I make a photo book for every year that my husband and I are together, starting with our first year of dating. I've also made wedding books and books dedicated to my dogs. I've used Shutterfly, MyPublisher, etc, and still love Picaboo the very best.
My friends often ask me why I love it the best, so I wanted to share that with you (and them). While working on my last project, I took some screen caps so I could talk about some of the features.
When you sign up for Picaboo (it is free, by the way), you download and install the application on your computer. When you make your book, you make it using this application.
This is the first screen that comes up after you have registered your account:
From this screen, you can start a new project (photo book, greeting card, calendar, prints, posters, canvases, etc). If you have a current project, it is saved on this main screen where you can select it and edit it. At the bottom, you will find a current coupon code for savings on your project or order.
When you open a new photo book project, you have the option of various themes for your pages (like colors, holidays, or events and such), and the option of Picaboo putting your chosen photos in the book or doing it from scratch yourself. I always choose the "from scratch" option because I put all my photos in chronological order.
This is a random page from my last photo book. On the left hand side, you can see cover choices you can decide on. The "Custom Cover" option is just that. You choose the layout, colors, background, add text, and make it your own. At the bottom, you can see all your photos you have added to the project. There is also a box to check that will not show photos you have already put in the book.
On the left here, you can see some of the layout options. They have many! They are in order from number of photos. There are layouts from one photo to about thirty-four photos per page. There is no limit to how many photos can be in a book. (Although you can only have up to 2 GB of photos per book.)
More layouts:
One of the reasons Picaboo really stands out for me is that you can truly customize the book. The above layouts are not set in stone. You can resize the photos, move them around, change their tilt or position. You aren't stuck with it as it is. They also have many, many options for background images. I use some of my landscape photos as backgrounds on occasion, but for everything else I use ones from Picaboo.
They have a variety of color options in solid colors, patterns, or textures. They also have holiday backgrounds, ones that look like a scrapbook page, real photos, and a plethora of themes to search through. When it is time to choose a background, you can look through the many available by category or you can search using a keyword.
You can maximize the background to view it larger as you look for what you want. Here is an example of a textured one.
You also have the option of making your photo into a shape (circle, heart, star) or adding photo corners to any or all photos.
And you can change the color and size of any or all picture borders, change shadows, edit the photo, or remove red eye.
When making your book, there is a yellow border that shows you the area that will be cropped during printing so you can make sure none of your photos or text will get cut off.
You order your book through the application as well. It is a really smooth and simple process. The prices are comparable to those of the other book-making sites. I have been very impressed by the quality of all my projects and continuously go back to make more.
If you have any questions or would like for me to do a video blog and show the size and quality of my books (I've made 5 or 6 books via Picaboo), let me know.
Also if you decide to sign up with Picaboo to make your own awesome photo books, you can use my referral link and you and I will get $10 each that go towards future purchases.
Have fun!
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