Digital Photo Books 3 Common Mistakes People Make When Uploading Their Pictures

Digital Photo Books 3 Common Mistakes People Make When Uploading Their Pictures

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One of the most popular ways of displaying photos is by designing a photo book online. As new photo sites pop up regularly, it doesn't take long to make a high quality photo book. I enjoy designing photo books and as I became more experienced I discovered I was doing some things the hard way. No doubt others have been in my shoes, thus I'd like to offer some suggestions on how to avoid the same mistakes.

Online Photobook Creation Mistake No. 1: Under- or Overestimating The Number of Photos Needed.

Ive done this a number of times, Ive been in the middle of creating a photo book and discovered that I didnt upload enough photos for the layout I had chosen and I have had to spend more time searching for and uploading additional pictures. And sometimes I have far too many and I have to change my layout to accommodate them or else not use them. The number of photos you will need will vary depending on the photo book size you selected and the page layouts/number of images per page that you chose.

What to Do Instead - Spend a few minutes planning your layout and assessing the images you want to use. Determine the size and number of pages of the book you want to create (the more pages the higher the price). Are you thinking of using a couple images per page and making the book photo-focused? If so, a book with 20 pages would require about 20 to 40 pictures. If you were thinking of making a few collages with 4-5+ pictures on a page, you may need around 150 photos. A little planning before you start will pay off.

Online Photobook Mistake No. 2 - Not Editing Images in Advance

Few photo book sites offer more than the most basic of editing tools. Typically you will find tools for cropping, perhaps red eye removal, plus a color changer for b&w or sepia. You may find photo book sites that will make auto adjustments for brightness, color and contrast during printing. To remove unwanted objects like cars from your photo, or should you want to erase a big zit on your nose, the photo site's online tools are unlikely to help.

What to Do Instead - Edit Your Images in Your Own Photo Editing Software. Trust me, you will be far happier with the results. It won't cost you a lot of money, and no Photoshop required. There are lots of great, reasonably priced image editing programs offered for well under a hundred bucks, and several are free or may already be on your PC. My favorites are Photoshop Elements and Corel Paintshop Pro. Editing can be speedier, since these software programs offer batch editing, i.e. performing the same contrast correction to a group of pictures. Therefore, by doing any necessary editing before uploading your images, you won't have to backtrack and make the fixes later. Take Note: If automatic enhancements are made by the online photobook service during printing, make sure you uncheck the "automatic corrections" box so your photos won't be corrected twice.

Online Photobook Problem No. 3 - Images Are Not High Resolution

This problem often occurs when you try to import pictures from Flickr, Facebook or other sharing sites. While it is very handy to be able to import your photos from these sites, typically sharing sites reduce the resolution to make the files smaller for online storing. If you use these pictures at larger sizes in your photo book, you may find the image quality has suffered. Unfortunately these pictures may look a bit blurry once printed. As a rule, for 8"x8"," 7x9" or 8" x11" photobooks you should aim for a resolution of at least 1600 x 1200.. You will need 2000x1600 resolution for 12x12 photo books.

What to Do Instead - Use Originals
The majority of photobook publishers place warnings beside images that are judged too low resolution for sharp printing. Don't take this lightly because if you go ahead and use this photo at a big size you won't be happy if it prints blurry. If you can't get the originals and you simply must use the lower res photos, they will work best as smaller pictures, for instance part of a collage of smaller photos. Thus, for optimum printing use the original photo if available.

By using these tips you'll discover that creating photo books on line will become much quicker and you'll certainly be pleased with your new creation.

About the Author:
Valerie Goettsch operates the website http://www.digitalphotos101.com and enjoys creating photo books online.Click the above link to learn more about making photo books.



Article Originally Published On: http://www.articlesnatch.com


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