Let’s say, you want to make a photo book of all of your favorite photos. But…..you’ve never had great luck at finishing a photo book.

You start off really excited. Select some of the favorite photos from your vacation. Open up the design software but then you quickly become exhausted with creating the layouts for each spread. Or you get tired of using the typical layouts. It makes your photo book look more scattered than you want.

So you give up.

Which is so sad because these photos are documenting your vacation. And in my family, our summer vacation is the highlight of our year!

Your photos deserve to be printed. Once printed in a photo book, you’ll always have this document to refer back to, year after year. Imagine looking at all of your vacation photo books, ten years from now. It will be a blast to look back through the memories you had as a family every summer.

I want to show you that there is an easier way to compile your favorite vacation photos into a beautiful streamlined photo book. It starts with a template.

In particular, I want to show you how you can adapt one of my annual photo book templates to become a smaller, more focused vacation photo book. Take a look!

*This blog post contains affiliate links. By clicking on a link and making a purchase, Book This Project will earn a small commission. I only recommend products I use and highly recommend to make your photo book experience better. 

During one of our summer vacation at the beach, we experienced our first King Tide. My mother-in-law explained that this is the highest predicted high tide of the year based on how the Sun, Earth and Moon line up. My daughter, who just finished her first grade year, was completely fascinated by this idea and kept imagining herself as a mermaid experiencing the high tide. I made the suggestion that she should take this idea and make a story out of it. We could make a photo book together. As I’m sure you could imagine, my heart skipped a beat when she jumped up and down and was excited to make her very own book. Usually, my suggestions are not met with as much enthusiasm. So, one afternoon of our vacation, we skipped the ocean, sat out on the screened in porch and worked on this photo book. Here are a few of my favorite tips and suggestions to help your own budding author!

1: Set up the Photo Book Parameters ahead of time

Before you start the process with your kid, I recommend that you set up the photo book parameters (paper, cover, etc), define the approximate number of pages and import the graphics or any photos that you want to incorporate. This saves some of the boring work and allows you to get started with the fun stuff when you sit down to work on it with your little one.

For this photo book, I recommend using Blurb’s BookWright program. Our photo book was a soft cover book with standard paper.

Another piece of advice, have your son or daughter think through a rough outline of the story ahead of time as well. This gives you a sense of how they are starting to formulate the basic structure of the story. Of course, it doesn’t have to be perfect but you’ll want to make sure they have a main character that follows a series of action steps. Bonus points if the action that a character is doing leads up to a conclusion, or main point.

2: Write the book with pre-made graphics in mind

Before we got started with writing, I looked for graphics that roughly match the storyline she’s created. If your kid loves to draw, you could easily have them make drawings for the photo book. However, this will add a little more time to the process. For me, especially on vacation, it was easier to find already made graphics that we could use.

Since the graphics were already imported into the design program (see tip 1), we went page by page with my daughter selecting which graphic she wanted to use. Then she would tell me the text and I would type it in. Once we finished the full story, we read back through it and made any edits together. In this process, I would ask her if what she originally said made sense and confirm it’s what she wants. If I had a slight tweak, I’d make a suggestion for her approval. Then we’d give one final read through. Once it was set, I handled all of the uploading and ordering process.

3: Share the book for others to purchase

One of the great things about using Blurb is that you can share the book with family and even set the book up for sale. With the cost of the printing of the photo book makes it difficult to make money, it is something fun for kids to look forward to.

You can check out (and even purchase) my daughter’s photo book here.

To set up your child’s book for others to purchase, you’ll have this option after you upload the photo book to Blurb’s website. So once you order the book, all you have to do is answer a few simple questions to set it up for others to purchase.

If you want even more tips and details – I share over 35 screenshots showing you how we made this photo book – sign up for my Special Photo Book Project: Summer Guide. This mini-workshop will be released in a few weeks but you can pre-order it now for a discount!

Usually, if I’m going to add text to my photo book, it’s going to be as a title on the page or a caption to a photo. But that doesn’t work for everyone. Some people want to incorporate longer pieces of text – such as long-form journal entries – combined with photos into a photo book. Recently, a reader reached out to me asking how to accomplish this using BookWright. While it can definitely be finicky, BookWright does have an autoflow text feature. 

What exactly is autoflow text?

 It means that there is one text that can be sub-divided into various text boxes throughout your entire photo book. And this isn’t accomplished by copying/pasting different sentences into each box. Instead, if you want to edit the text, you’re editing one text file – even though it appears in several boxes and pages, throughout your book. 

This allows you to consistently edit the features of your text at once yet customize how much of the text you want to appear on a particular page. 

So let me walk through how to incorporate a larger piece of text into your photo book. 

STEP 01: SAVE YOUR TEXT AS AN RTF FILE.

The first step is to convert your text file into an RTF file that can be read / used within BookWright.

For this example, I’m using a text file I created for one of my recent emails, which is a Google Doc file. 

To transform this google doc file into something BookWright can use, simply head to the File menu and select “Download As” then select “Rich Text Format (.rtf).” This will automatically download your text into your Downloads folder. 

Follow a similar process if you are using Microsoft Word or Apple Pages. 

Important Tip: 

I recommend writing, reviewing and editing your entire text before converting it into an .rtf file. It will be so much easier to edit your text in the word software program you are using, rather than trying to edit in BookWright. 

STEP 02: IMPORT YOUR TEXT INTO BOOKWRIGHT

The next step is to import this text file into BookWright. You’ll want to make sure that you are in the Text Files tab of the program. 

Once you’re here, select “Import RTF Files” and then locate the file in your Downloads folder, or wherever you saved your text file. 

To insert the text into a text box on the page, all you have to do is drag and drop the file onto the page you want. 

Once the text is placed, you can always adjust the size and location of the text box. This initial layout is just to get you started on the page. 

Important Tip: 

Since each file you import shows up as a separate entity, one thing you can do is create multiple files for the text you want to include in your photo book. This allows you to finish a text completely and add it to your book before the full text is finished. For example, if you wanted to include a journal entry (2-4 pages of text) for each month, treat each of the entries as separate rtf file. 

STEP 03: ADJUST THE TEXT BOXES.

The text is initially placed as two large photo boxes on the page. Usually, my first step is to delete the text box on the right page (unless I know I want two full pages of text). Once that text box is deleted, I have more control about how and where I want my text to flow. 

Now, deleting text boxes can be finicky in this program. If you click on the text box, even around the border, it will open up the text styles/editing box….which is not what you want.

To delete a text box, you have to move you cursor outside of the text box boundary, click and hold down on the mouse, and then drag to the opposite corner of the text box. This will select the text box without bringing up the text window.

Then hit the delete key.

This removes the text from the box but will keep the actual text box. In order to delete the box, you have to click delete a second time or you can click on the trashcan icon of the text box (lower right corner). 

When you are ready to continue your text into another text box, even if it’s on another page, you’ll select the text box and at the bottom there is an orange “Text Flow” button.

Click it and your cursor will change – allowing you to create a new text box. At this point, find the location you want for the text to continue and drag your cursor to form the approximate shape of the box you want. You can always adjust this later. 

You’ll notice in the upper left-hand corner of any text flow box, it tells you where the text fits in the overall number of text boxes. For example, if you’ve placed 4 text boxes for a particular journal entry, you can click on a box to discover that a particular box is 2 (second) of the total 4 text boxes. This comes in handy in you have multiple boxes forming your text. 

Important Tip: 

Form text boxes that align with the photos on the page. Don’t forget to use the align tools that come with BookWright to make everything on the page look intentional.

STEP 04: ADJUST TEXT STYLES. 

One benefit to using the autoflow feature is that you can can adjust the text – from any text box – in the one text style/editing dialogue box. If you decide you want to delete a sentence or change a word, it is done through this window. In other words, text edits are never made on the actual page.

You can adjust the style of the text from this window as well. To change the font style, size, alignment, etc., click on the actual text (left side of the box) then hit control (or open apple) + A to select all of the text. Once selected, make the adjustments you want.

Then click “Update Text Flow” for the changes to appear in your layouts. Keep in mind, this may affect how much of the text is visible within the text box. I recommend you make any major style changes at the beginning, before you spend too much time adjusting the actual shape and location of the text box. 

Important Tip: 

Since all of the text is edited through this one dialogue box, I recommend you keep the actual text used in multiple boxes (autoflow text) as primarily the body copy of your text. You can always make certain words/phrases bold or italic, if needed. However, you’ll want to minimize the special features you define within this text style/editing box. With that in mind, I also recommend that you remove titles and photo captions from this file and make them separate stand-alone text boxes (not autoflow text) within your photo book. 

One quick and easy way to make your photo book look more intentional is to have custom designed divider pages. If you’re including these pages in your photo book, I recommend having them stand out from your other pages with design elements, text and/or color. However, I also understand – you don’t have a lot of time to customize these pages.

It’s one of the reasons I’m creating my Graphic Design Packs every month. These design packs will quickly introduce color or patterns on your pages, particularly the divider pages in your photo book.

There are two ways to add color if you are using Blurb’s free software program, BookWright. Whether you are using colors from my BTP Graphic Design Pack – or – creating a color profile on your own, this video tutorial shares the two methods to achieve add color to your photo book.

Want to learn even more tools in BookWright?

Check out my free email series sharing 5 design lessons to make your photo book more stylish without overwhelm. 

Over and over again, I hear from people that what makes designing a photo book so difficult, is selecting photos. Even if I design a custom photo book for you, you still have to select the photos, right?!?! So it’s important to get over this hurdle and find a way to make selecting photos less of a chore and maybe even {gasp!} enjoyable!

When I first heard that Marie Kondo was translating her very popular book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, into a Netflix show I was excited. I read her book when it first came out but tidying up always comes in waves for me. I’ll make progress over several weekends, then get derailed with life’s other demands.

This is what makes her show so enticing to me. Once I started watching the first few episodes, I realized how much it helps to see her and the families in action to get me back in gear. And whenever I fall off the tidying-up wagon, I can just watch another episode (or one I’ve already seen) to get re-inspired and make progress in my own home.

And this led me to photo selection. Kondo’s main mantra on clearing out the clutter can actually help you select photos for a photo book. As you are going through your photos, ask yourself, “Does this photo spark joy?” If so, it should definitely be flagged as a photo to print (either in a book or on your walls).

However, you also have to realize, multiple photos of the same event or moment, is just like clothes in your closet. While you may initially have a desire (joy) to keep 10 black dresses, at some point you have to ask, do I really need all of these? Or are there a few that spark the most joy for me. And that helps to narrow your selection….and all of the clutter.

I’m sure you would say most of your photos spark joy but you have to dig a little deeper. Are you holding on to similar photos just because you have the storage space? If pressed, could you actually select the pose/photo that provide you with the most joy?

Now, I would add one more question to help with your photo selection process.

How do I intend to use this photo?

Particularly when working on a photo book, it’s helpful to know if a photo is part of a series or a grouping – or – if you want it to be a stand-out photo on the page. Asking this question will help you determine if you can select a couple or if you need to be really strict and only select one.

Disclosure: Some of the links below are affiliate links, meaning, at no additional cost to you, I will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase. 

One of my goals this year is to flex my graphic design muscle. It’s been a while since I’ve focused on how color, font styles and patterns can come together to customize a photo book. And with everything in life, one only improves with practice. 

So this year, every month I’m creating free graphics – that includes color jpegs + CMYK values, font ideas and several patterns – to help “dress up” your photo book. My graphic packs are free during the month they are released and then will be in my shop for $10 when the month concludes. 

While every download comes with general instructions, I thought it would help to see how exactly you can use these graphics to transform your photo book from blah to amazing.  

Import and use the graphic images from the design pack you want to use in your photo book just as you would any other photo. 

Once you download the BTP Graphic Design Pack you may be thinking, “This is great….but now what do I do with them???” So I wanted to share 12 layout examples to show you how the BTP Graphic Design Pack can make your photo book amazing. These examples are just to get your creative juices flowing. There are so many ways you can use the colors, fonts, and patterns in the graphic design pack to make your book a perfect reflection of your design aesthetic.

I’ll be sharing more examples on Instagram – make sure to follow me here. And I’d love to see how you incorporated the graphic elements into your own photo book. Simply use the hashtag #btpgraphicdesignpack when you post a screenshot of your example.

In these examples, notice the scale, placement, and mixing of different elements are incorporated on the page. 

Check out other BTP Graphic Design Packs.

My computer is a tech dinosaur. Toward the end of 2017, it was taking entirely too long to do anything so I decided to move my photos completely off of my computer and onto an external hard drive.

Fast forward to the end of 2018, one evening I set my laptop down a little too quickly. The next morning, my external hard drive was not turning on. Immediate panic set in.

Of course, I have a back-up system. Several years ago, I had a similar mishap and set up multiple back-up systems. In fact, I now have files in so many places it’s hard to know if it’s duplicated or quadruplicated. 

Yet, my little external hard drive containing my 2018 photos, somehow missed my back-up system. Yep, it felt as though my memories from 2018 vanished in an instant. Several weeks and hundreds of dollars later, I got my photos back.

After all of this happened, I knew it was time to update my back-up system and I wanted to share with you my process for backing up my computer….primarily my photos. 

My 5 Step Method to Backing up my Photos

1. Back-Up my Laptop using Apple Time Machine to my Main External Hard Drive, at least once a week.

2. Back-Up my Laptop + my Main External Hard Drive using a cloud-based system such as Carbonite. I’ve set it to consistently back-up but will check it monthly. 

3. Back-Up my photos and videos to a separate external hard drive. Add new content every month. 

4. Use a cloud-based system, such as dropbox, google drive and adobe creative cloud to store files and photos that I want to access anywhere. 

5. No longer use my smaller 1TB external hard drive for long-term storage or important files. Only used for triplicate file storage. 

Now, all of my photos from the current year are imported to my laptop, saved on my main external hard drive, saved to the cloud back-up and triple backed up on my photos/videos external hard drive.

I’d love to hear from you. What is your back-up system? Do you do something that is not on my list? If so, leave a comment below.

If you’re looking to make a photo book this year, now is the time to start thinking about it. The earlier you get started – and start making decisions – the better off you’ll be to actually finish a photo book in time for the holidays.

Imagine spending a little bit of time here and there working on your photo book over the next few weeks so when January 1st rolls around, you’ll be able to place your Christmas through New Year’s Eve photos into layouts and then print your photo book. Sounds nice, right?!?!

All it takes is a having a game plan that you can follow step by step.

Today, I’m sharing ten steps, with relevant resources, to walk you through 10 steps to documenting your favorite family photos from the year into a concise and beautiful photo book your family will treasure for many years to come.

Define what you want.

While it sounds easy, one of the most common steps people overlook is defining what type of photo book before they get started. It’s so important that you know what type of book, how big, what type of cover and what photo book company you want before you even begin looking at photos or thinking about layouts.

First step is to research different photo book companies to understand what kind of photo book will work best for you, your family, and your photos.

If you’re prone to overwhelm at the beginning, I recommend my free workshop that will help you find the insipiration to start, the motivation to keep going, and design ideas to make your book creative.

Target Time Frame: Define what you want for your photo book within one week.  

Get Organized.

Depending on how Type A you are with your photo organization, this first step could take some time. But it’s so crucial and will set the foundation that you’ll appreciate long after you print your photo book.

Before you even get started with selecting photos or laying out your pages, you first must organize your photo library. This means importing all of your photos from the year into one place. All of your photos from your smart phone, dslr, film and any other camera you own should be in one library.

Target Time Frame: Have your photos together and rated by the end of October.

Set up Systems.

If you’re anything like me, life does not provide you with unlimited time to start and finish your goals one at a time. Wouldn’t that be nice? Truth is, we all have multiple projects, family demands, and other commitments competing for our time.

And making a photo book is not easily accomplished within a day or two, unless your photo library is extremely organized (see step 2) and you have a very limited scope such as making a photo book of your favorite summer vacation photos.

To stay with your photo book project through the many starts and stops you’ll experience over the next few weeks/months, I recommend setting up a simple system you can follow.

When I use the term systems, I want you to set up a process for working on your photo book in a logical way that you can track. Being able to track – tell where you left off – is the key part to developing any system.

Refer to this blog post to see how I use one free tool to keep track of my photo book progress.  

Target Time Frame: Define your system by the end of October.

Select Photos.

Selecting photos is without a doubt the hardest step. Our photos are so personal and each photo we keep is for a particular reason. This makes it so difficult to figure out which photos you should actually select for a photo book.

Sometimes it helps to see how and why other people select photos for a photo book. This blog post outlines 2 important factors to consider when selecting photos. If you’re curious to see how / why I selected photos from everyday moments in my life, I’m sharing 4 videos illustrating how I select photos for a particular layout.

While I provide several tips and strategies for selecting photos in my workshops: In 100 Pages and Document Your Year, my main piece of advice for those indecisive photographers (raising my own hand) is to select photos that are the most representative of an event, emotion, or experience.

And don’t dwell on the photo you didn’t select. Years from now you won’t remember the photo you almost selected. Instead, you’ll remember the moment/event because of the photo you did select.

Target Time Frame:  My challenge for you is to select photos for a photo book every single week. Start with photos from one day. You’ll realize, the more you get used to selecting, the faster you’ll get. Promise.

Understand the Program.

If you’ve never made a photo book before – or it’s been several years – I recommend you open up and practice a couple of layouts with the company/design software you’ve selected in Step 1. While most of the free design software is pretty intuitive, it really helps to understand the setup and various tools you can use as you design your pages.

If you plan on using text – either as page titles, captions or page numbers – test this feature as well. You’ll get a sense of how easy it is to add text and your practice will confirm if this is something you actually want to accomplish with this particular photo book.

While practicing a few layouts ahead of time seems like an extra step, it will save you time once you’ve selected photos and are ready to start designing pages.

Target Time Frame:  Open up the software and design a few test pages by Thanksgiving.

Layout Pages.

Once you have a good number of photos selected, it’s time to start designing some layouts! For this step, you don’t have to wait until all of your photos have been selected before you start designing your pages. In fact, starting to layout pages could help you select photos. You’ll start to understand what types of layouts you prefer and what photos work best in those layouts.

Check out this email series for layout design inspiration.

Target Time Frame:  Starting designing layouts in mid-November and continue designing throughout December.

Add a Sense of Style / Design.

If you’re designing a photo book, particularly when you’re customizing your layouts, I recommend adding a sense of style or design intent to your photo book. This can be as simple as adding page numbers, a color, an interesting font or more elaborate design elements such as unusual margins or design graphics. 

For those who want a small bit of interest to their layouts without going overboard, I recommend my photo book template for BookWright: Catalog Collection. This template was designed to give your photos an editorial look that you see in magazine or clothing catalogs. It’s a great way to get started with interesting layouts to showcase your photos. 

Target Time Frame:  Add design elements in December and the beginning of January.

Design a Cover.

I always wait to design my cover until the very end because I like for it to fully represent the entirety of the photo book design. Photo book covers can be simple – such as a family portrait – or more complex with an attention-grabbing design. The goal is for a cover to capture the spirit and vision of a photo book and entices family and friends to pick it up from the coffee table when they are visiting your home.

For photo book cover inspiration, check out my Pinterest board for photo book covers.   

Target Time Frame:  Design your cover at the end of the January.

Review your Photo Book.

Once all of your layouts are finished, it’s time to review your photo book before you upload. I can be pretty obsessive with checking photo books so take my recommendation with a grain of salt, but I recommend checking your layouts several times.

Start with a review of layout in the preview mode. Then I do a spell check of the entire document. In case I spell “their” when I mean “there”, I read through every single caption. Once all of the basic checks are completed, I check one last time in preview mode. 

Target Time Frame:  Finish your review at the beginning of February.

Order your Photo Book.

At last, it’s time to order! After weeks of organizing, selecting, designing and checking, it’s now time to order your photo book.

Target Time Frame:  Order your book at the beginning of February.

While I’ve tried to cover the necessary tips to get you started….I still have more to share!  If you loved this post, you’ll love my self-paced workshop: In One Hundred Pages.

With cameras on smart phones getting better and better, they are used more often to capture the photos of everyday life. Lately, I’ve been using my iPhone more than my dslr because it’s easier and more available for those quick moments. 

But it’s harder for me to remember to import the photos my iPhone to use them in my photo book. With my dslr photos, I have to import them into LR in order for me to view, edit and organize them.

With the photos on my phone, there are so many other things I can do with them….I forget to import them into LR. And this means, they are less likely to make it into my annual photo book. However, these photos are a big part of my documentation so I want to make sure I don’t forget about them.

In this tutorial, I’m sharing how I organize the photos I want for a photo book from my phone in 12 easy steps.

STEP 01: SHOW YOUR LOVE

The first step is to open up the Photos app on your iPhone. I look at the individual photos at full screen. If it’s a photo I want to go in my photo book, I show it some love by clicking on the heart icon at the bottom center of the screen. This marks the photo as a favorite. 

STEP 02: SELECT ALBUMS

Whenever I want to see my favorites, I back out to the Moments screen and then select “Albums” in the lower right corner of the screen. This will bring up all of the albums you’ve created. 

STEP 03: SELECT FAVORITES

With the photos app for iPhones, it automatically creates a “Favorites” folder and this automatically assembles all of the photos that have been marked with a heart. This is the iPhone Photos version of smart collections which makes life so much easier.

STEP 04: VIEW YOUR FAVORITES

Before I upload them to another app, I like to review all of the photos in my Favorites photo to make sure I want all of them to go in my photo book. If there is any that you don’t want to include, tap the photo, then tap the heart (to un-heart it) and the photo will remain in your collection but not in this particular album. So smart! 

STEP 05: SELECT DROPBOX

For the next step, I want to upload the photos to a storage app such as dropbox or google drive. In this case, I’m using dropbox because it’s where I’ve been keeping a majority of my photos to date. Select the app or download it if you haven’t already. 

STEP 06: SELECT CREATE

Then I click the plus sign at the bottom center of the screen. By selecting “Create” (the plus sign), the app will direct you to an upload dialogue box.

STEP 07: SELECT UPLOAD PHOTOS

With the dialogue box open, select “Upload Photos”. 

STEP 08: SELECT ALL PHOTOS

By selecting “Upload Photos”, the dropbox app automatically pulls up the Photos app. The view from the photos app includes all of your photos. This does not help because it’s showing everything. I only want to see my “Favorites” folder because I’ve already done the work to designate the photos I want to include for my photo book. 

In order to get to the “Favorites” folder, I need to tap “All Photos” at the top center of the screen.

STEP 09: SELECT FAVORITES

Now I see all of the albums created within the photos app and I can tap “Favorites” in order to see those photos.

STEP 10: TAP PHOTOS YOU WANT TO UPLOAD

Now you have to tap the photos you want to upload. Unfortunately, there is not a Select All function so you’ll have to tap each one. 

STEP 11: SELECT THE FOLDER FOR YOUR PHOTOS

Within the dropbox app, it will automatically designate a folder for the photos. If you want to select a different folder – or create a new folder – tap where it says “Choose a Different Folder”.

STEP 12: SELECT UPLOAD

Now that you’ve selected the appropriate folder, all you have to do is tap “Upload” and the photos will upload from the photos app to within dropbox. With the photos in this dropbox folder, it’s easy for me to copy them into my main photo book folder with my exported dslr photos so they are all in one convenient place for when I start my photo book. 

Bonus Tip: 

Once you’ve uploaded your favorite photos, you may want to go back into your “Favorites” album in your Photos app and un-heart them so you don’t lose track of what you’ve already uploaded. And if you like to keep a tidy Photos app, you can even delete the photos because you know they’ve been uploaded to a digital location.

Want to get started with a photo book? Check out my exact photo book process – from organizing my photos to working on the pages in this free guide.