Thursday, January 28, 2010

iPhoto Book Themes - Printed Guides!

Those of you who've followed my writings know that I'm an avid photographer and have amassed more than 50,000 photos in my iPhoto Library. I've created several iPhoto books and think it's a great way to share your photos, give incredibly special gifts, and also make an obsolescence-proof backup of your photographs.

You might also know that, frustrated with the scant information about the layouts in iPhoto, I created a rather obsessive Web site that documents all of the possible layouts in each iPhoto book theme, in order to make it easier to create iPhoto books. Originally, it was a tool for myself as well as an experiment in giving away information. The site has been live for about a year, and it has steadily grown in popularity. I get letters from people almost every day who've used my site to create their iPhoto books.

For a long time, I've been wanting to create a print version of the Web site (as a PDF, that you can download and print yourself). While the Web site is good for a quick question, I thought it would be handy to have a nicely laid-out concise guide to each iPhoto book theme. In the print version, I have given examples of every single possible layout for each theme, and made it easy to figure out how to recreate those layouts in your own book. (The Web site, is nowhere near as complete.)

So there are 16 beautiful little mini e-books, one for each iPhoto book theme. They're almost done, and now I'm just working out the details about selling them online.

Meanwhile, I'd love to give you a sample. It'll be a PDF of the guide to iPhoto's Modern Lines book theme. It's absolutely free, and the only thing I ask in return is that you tell me if you find it useful and if you'd ever see yourself buying such a guide for any of the other themes.

To get your copy, just drop me a line and ask for it!

Thanks for your interest.

5 comments:

  1. Any info on how to wrestle with those very inflexible pre-made layouts is useful.

    For example: is there a way to change size/proportions of the rectangular place-holders? How can I manage to fit square photos into rectangular place-holders without photos being cropped and enlarged? This is insanely frustrating problem. People use photos of many different crop ratios, squares, panoramas, etc. - don't they?...

    Within your web site dealing with all book themes, I found a tip that says I should right-click on the image and choose "Fit Photo to Frame Size". I tried that method before, but unfortunately, whenever I did that, I found "Fit Photo to Frame Size" option grayed-out and unavailable. Why is that?

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  2. Time Machine not backing up keepsakes. Ideas?

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  3. @Anon: are you making sure iPhoto is closed before backing up? See this article: http://www.pigsgourdsandwikis.com/2010/01/timemachine-is-not-backing-up-your.html

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  4. Is there a way to co-edit an IPhoto book? How can you get copy to another person to proof?

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  5. @Anon: about co-editing. That's an interesting question that I don't know the answer to. I haven't tried sharing them with iPhoto itself. What about printing a book to PDF and sending that back and forth? It's not exactly co-editing, but at least would give you the opportunity to share it with someone else for proofing purposes.

    I'd love to hear if you find a better way.

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