We’ve come a long way since premade photo albums. Nowadays, all it takes is to upload our best photos to an online photo book builder, customize the draft to our liking, and then simply wait until the order is delivered to our doorstep.
However, putting together the photo book still takes a bit of time, especially with the various customization options on offer. The way to overcome this issue is to choose the right tool from the start. By doing so, the time it takes to create a photo book significantly decreases.
Some photo book makers offer the option to have photos auto-filled into the book or have it created by a group of professionals. There are other innovative approaches to start the photo book building process, such as fetching the photos automatically from a device or social media account.
Founded in 2006, Mixbook has established its position as one of the best photo book editing services on the market. One of the reasons for the company’s impressive reputation is its nearly flawless editor that helps you quickly craft the photo book of your dreams.
This editor includes over 700 designs, layout options, and other customizations to make your photo book unique. Mixbook also offers a reasonable range of size-to-cover pairings, with eight sizes and four cover options.
For affordable pricing and shipping, you receive a quality product within one to three weeks. Mixbook is present in the U.S. and the UK, and ships internationally. It’s even possible to reduce the price by waiting for one of the occasional discounts Mixbook runs on its website or refer Mixbook to a friend and get 40% off for each successful referral.
Photo books are an excellent way of always having cherished memories on hand, and they are also fantastic as gifts. Formerly known as AdoramaPix, Printique has been one of the most reliable photo book services on the market since 1996.
Printique guides you to create the photo book of your dreams with ease, thanks to a wide variety of customization tools. Ready-made designs make the creation process a breeze, but building everything from scratch is also possible.
There are several paper, cover, size, and shape options to choose from, and the book can be delivered to your doorstep or collected from one of s store locations. With prices starting at $14.99 for a 4×4” softcover book, as well as discounts for newcomers and occasional offers for regular customers, Printique is definitely an option worth trying out.
With the intention of keeping cherished memories alive, Chatbooks was founded in 2014. The creators of this top-tier photo book service dedicate themselves to preserving and modernizing the traditional method of storing precious photos.
Combining this with digital technology, Chatbooks has created the perfect platform to transform moments shared on social media into neat photo books. You can subscribe to a monthly service or go for the conventional approach and choose among the many single-purchase options.
Regardless of the model chosen, your simple yet stylish books are created with utmost dedication for affordable prices, starting at $7.20 per book plus free shipping. Additionally, subscribing to the newsletter grants you 10% off your order, and if you aren’t satisfied with the product delivered, you can get a new copy or your money back.
Well-renowned for its high-quality photo books, has a knack for bringing memories to life. Since its early days in 1999, the company has developed an impressive product range that includes photo cards, stationery, prints, calendars, gifts, and photo books that can be customized to your liking.
Shutterfly grants users full creative control when building their photo book. There are preset themes to choose from, as well as the option to have a book made for you with your photos and a theme of your choice. If you choose to craft the photo book yourself, then it can be created with the versatile editor, either from a desktop or mobile device.
Letting creativity run free, there are over 200 themes to choose from with an assortment of different paper types, sizes, and covers. Once your book is customized to your heart’s content, it can be ordered for affordable prices starting at $24.98. Plus, there are ways to lower this price through seasonal offers and bulk orders.
Truth be told, photo book building will always need some sort of human intervention. However, due to the ever-growing rise of AI, manual input can be reduced to just a few clicks. Plus, there are even virtual assistants to guide users and streamline the process.
Most regular photo book builders only provide an autofill option, leaving the rest of the editing process to the customer. Meanwhile, with automatic photo book builders, users only need to select a predetermined number of their favorite pictures. Then, the software or app automatically edits the book and sends a printing request.
Certain solutions have taken this approach a bit further by leveraging the power of social media. All the customer has to do is choose a certain period of time on their timeline. Then, based on this information, the software fetches and automatically arranges all photos in chronological order. It may even include each photo’s caption.
Even this process can be automated, creating a truly effortless photo book building experience by connecting the photo builder to your social media accounts. This way, when a new photo is uploaded to Facebook or Instagram, the software puts it into the book. The process is repeated until the book reaches a predetermined page limit and is ready to go.
Having the photo book created automatically is highly convenient, but there is one huge catch: accepting the photo book’s draft without checking it first can result in an unsatisfactory final product. There are two ways to avoid this issue. Either spend some time checking and amending the photo book or assign the task to a real-life professional designer.
The advantage of having a photo book created by a professional is that they’ll select only the best pictures and put together the final product according to your very specific instructions. In other words, the photo book will appear exactly as you want it without having to do any of the work.
However, this service is never free of charge, especially if the book is ordered. Since online photo book builders are ridiculously easy to use, you’re likely to be paying for someone’s time rather than expertise, which is something to consider when pricing up the task for someone to take on.
There are two major ways to get a photo book ready for printing in a short amount of time. The first is the simplest: using a photo book creator that was intended for quick book building. Most of the providers are capable of putting together a photo book within mere minutes.
The other way is to rely on autofill, a feature that almost all major photo book editing companies have. With this feature you only need to pick a matching style and the photo book builder automatically arranges any chosen photos.
However, thanks to the huge variety when it comes to personalization options, customers can typically add the finishing touches themselves, overriding the draft created by the software.
Granted, this may slow down the building process. So, if you don’t have special requirements for the book’s final look, then the way the editor automatically designs it should be good enough.
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