There is something wonderfully tactile and memorable about bespoke printed photo books – having your images collected and beautifully printed into a keepsake or thoughtful gift that can be enjoyed for years to come.

When you want a gift that feels personal and thoughtful, a photo book delivers. Perhaps you need a gift to mark a milestone birthday or to commemorate a wedding day. Maybe you want to keep your kids’ school snaps in one place. 

Here’s how to make a photo book to treasure forever.

Getting Started Making Photo Books

With a range of styles and sizes of Officeworks photo books on offer, there are a few things to think about before starting your project. Is it going to sit on a bookshelf or take pride of place on a coffee table? Are you creating a standalone photo book or an ongoing collection? Will you be compiling mostly portrait or landscape shots, or a mix of both?

Hardback photo books are suitable for most projects due to their durability – making them a great option for a coffee-table book that will be picked up and perused regularly. While soft-cover photo books might better suit more personal publications, such as travel diaries and school photo collections – they’re lightweight and easy to pop in a bag, and their flexibility and lower cost make them ideal for repeatable volumes like ‘Year 1’ and ‘Year 2’.

Other options to consider are whether you would like it bound in a leather-look material or packaged in a presentation box. Decisions, decisions!

SEE ALSO: How to Make a Family Recipe Book

Selecting and Loading Images For Photo Books

A series of screenshots demonstrating how to use the Layouts option within the Officeworks photo books app to create pages for a photo book.

When selecting your digital photographs, we suggest creating a shortlist (even if it’s more of a longlist!). It doesn’t matter if you decide not to use every shot; some might even be so good you use more than once – perhaps on the cover, as well as on the pages of the photo book.

Once you’ve selected the photo book you want to create, you will be prompted to choose an option for designing your book. You can opt to use the ‘AI Smart Book Creator’, which places your photos for you; or ‘Choose a Theme’ to browse curated layouts and page designs; or ‘Start with a blank book’. Each option takes you to the Officeworks photo books app, which allows you to edit and customise each page.

Now you’ll be prompted to upload your selection of images. Then you can get placing! Once you have used an image in your photo book, a tick will appear on the thumbnail in your library. If you’ve used it twice, it’ll get two ticks. All of which makes it very easy to keep track of which images you have already placed on your pages.

Choosing Layouts for Photo Books

A series of screenshots demonstrating how to place and edit photos using the Officeworks photo books app.

When designing photo books, think about which images would benefit from having a page to themselves. Usually, these would be photographs with a lot of detail or images so awesome you want no distractions placed next to them. 

In other cases, three or four images together on a page can be very effective. Show multiple shots from a sequence or photographs of different elements from a single event, for example, the food from a wedding.

Hot Tip: If you want some more inspiration for your photo book composition, or your project calls for some fun illustrations, use the Layouts and Designs tabs to explore a wide range of pre-made templates that you can simply drag onto each page as you work your way through your book. 

SEE ALSO: Canvas Collage Inspiration: From Photos to Abstract Art

When to Use Full-Page Images in Photo Books

A series of screenshots demonstrating how to make a photo a full-page image using the Officeworks photo books app.

If you have images for your photo book that simply can’t be too big, then you have the option to make the image a full page or even a full-page spread, which means it stretches across both pages – perfect for those holiday panoramas. When you choose either of these two options the image will go to the very edge of the page, with no white paper visible. 

This will give your book a very professional feel, while also maximising the size of the pictures. It’s best not to do this on every page, though, as the white frame provides a certain continuity for the reader that is lost in a book that only has full-page images. Variety is key when designing layouts for photo books. 

Cropping Images for Your Photo Books

A series of screenshots demonstrating how to crop photos using the Officeworks photo books app. 

Don’t feel restricted by the shape of a photo or the fact that you love it but there’s too much sky or sand. When you’re creating photo books online, you can simply zoom in on the precise part of an image that you love with the cropping tool and apply your changes.

‍Creating Eye-Catching Covers for Photo Books

A series of screenshots demonstrating how to add text and backgrounds using the Officeworks photo books app.

When designing covers for photo books, pick an image that isn’t too specific and perhaps conjures a mood rather than a specific event – this is the style a lot of professional book publishers go for. Alternatively, you could pick an image that makes you laugh every time you see it. That’s the beauty of designing your own photo book – there are no rules.

Then it’s just a question of adding and positioning a title and perhaps a border to the cover and you’ve created a photo book your family and friends will treasure.  

Once you’ve completed preparing your photo book online using the Officeworks photo books app, allow 7 to 10 business days for it to be printed, whether you decide to have it delivered or if you prefer to collect it from your nearest Officeworks store.

What to Try

SEE ALSO: How to Write and Print Your Family History

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This article was originally published in March 2022 and has been updated.