7 genius tips for a perfect photobooK

Icon made by Pixel perfect from www.flaticon.com

Photobooks are a great way to enjoy and share your photos and even a way to downsize all those bulky printed photo albums. I love a good photobook, but the disappointment of working so hard to make that book and when it comes back and it is just not what you expected is not so good. So check out my seven genius tips to get that photobook right the first time!

Tip 1: Pick the right supplier and format
Picking the right supplier for your photo will influence the final result. So, before you launch into committing yourself to one particular supplier do your research.

• Do they do the size, quality and format that you want?

• Do they have the level of creativity that you want?

• Do they have their own book creation tool that is easy to use?

• Are they in your price range?

Definitely do a bit of a google search to see what people are saying, but don't go the rabbit hole too far you could spend a ton of time researching and come back to where you started. But at the end of the day remember you do get what you pay for. However a tip from me, photobook companies are always doing special offers around special times of the year, unless you are on a time deadline I would hang around for a while to see if you can get a bit of discount.

Tip 2: Photo quality
Let's just say if you have a crappy photo, you will get a crappy photobook.
You can play around with the quality a little bit on Photoshop, but to be honest, there's only so much you can do to improve the quality. So if you're expecting to enlarge your photo onto an entire page of a photo, make sure you pick the best quality photos that you can. Check out the photo quality or DPI setting that your selected photobook printer needs to get a good quality image, it will say somewhere if you search their site because if you don't all that research you have done into the best quality photobook printer will be just wasted.

Tip 3: Organise your photos before you start
Before you start creating your photobook move away from the book creation tool and select your photos first. I would definitely recommend having a sort and pick out the photos that you want to include. Create a folder for the photos you want to include and then load that up to your photobook creation tool, believe me, it will make your life a lot simpler and a lot quicker in the long run.

Tip 4: Pick a theme
If you're like me and like to do multiple photobooks on particular subjects and you're a little bit obsessed with making your bookshelf look great. Before you start your book creation think about the look and theme you want to achieve. I tend to focus on one colour for a collection, and pick one font to go with it so all of the photobooks so they all fit together beautifully.

Tip 5: Info pages and captions
Having just a straight book of photos is a beautiful thing to have and sometimes the photos will say everything that you will have to say. However, if you're like me and have a memory like fish or if you are creating a photobook to a legacy of all of your travels it's definitely worth thinking about adding some captions and some words about your trip or when where a photo is taken. Because believe me I have lots of photos of the Lake District in the UK, which involves a bit of detective work to work out which hill I am standing on!

Tip 6: Add memorabilia to go beyond the photos
Yes go crazy and go beyond photos and add some pictures of your trip memorabilia to your book. It could be taking a scan of your aeroplane ticket, a leaflet from an amazing trip that you went on or even taking a picture of a special moment or gift you bought yourself on your travels. I always seem to buy T-shirts when I go away so taking a picture of the t-shirt that I got is a great reminder of my trip. Go on have a think about what else you could include to bring your book to life.

Tip 7: Check and Check again
You've created your beautiful photobook it is a must to check and check again, because a spelling mistake or misaligned photos will mean a costly re-print. I always like to get someone else to review my books because I've been staring at that book for hours so will always miss something blindingly obvious

So there you have my seven genius tips to get that photobook right the first time, what will be the next photobook you create?

What Next?
Are you still struggling and don't know how to get started with photo organising? I have put together a simple straight forward quick start guide to organising your photos which you can find here.