Thursday, February 19, 2009

Creating photo books with Inkubook

As many of my readers know organizing my photos has always been an issue for me. I really struggle with this. I suppose a lot of it has to do with the huge amount of pictures I take and then because of that I get completely overwhelmed with the whole editing, printing and filing process. The more pictures that get backlogged on me the more stressed I get and then the more I procrastinate the project. It's easy for me to ignore because I'm not tripping over my pictures on a daily basis, they are tucked away on my computer. Out of sight, out of mind as they say. It's definitely a viscious cycle that is for sure.

I've heard people talking about photo books for awhile now but they sounded complicated to my simple mind and I seriously didn't want another thing confusing me. In January though I had the opportunity to check out Inkubook, an online photo book publishing service. A service that I absolutely fell in love with.


Love, love, love Inkubook! Now that we've got that out of the way, let me tell you why. From start to finish the process was so EASY. So easy even I could figure it out!

First thing I did was sign up for an account, which is free, and it allows you to play around creating books and having fun yet with no obligation to buy ever. Sweet! I decided to do a 2008 Christmas album and clicked on "start a new book". The next screen gave me two options and this is where I really started to get excited.

The options were:

Autofill my book ~ kick back and let us do the work. Choose your photos and we'll create the first pass of your book

or

Start from scratch ~ feeling adventurous and creative? Build your book from start to finish.

Gee I wonder which one I picked?? Option #1 of course because I like simple and that sounded simple. And was it ever. All I had to do was select my theme (Contemporary Christmas for me) and upload my pictures (I had about 86 pictures) and then just sit back and wait while Inkubook did all the work. In about 10-15 minutes Inkubook chose the picture size and background pattern for each page and varied it up so each page was different. And because it puts the pictures in in the order you uploaded them they were all in the right sequence. I am not kidding you when I say how blown away I was by this. When the computer was finished doing it's thing, just like that I had a beautiful book with lovely holiday patterned and colored background pages.

At this point I was given the option of making any adjustments I saw fit to either picture placement and size or to the layout and backgrounds. I could also add text if I wanted to. I only needed to move a couple of pictures around and it was super easy to do although to be honest I did run into a little snafu with my cover page. I decided I wanted to change the picture on the cover but when I tried to do it I could only get a tiny picture and of course I wanted it to fill the whole page.

I must admit I panicked for a good couple of minutes before, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a button that said Live Chat. Live Chat, ya right, that'll be the day. I clicked on it and a chat box came up. I wrote hello in the box and sat back thinking I was going to have to wait awhile before anything happened. To say I was a little skeptical would have been an understatement. Would you believe someone immediately typed back hello to me. It was so quick I assumed I was corresponding with a computer but as I explained my problem and this friendly "computer" chatted back with me I realized I was in fact talking to a REAL LIVE person and not only that but she fixed me up lickety split and I was back on my way. Holy smokes how's that for service!


When my book arrived in the mail I simply could not have been more pleased. It is a stunning hardcover book filled with pages and pages of amazing pictures printed on archival-quality silk paper.

The price for a book with 86 pictures? $43.95 which works out to about 51 cents a picture. But keep in mind that these pictures aren't all 4x6 size. I have some 4x6, some 5x7 and some full page pictures included plus I don't have to buy an album on top of that. It's done. Done as in once I get the book I don't have to do a single other thing to it except enjoy it!

The last thing that I want to touch on is that my book is thin which means it takes up way less space on my shelf than a photo album would holding the same amount of pictures. This is perfect for me as I'm fast running out of room on my photo album shelf.

Finally if anyone is interested, Inkubook is offering free shipping right now to residents of the US until the end of February with the code LUVFREESHIP. Also once you have an account set up you'll be notified of any future promotions going on which is nice.

Check it out ~ it's fun, easy, beautiful and FAST!

Did I mention I love Inkubook?! :)


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5 comments:

Ter said...

I will have to check it out... Too bad their discount isn't extended to Canadians. But, I, too, have tons of photos to be sorted through.

Bobbi & Noe said...

Next months theme is photos and I was thinking I'm going to spend the entire month scrapbooking to catch up. It's been feeling more like a chore lately than a hobby. I think I'll finish up the kids book, because I have enough photos to do that (yes that behind) and order these for now on!!!!

Southern Gal said...

I made a book with Inkubook on a whim in November when they were offering a FREE book. All I had to pay was shipping. I LOVE IT!! They worked with me when my computer was being stubborn and really helped in any way they could.

I'm now going to make a book of engagement and random pictures of my daughter and her fiance with lots of white around the pictures to use as a guest book at their wedding. How great will that be??

Yep, love those photo books.

Dominique said...

I'm adding this to my weekend to do list! Thanks for the glowing review.

Anonymous said...

I LOVE the guestbook idea! I wonder how big the book would be for my 3000 baby pictures? (You think I'm kidding, don't you?)