Printing Photo Books
 

Hi everyone,

I've been looking at photo book options all afternoon and can't decide on a few things so I'm hoping some experienced scrappers can help me out.

1. Firstly, how many pages do you think is ideal for a hard cover book? I'm thinking the minimum 20 is far too small but how thick can you realistically go without being hard to handle or risk damage?
   
2. Secondly, how do you get it to not cut off the edges of the pages? I've resized my pages to 95% based on a suggestion from someone here a while back but it looks like the page just expands to fill the space. I would prefer a white edge around the layout than to have things missing.
   
3. Lastly, how much do you think about the order of your pages in your book? Do you put them chronologically? Do you make sure each pair of facing pages 'matches' or at least 'compliments'?

I'm really confused! I have a couple of pages uploaded to two different sites but I can't make up my mind which way to go. Thanks for your help.

I have printed 100 page hard cover books from Shutterfly. Since the pages are so thin, I don't think the handling or wear and tear are an issue, at least to me.

I don't have any advice on how to make your pages "fit". I'm still figuring this out myself! If you feel they are still expanding to fit the page, maybe try adding a small white boarder around the page yourself to see if that helps? The whole page thing still annoys and confuses me. I will still get portions cut off my pages, so I have no advice on this one!

I do like my pages in chronological order in my albums. But I also like the pages to go together fairly well. But since I scrap all over the place, that isn't always possible...at first! I will change the order of pages just slightly to make 2 facing layouts fit better together! I try not to change them too much (maybe 1-2 pages over from where they would originally be). Just enough that their colors or themes compliment each other, but they're not an Easter page and a Christmas page side by side. More like an Easter page and a regular spring page. Or a Christmas page and a Winter page. Make sense? I will draw out a small template of the pages I need to print and their order in the album as I"m getting ready to print. That way I am thinking ahead of where they will go, but also keeping it open to switch out pages as needed.

My replies are below.

Hope that helps.

I've printed big books, around 100 pages. For the year 2016 (my last books printed) I had to split them into 2 books! Each around 90 pages and they're holding up great.

I create an action that resizes my layouts to 95% and adds a white background to them, so they all have a white border. My 2016 books are my first ones doing this and I LOVE it.

I organize chronologically by month, but allow myself to mix the layouts within the month so I don't go crazy figuring out what happened first. My layouts do match somewhat color-wise so they look good side by side. I've learned early on that it's better for the people in the photos to look inside rather than outside the book. So if the people in the photos are looking to the left, I try to keep that layout on the right side of the book. I hope that makes sense.

1. Each of my books is 100 pages (or 104...project life). I feel like this is a manageable size & a "good-looking" thickness on the bookshelf. Plus, 100 seems like a decent number to aim for & a good accomplishment to celebrate by printing a book! I'm (still!!) working on a book of Disneyland pages and that will probably be closer to 140 pages...hoping it doesn't make much of a difference to the spine-size.

2. For my PL book, where things always go really close to the edge, I open a new canvas that's 13" square and then duplicate all of the layers from my layout and plop them in the center. I like the way these turn out. I always forget to do this process for regular pages & the white edges in the "regular pages" book aren't always a consistent width, but I don't think I've lost anything too noticeable.

3. I decided not to care & my pages aren't chronological at all. Many- but not all- kind of have similar color or at least "feel" on facing pages. If I have, say, 6 pages from a vacation, I'll put those consecutively. Otherwise, I don't mind if my son is 2 years old on one page and 8 on the next. (I also think it's easier to make sure pages are close to "evenly distributed" between kids this way.)

I use Blurb and select the layout option to put a border around my pages so nothing is cut off and I don't have any extra work. I choose dark brown to hide fingerprints. I've printed a huge book with four vacations in one (maybe close to 300 pages), and it's holding up great so far. If I were you, I would print how you scrap--chronologically or not.

Here are the last two books that I've ordered, just to give you an idea of how I lay them out.
January - September 2017

Disney 2018

Thank you all so much! I have my layouts sorted on the computer by year so my goal, at least for the busier years is to have an album for each. Vanessa I'm off to read your links now but just wanted to acknowledge all your replies.

I've done minimal number of pages like 20 and I've done maximum that it can hold... they all have held up well.

I don't worry about cut off, I scrap taking that inconsideration and don't put anything like writing too close to the edge.

I print in order, but I don't scrap in order.... so when I have the maximum amount of pages for a book, it gets printed... so that means in vol two, I could have a page from Feb and then the rest is are October through December or whatever. I don't care if they are facing pages match, unless it's a double page - but I don't do many of those.

^^^^^^
This is me.
and
I don't scrap in chrono order and my books aren't either

Thank you all so much. I am playing around with my 2019 album and I've resized them to add a 1/2 inch border around the layouts which seems to be working. I also decided to do what some of you suggested and roughly order the layouts but not be too concerned. I'll work on getting one printed and see if I need to change things up next time. I love having you ladies to bounce ideas off.