoration service for your old photos, slides and even negatives, bringing your treasured memories into the digital age, and SAFELY too!  For peace of mind, ScanCafe uses a door-to-door online tracking system integrated with UPS so you can follow your package not only while in transit, but also during production at each station within the lab itself! You can see your order every step of the way which is so important. I believe many shoeboxes full of photos, slides and negatives have been waiting for this convenient and safe way of coming into the digital age. Visit ScanCafe and see what they have to offer at http://shutterfly.scancafe.com/index.php

I am convinced that incorporating old family photos into Shutterfly photo books have made my books much more interesting and complete. I find it amazing while studying old photos, to see a familiar dimple, an endearing crooked smile or even an unruly cowlick that I recognize in family members today! So many traits continue down the genetic line and to be able to meet our ancestors by studying their photos and learning where some of these things have come from, brings the past into the present and truly makes me smile.  While I may not be able to shake my great grandfather’s hand, with a little digital help and Shutterfly, I can surely introduce him to my children.

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My name is Ishantha and I head up User Experience for the site and Product Management for Share at Shutterfly. I am also an abstract painter in my “spare” time. People always ask me about my art, what inspires me and a myriad other questions that most artists prefer to dodge.  As I was driving home one day, it occurred to me that a professional looking Photobook would be a great way to tell the story behind my art. Something I could hand out at exhibitions or share online in the Shutterfly Gallery (which I did).

Since I posted the book in the Gallery, I am deeply moved and thankful for all the wonderful comments I have received so far. I am getting more credit than I truly deserve, so I am going to share with you a simple palette of tricks on how I created the book. Yes, it is 100 pages long and people in the blogs say it has a professional look, but it was actually super easy to create.

Here’s a link to browse my art book in the Shutterfly Gallery. Check it out and I’ll take you through the process I went through.

1 | essence

Before I got to the fun part of designing the book, I took a moment to reflect what the essence of my story was all about. I think this is really important as it helps re-enforce a key theme throughout the book. My story was about my love for art and how my painting style evolved towards abstraction. I love modern art. As such, I wanted the entire design of the book to have a contemporary style. I found this became a guiding principle as I designed the book – the layouts, the fonts, the backgrounds, the cover, the back, the spine.

 
2 | gather

The next step was to gather my artifacts – the pictures and text that got strung together to tell the story. Most of the pictures were of my paintings over the years. I planned to place them in the book in chronological order. As you know, there are many ways to organize your pictures – you may want to think about chronological order which is a natural way to tell your story. Once I uploaded all my pictures, I simply sorted them in chronological order and put them in the filmstrip in the photobook creation path. Most of the text was written in word, which I later cut and paste into the text boxes in each page of the book.

3 | create

Now for the fun part. Creating my book was much easier than it looks. I wanted the book to have a contemporary, clean and minimalistic look. I was also time constrained. So I came up with the idea of creating just 2-3 page templates that looked great and then replicating these sets of pages across the book. The really cool feature “Apply selected to all pages” (link on the bottom left of the navigation bar) helped apply the layout I liked to each page. This way I did not have to take the time to design each page as I went along.

Here are a few other design decisions I made upfront that speeded up the process considerably:

Simplicity – I decided to put a single picture of my art on the pages on right and a text describing the art on the left. This made it really easy to drag and drop the pictures that were already arranged in chronological order to each page on the right.

 
Framework – The corresponding page on the left described the painting. The description for each painting followed the same framework (title of painting, size, year it was painted and medium). This framework helped me to fill in the blanks for each page on the left. This also helped the reader to simply thumb through the pages and get a feel for the progression in my style – the main theme behind my story.

Accents – I wanted the book design to be minimalistic and elegant. I love typography and so I played with different font sizes till I got some interesting visual effects.  To be honest, it is quite subtle but I really liked the little details I could do, such as the bold large font for the number of each painting (see above left).  To create fonts that were different in size, I used two adjacent text boxes instead of putting it all in one. So, the number 9 in the picture above is in a separate text box from the text below it. This is also the same trick that helped me build a table of contents as shown below. The orange lines do not show up in the design, but are shown here to illustrate the boundary of each text box.

 
Negative space – In the step where you select the Style for the book, I picked “Classic White” which worked perfectly for my story. I intentionally did not fill out a lot of text boxes to create more white space. I found the white (negative) space to be a valuable technique in creating a modern look and feel.

 
Variety – I added a couple more templates for variety and visual interest throughout the book. Simply, changing the size of the picture helped break the pattern and add some variety. However, as you see from the image below most of the pages have the same two page template, which really made it a breeze to create my book.

Fun – Finally, creating anything is all about the fun you are going to have along the way. I had lots of fun making and sharing this book. I hope this inspires you and I can’t wait to see where your creativity and storytelling takes you. Have Fun!

In this interview, Rachael tells us how she was designated family historian, how road trips and family photos are her favorite subjects, and also imparts some great advice to us fellow storytellers - getting creative is easier with a little help from fellow artists (like us, on  Shutterfly Gallery).
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Tell us about yourself
I grew up in southern Utah, surrounded by national parks so I was pretty much destined to love nature. My husband and I travel as often as we are able, usually by motorcycle so we can immerse ourselves in our surroundings. Between the two of us, we take a lot of photographs! I love to tell the stories behind our photos, so I was thrilled to discover digital scrapbooking. I’m definitely an amateur, but I feel pretty strongly about the importance of preserving memories.

What got you interested in making photo books?
I love to take pictures, but never felt I was doing them justice by sticking them in an album. Photo books are the perfect answer; they draw people in and share the photos in a captivating and meaningful format. They make unbeatable gifts, too.

What are your favorite images to capture and why?
I’m either photographing my scenic vacations, or my adorable nieces and nephews. I am sort of the family historian…since the kids keep their mamas pretty busy, I’m the only one who has time to tell their stories!

Who inspires you?
Katie Pertiet and Cassie Jones (1gr8muggle). I have no idea where they get all their ideas and energy, but I love it!

What kind of stories do you like to tell in your photo books?
The photobooks I keep are usually about our road trips. However, I also love to create family scrapbooks and give them to family members for birthdays or other special occasions.

What advice would you give your fellow photo book storytellers?
The Gallery is an awesome place for inspiration! Whenever I’m working on a project and feel like I need some fresh ideas, I can always find something creative and inspiring in the Gallery. I also love the support of the Shutterfly community; it feels like family! If anyone has questions about my projects or how to get started, I’m more than happy to help.

What’s your next photo book project?
I’m working on a book about our trip to Havasupai…seriously one of the most beautiful places on earth!

What are some of your favorite Gallery photo books and why?
I absolutely love “ Coles Book” by denasimoneaux; it is so creative and artistic, and tells such a sweet story. I also love the book “New York City” by teeleedee. She is a digital scrapbooker whose work I am familiar with via the DesignerDigitals.com gallery. She is always inspiring, and this book is no exception. It is beautifully designed and portrays her story beautifully.