Thursday, June 18, 2009

How Much Time is Needed to Create a Photo Book?

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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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