How to Create Stunning Photo Books With Mobile Apps

In the depths of the average smartphone are thousands of beautiful photos capturing good times and memories that, unfortunately, often become buried under less meaningful, sometimes junk, images. Although eternalized in the digital sense, it’s easy to forget about these lost treasures over time. Luckily, some solutions are available to us such as the ability to create photo books so you can keep your most important pictures on physical display for a constant reminder of the great moments they represent. When these books can be made directly from a smartphone, it’s a huge bonus as it eliminates the need to pass through the intermediary desktop step that many platforms require. With some services, this implies using the mobile version of the editor, with others, a dedicated app is available for download to ideally provide a smoother and friendlier user experience.

Possibly the most well-known platform for making photo books, Shutterfly‘s mobile app is just as good – if not better – as its desktop version. The app allows for just as much customization, design options, and fluidity, managing to do so without the smaller screen size being an issue. Once the app has been downloaded, all you have to do is select the photos from your camera roll that you want to include in your book and then start designing. The app has a nice book preview feature, allowing you to swipe through the pages and experiment with different layouts, backgrounds, and designs. It’s also possible to switch between the app and the desktop version, enabling you to start working on your project in one place and pick it up wherever it’s most convenient. It’s intuitive and pleasant to use, so don’t hesitate to download the Shutterfly app for your next project.

Creating photo books on mobile is also possible with some of the other most popular platforms’ apps, such as the Chatbooks app. This app has some very handy mobile features such as smart suggestions for events or vacations you may wish to create a photo book for, as well as the ability to hide screenshots or unusable photos and to consolidate similar images. This helps a lot when scrolling through your photo galleries and selecting what to add into an album. It also comes with the nice option to give contributors access to your photo book’s creation process, but, overall, the design customization options are extremely limited and the general usability of the app is just not up to par with the desktop version, so you’d be better off creating your Chatbooks photo book from a computer.

The Photobook America platform can help you create beautiful, high-quality photo books, but the mobile experience is much less pleasant than the desktop one. The mobile version of its classic editor is almost impossible to use since it doesn’t allow you to zoom in. The app, which is a bit better but still quite slow, doesn’t allow for much customization and is even missing a real preview feature. It’s good to have the smartphone option there for simple, quick needs, but to get the best experience possible, avoid the app or mobile version.