Digital Photo Books – 3 Common Mistakes People Make When Uploading Their Images

One of the most popular ways of displaying photos is by designing a photo book online. As new photo sites pop up regularly, it doesn't take long to make a high quality photo book. I've made quite a few photobooks and as I became more experienced I discovered I was doing some things the hard way. Apparently I'm not alone, therefore I'm sharing my tips on how to make the process fast and easy.

Online Photobook Building Mistake #1: Uploading Too Many or Too Few Images.

I've been guilty of this on more than one occasion, After I've started my book I’ve figured out that I didn’t have nearly enough pictures for the design I chose and I had to stop and look for more pictures. And sometimes I have far too many and I have to change my layout to accommodate them or else not use them. The quantity of pictures needed depends on the book size, page layout and number of images per page.

What to Do Instead - Spend a few minutes planning your layout and assessing the images you want to use. Determine the size and number of pages of the book you want to create (the more pages the higher the price). Do you want to use large images and only use 1 or 2 per page? Thus at least 20 and up to 40 photos would be needed for a 20-page book. For collage pages with 4,5,even 10 photos on a page, you could use 150 or more pictures in a 20-page photo book. A little planning before you start will pay off.

Online Photo Book Creation Mistake #2 - Not Editing Photos Before Uploading

Most photo book publishers have only very basic online editing. Typically you will find tools for cropping, frequently a redeye reduction tool, or color change to sepia or black and white. Some photo book publishers will automatically make corrections for color/brightness/contrast when your book is printed. To remove unwanted objects like cars from your photo, or you want to remove that giant pimple on your chin, the photo website’s online software probably.

What to Do Instead - Edit Your Images in Your Own Photo Editing Software. Trust me, you will be far happier with the results. It won't cost you a lot of money, and it's not necessary to get Photoshop. There are lots of great, inexpensive photo editing software programs available for less than $100, and several are free or may already be on your PC. Corel Paintshop Pro and Photoshop Elements are two very popular editing programs. Editing will be faster too, since these software programs offer batch editing, for example making the same color adjustments for a sequence of photos. Therefore, by doing any necessary editing before uploading your images, you won't have to backtrack and make the fixes later. Special Note: If your online photobook publisher makes automatic color and contrast corrections during the printing process and you've made similar corrections in your own software, don't forget to uncheck the "automatic color corrections" box during the order process so your pictures are not corrected again.

Online Photobook Design Error Number Three - Photos Resolution is Too Low

You can run into this issue if you import pictures from sharing sites like Flickr or Facebook. Even though it's a bonus to be able to import pictures from these and other sites, usually the photos are converted to a lower resolution to create a smaller file size for storing. You may encounter quality problems if you try to use these photos at bigger sizes in your photobook. These photos won’t look a sharp and crisp when printed. For an 8x8, 8x11 or 7x9 photo book your photos will print best at a resolution of 1600x1200. For bigger photo books such as the traditional scrapbook 12x12 size, you will need images of at least 2000 x 1600 pixels if you plan to use them fairly large.

What You Should Do Instead - Try to Use the Original Photos if Available
Most online photo services will give you a warning icon if a particular image is deemed too low resolution to print well. Don't take this lightly because if you go ahead and use this photo at a big size you won't be happy if it prints blurry. If you really want to use these photos, they will work best as smaller pictures, i.e. they are just one of several on a page. For the best results try to use the original images if possible.

With these tips you will find making photo books on line goes much faster and you will definitely be happier with the results.

The publisher of http://www.digitalphotos101.com, Valerie Goettsch loves designing photo books on line for all occasions. Click the above link to learn more.