I often get asked how long it takes to make a photo book. It's hard for me to answer that question. When I get involved in a photo book project, it becomes an engrossing labor of love for me and I end up staying up late at night working on it. I'm so energized that the time flies by. I also slip into being a bit of a perfectionist and I check and double check and triple check a book before I order it. I'm probably not a typical example of how long it really takes to make a photo book.
In a recent issue of Digital Scrapbooking, an article discusses how to make fast photo albums. One example the article describes is a dad who is not a scrapbooker and had never made a photo book before. He made a 12x12 book with 20 pages in just 7.5 hours on Shutterfly. The breakdown of his time was 2 hours for selecting photos, 1.5 hours for uploading photos, 2 hours for placing and cropping photos, and 2 hours for journaling. He found that Shutterfly's drag-and-drop photo templates were easy to use for a novice.
The nice thing about making photo books is that you don't need a 7.5 hour stretch of uninterrupted time to make one. If that was required, I would never finish any photo books. All it takes is logging onto a computer for several short periods of time. In just 15 minutes, you can get a few pages done. I managed to make an 85 page photo book in 1 week. I worked on my photo book for 15 or 30 minute segments all throughout the week. I used less time uploading photos (I set my computer to upload overnight) and I didn't do a lot of journaling. It's surprising how quickly you can make a photo book, which is great for those of us who don't have a lot of time.
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