Do you have hundreds and hundreds of digital photos on your computer? I know I do. The beauty of digital photography is that we can easily take endless pictures, and when you have children, you definitely want to remember those stages that pass so quickly. The problem (and its the same with boxes of printed photos) is that if they are not in an album, they are not being enjoyed. My favourite way to use my photos is to create online photo books through my personal website of choice, Blurb.
Blurb allows you to easily create high-quality, bound books. My favourite is the ‘hard cover image wrap’ option, which professionally prints your photo design directly onto the cover; I also recommend paying the bit extra to get the premium paper. Blurb‘s options run the gamut in price, from $12.95 for a soft cover 7″ by 7″ book, to $59.95 for a hard cover 12″ by 12: book. I’ve made lots of photo books over the years, and MyPublisher and Blurb are pretty evenly rated as my favourite two programs. MyPublisher has regular sales, which makes them more economical, but for all-out quality, I prefer Blurb. For example, for my wedding album, I picked the largest hardcover book available, with the image wrap and premium paper options (I saved money with my photographers by getting all my images on CD) and it was a real labour of love to create the album myself. I ended up with over one hundred pages, with all the bells and whistles, for under $100, including shipping.
Blurb photo books make beautiful gifts, and you can print multiples for family to share the memories. Why not put together a book for Father’s day this year?
Someone recommended Blurb to me when I was complaining about the lack of “journalling” options on the other publishing sites I had tried. So I’ve been creating a 2010 family yearbook on Blurb (with tons of journalling!), but of course won’t get to see the end result for awhile still, so am very happy to see a review on it. I’m loving using Blurb – it’s fun and easy!
I’ve never heard about Blurb before but will definitely check them out soon. I have been a MyPublisher fan for years since my wedding (much cheaper to make a book than it is to pay the photographer to do the same thing) but I would have to agree as well – I’m looking for a little bit higher quality.
Thanks for letting me know about Blurb. This probably is a lot easier than scrapbooking (which I used to do but now can’t because of being a parent to a very active toddler
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