Photo Books-The Nitty Gritty

In my last post I talked about listing out all the steps to complete a photo book. Today we will go through the nitty gritty of the actual 'putting together' of the photo book. 


Without a doubt the most time spent is actually putting the photo book together. In the last post I had 'make photo book' as on of the items on the list. In reality I break this down in to many small steps to be completed. If I am working on a yearly photo book, I will break it down by month and try to work through it that way. For our Disney trip, I did it by the day. You just have to break it down into the chunks that work best for you. Breaking it up into pieces makes it feel much more manageable to me and therefore I can actually accomplish the entire project without getting overwhelmed.

Here are some actual shots of the photo book I did for 2013. Its completed now, but I took some screenshots to show you my process.

Step 1: Put the photos on the page. The first step is to literally drop the photos on the page. Shutterfly will automatically pick a layout for you based on the number of pictures on the page. I don't mess with it at first. I just get all the pictures on the pages I want then move on. (You could do this for the month, year or whole book as you see fit)

Step 2: Layout. Once I have all the pictures on the pages I want, I then use the Layout tab to select the layout that works best for the number of pictures I have. 

Step 3: Add a background color. I generally keep both pages in a spread the same color or same theme so its not too distracting. 

Step 4: Add the details. Generally the last thing I do is add text and stickers. 

Buy it!

Don't forget to preview and proof your book before you buy it! You can't change anything after you order. 
As far as ordering goes—I generally wait until photo books are 50% off (this generally includes extra pages, which I use a lot of) and I have a free shipping code. Making the photo book is the hard part-not ordering. Sometimes the books will sit in my cart for months. I usually order all of them around Thanksgiving when they run the sale. Then I redeem my coke reward points to for a free photo book. For the past couple years the most I have paid for is 50% for the extra pages. Divine.

So, does this seem manageable to you? I really think breaking it down into little pieces makes the whole process possible without becoming overwhelming.

For part 1 of this series, click here.
For part 2 of this series, click here.