With the rapid technological advancement of digital photography and on-demand digital printing, why not explore the possibility of creating your own hardcover picture book. There are many places on the internet that you can create and order the picture books. With very heavy competition, the prices are very affordable and it provides an opportunity for everyone to produce and publish your own customized picture book at a quantity of one.
For example, you can get a 7×7 inch 12 page (24 sides) soft cover picture book for as low as $12.95 from blurb.com. For larger size books with hard covers, you can get them for around $30 from most other photo hosting sites like snapfish and shutterfly as well as book publishing sites like mpix, blurb, my publisher and many others.
Before you get started, there are a few things you should be aware of:
- Size and number of pages for the book
- What kind of layout you want your book to be
- What is the theme and/or story line of the book
To make a nice looking picture book, besides having good focus, lighting and all that int the traditional sense of picture taking, you need adequate resolution. This translates to the Mega Pixels that your digital camera offers. Ok, you can also take traditional color picture and have them scanned for the piture book. The same principle applies.
In terms of resolution, you need enough pixels/inch to give a sharp looking picture without it looking pixelated. The “rule of thumb” for resolutions of the picture is from 150 to 200 pixels per inch. So, for a 11 inch wide picture, you will need to take a picture with pixel dimensions of between 1650 to 2200 pixels. Generally, a 3 MP camera gives about 2000×1300 pixels and will be adequate.
However, if you start to crop the images such as fitting the rectangular images into a square, you will have to pay attention to the final resolution that you will be getting. Personally, I prefer to use a rectangular layout since most camera take rectangular pictures. A rectangular page let me get the most from my pictures when I use full page pictures.
Try to have enough pages so that you can show the setting or location of where the pictures were taken. It helps to set the context and mood of the picture book. It would make the book more interesting. It is better than seeing pictures of only people lined up for poses. Below is a picture of the villa, the harbor and the boats showing a view of the location where the group was staying. It made use of the full rectangular frame of the picture taken.
Many free downloaded picture book composition software, as well as the software for on-site creation of picture books, offer a variety of ways to add text. They also provide means of generating creative layouts of pictures.
Use the addition of texts to add title for the book and creative captions. Alternate between different layout of the pictures on the pages. Tilt and overlap the pictures. Use different background colors and patterns. Use Mosaic effects to add more interest to a simple picture or change the appearance of an over or under exposed picture of an important scene. I like the ease of use and variety of effects offer at snapfish.com. The book in this illustration was created with on-site software at snapfish.com.
Develop a theme and/or a story line for the picture book. Start with an introduction, either with text or better yet with a panoramic picture. Group picture in related events or activities interleaved with event linking relevant inserts. Close with a picture that wrap up the activities. I used a picture of a beautiful sunset that brought up good memories of a relaxed time.
To see more picture that I took, please visit my web site at bleungimages.com.
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