Tuesday, June 13, 2006
Create a Masterpiece!
Today's post is courtesy of *Wendy* ~she told me about *Shutterfly* and I've been having a blast ever since! You can do so many kinds of projects, and I have to tell you, it's one of the most user friendly sites I've ever used. I can't believe how easy it is! So I thought I'd share.
Choices, Choices, Choices! You can do wonderful photobooks like the above. That's a tan suede cover. I made this book for our friend Jane who visited us from England of all her vacation photos. The inset is a postcard image I found online. All kinds of ways to be creative with these projects. 
I make my own intro pages too. Like this postcard of Vegas. 
There are several layout themes to choose from. Both books I'm showing you are using the Travel theme.
You choose how many pix go on each page (up to 6). And you can choose from about 20 different photo layouts and positions. And whether you want captions or not.
After I made Jane's vacation book, I had to make one for our trip to Italy last year. Blue Suede cover. It ended up with about 200 photos in it.
I made both the images on these pages in Photoshop. Left is an example of an intro page for the section of the Italy book on Venice. Right is a map I found of Venice and modified/colored it in Photoshop. The ratios of the images don't always match, so I just add borders to the photo to make sure it all gets in there (see the side borders on the Venice map).
The full page bleeds are strikingly dramatic!
Intro page for Florence. And 4 photos with captions. You can do flush left or right photos also.
The books turn out beautifully, and they arrive to you faster than lightning (esp. if you're on the west coast). I got the Venice one in 3 days. The only real advice about the photos is I usually brighten them a bit, and sometimes punch up the color, before uploading them to Shutterfly, otherwise, once in a while they seem just slightly darker. But it's easy and quick to do that. And, Shutterfly has a 100% guarantee return policy. Shutterfly is virtually unlimited. You can make small photo flip books, larger photobooks with suede or linen or leather covers (from $30 to $80). You can make print-quality posters of your favorite photos! You can make calendars, note cards, greeting cards, large prints stretched over canvas (I am SO doing this), DVD slideshows where you get to select the music and formats (I just finished one for our Italy trip), mousepads, boxes with photos on the, totebags, mugs, t-shirts. Endless gift ideas. Why pay $2 in a store for a card, when you can make one for the same price with your own photos at Shutterfly! And I made a box of them for $12 last week. Love this site. A real gem. Thank you, Wendy!
Go forth, and create!!
~Shephard :)
posted by Shephard @ 