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I've taken a plunge of sorts. I just made a book through iPhoto '08. It was of our recent trip to Walt Disney World in Florida. The vacation was fun. Creating a book about it was a mostly pleasant experience if not exactly simple.
In this post I'll highlight what I did that was successful. There was a little trial and error involved, but mostly the task was straightforward and logical. I found it helpful to view the Apple tutorial on making a book. Simple as the video is, it showed how easy it is to make a book.
Note that you do not need to buy a hardcopy of your book from Apple. Once you've created your book, you can print your book either on paper or to a PDF that you can share with others, assuming bandwidth isn't an issue.
PHOTO EDITING
I had 284 photos from the trip, most of them taken with a Sony Cybershot DSC-T5 point-n-shoot digital camera and the rest with the iPhone. After backing up the originals and ensuring their integrity, I created a new album in iPhoto and copied all of the vacation photos to it. I took a few passes at editing my collection for the book.
I rotated pictures and deleted obviously bad images. I then took a pass at deleting photos I just didn't like. Eventually I took a final pass, rearranging photos and doing light duty editing. My rearranging was a matter of grouping images by topic, even if they didn't quite correspond to the timeline by which the photos were taken. The light duty editing was simply changing some parameters through iPhoto. Exposure and contrast were modified on some images in order to make them acceptable for the book.
I was impressed that iPhoto knew enough about when I took my pictures to merge them from multiple sources. I had images from the Sony that were burned to a CD at WDW; I also had images directly on the Sony I downloaded to my MacBook; additionally I had images on the iPhone that spanned the entire vacation. iPhoto initially arranged them by the time they were taken.
I was a bit surprised I ended the editing with roughly 80 images. In the film days of the past, I always figured I was good for having ten percent of my pictures being viewable. In this case I was closer to thirty percent. Mostly I credit digital technology to this. With both the Sony and iPhone, I can quickly see the results of my work and learn almost instantaneously. Also, an image that might have been too dark can often be easily adjusted to become quite acceptable.
MAKING A BOOK
iPhoto gives you many options for making a book. I wanted to create a hardcover book. Once chosen, I had many templates from which to choose. An interesting and practically unusable feature is Autoflow. It takes your images and sequentially fills in your book. It's interesting in that you can see lots of options from which to choose. For all practical purposes it's unusable for anyone who has some sense of how they wish to group their images. After many experiments with different themes, I chose the "Line Border" theme, and I manually added photos.
I began adding photos to the main part of the book, leaving the paper cover to last. Virtually each page required a modification to the layout. I wanted to group images logically, and have a small caption on each page. While layout options are a bit limited, I had little trouble finding combinations that would work for me.
The standard book is 20 pages long; mine ended at 32. My 80 images eventually dropped to 75, and I reused key images from the book for the paper cover. Captions were added, and the book was complete.
EDITING
I've spent time editing the book, modifying an image here, rewriting a caption there. I want people to pick up the book and enjoy it and not find it tedious. I also want it for us to remember our vacation over the years. It doesn't have everything in it, but it has the important things.
For instance, I kept the picture my wife took of the tile floor and the tips of her shoes. It was one of her first with the iPhone, and it was an accident. It did NOT make it into the book however.
On the other hand, we had lots of pictures taken with Disney characters. Most all of them are in the book. It was a significant part of the trip, and a little redundancy here I considered to be fine.
BUY THE BOOK
After I was reasonably sure the book was stable, I ordered a copy. A 20 page hardcover is US$30. Mine, with extra pages was just over US$40; tax, shipping, and handling brought it to just over US$50. It is supposed to be here in 6 to 10 days.
Is it worth it? Who knows? I'll know after it arrives. If nothing else, the PDF version is very cool, so it's good knowing I can create those. The one for this book is 32M however, so it isn't exactly small. I just think it's a very cool idea to make a book for something special like a fun vacation. I'll post commentary on the quality of the actual book when it arrives.
Below is the front of the paper cover for the book. Enjoy!
In this post I'll highlight what I did that was successful. There was a little trial and error involved, but mostly the task was straightforward and logical. I found it helpful to view the Apple tutorial on making a book. Simple as the video is, it showed how easy it is to make a book.
Note that you do not need to buy a hardcopy of your book from Apple. Once you've created your book, you can print your book either on paper or to a PDF that you can share with others, assuming bandwidth isn't an issue.
PHOTO EDITING
I had 284 photos from the trip, most of them taken with a Sony Cybershot DSC-T5 point-n-shoot digital camera and the rest with the iPhone. After backing up the originals and ensuring their integrity, I created a new album in iPhoto and copied all of the vacation photos to it. I took a few passes at editing my collection for the book.
I rotated pictures and deleted obviously bad images. I then took a pass at deleting photos I just didn't like. Eventually I took a final pass, rearranging photos and doing light duty editing. My rearranging was a matter of grouping images by topic, even if they didn't quite correspond to the timeline by which the photos were taken. The light duty editing was simply changing some parameters through iPhoto. Exposure and contrast were modified on some images in order to make them acceptable for the book.
I was impressed that iPhoto knew enough about when I took my pictures to merge them from multiple sources. I had images from the Sony that were burned to a CD at WDW; I also had images directly on the Sony I downloaded to my MacBook; additionally I had images on the iPhone that spanned the entire vacation. iPhoto initially arranged them by the time they were taken.
I was a bit surprised I ended the editing with roughly 80 images. In the film days of the past, I always figured I was good for having ten percent of my pictures being viewable. In this case I was closer to thirty percent. Mostly I credit digital technology to this. With both the Sony and iPhone, I can quickly see the results of my work and learn almost instantaneously. Also, an image that might have been too dark can often be easily adjusted to become quite acceptable.
MAKING A BOOK
iPhoto gives you many options for making a book. I wanted to create a hardcover book. Once chosen, I had many templates from which to choose. An interesting and practically unusable feature is Autoflow. It takes your images and sequentially fills in your book. It's interesting in that you can see lots of options from which to choose. For all practical purposes it's unusable for anyone who has some sense of how they wish to group their images. After many experiments with different themes, I chose the "Line Border" theme, and I manually added photos.
I began adding photos to the main part of the book, leaving the paper cover to last. Virtually each page required a modification to the layout. I wanted to group images logically, and have a small caption on each page. While layout options are a bit limited, I had little trouble finding combinations that would work for me.
The standard book is 20 pages long; mine ended at 32. My 80 images eventually dropped to 75, and I reused key images from the book for the paper cover. Captions were added, and the book was complete.
EDITING
I've spent time editing the book, modifying an image here, rewriting a caption there. I want people to pick up the book and enjoy it and not find it tedious. I also want it for us to remember our vacation over the years. It doesn't have everything in it, but it has the important things.
For instance, I kept the picture my wife took of the tile floor and the tips of her shoes. It was one of her first with the iPhone, and it was an accident. It did NOT make it into the book however.
On the other hand, we had lots of pictures taken with Disney characters. Most all of them are in the book. It was a significant part of the trip, and a little redundancy here I considered to be fine.
BUY THE BOOK
After I was reasonably sure the book was stable, I ordered a copy. A 20 page hardcover is US$30. Mine, with extra pages was just over US$40; tax, shipping, and handling brought it to just over US$50. It is supposed to be here in 6 to 10 days.
Is it worth it? Who knows? I'll know after it arrives. If nothing else, the PDF version is very cool, so it's good knowing I can create those. The one for this book is 32M however, so it isn't exactly small. I just think it's a very cool idea to make a book for something special like a fun vacation. I'll post commentary on the quality of the actual book when it arrives.
Below is the front of the paper cover for the book. Enjoy!
