If you're a shutterbug, you probably have discs and folders full of photos to sort through. And many of them won't ever see the light of day once you've uploaded them to your computer. But photo services like the ones we profiled in our top 10 list of Apps to Preserve Memories make it easy to organize and preserve your pictures in book form.
I recently had the chance to test out Picaboo's photo service, and I knew right away that a photo book would be the perfect holiday gift for my dad. To call him a photography enthusiast is a serious understatement. In the course of our five-day trip to Paris, he rarely emerged from behind the viewfinder of his sizable HP camera. Needless to say, the photo album was the hit of my family's Christmas. My dad still shows it off to family friends! Though there were a few hiccups building the book with Picaboo's software, I was really happy with the final product. More on the creation process after the jump.
Similar to competitor MyPublisher.com, the actual building process occurs on your local system after you download the free software from Picaboo's website. Here's where I hit the first glitch: I own a MacBook, and Picaboo only works on Windows systems. I regrouped and brought the photos to the office on a flash drive, so that I could use a Windows machine. Unfortunately, the installation process still didn't run smoothly, and I kept getting vague error messages. I tried going to Picaboo's troubleshooting page, but it wasn't particularly helpful or straightforward. Finally, after turning off all other programs and restarting my computer, I was able to fully install the software, which ran smoothly after that.
Once I launched Picaboo and selected the "Create Book!" function, I was immediately prompted to pick a theme. I was pretty impressed with the options. The basic choices are all surprisingly tasteful and allow for a lot of flexibility. The program comes with 19 basic themes and more are available on Picaboo's Web site.
The next step is to choose the photos. The program loads thumbnails, so it's pretty easy to pick the exact pictures you want. In Picaboo, you can do some photo editing (including resizing, adjusting brightness/contrast, and removing red eye), but if you want anything more advanced, you'll need to tweak the photos before you upload. The upload itself doesn't take long (even on my clunker of a computer) and the little dancing Picaboo logo is enough entertainment to pass the time.
I wanted ultimate control of the layout, but I decided to try the Auto Create function just for kicks. I was actually impressed with the result it came up with. The program took Paris photos, along with shots of the beach by our house in San Diego and the ski slopes in central California, and combined them in a visually compelling way that I was actually tempted to use. If you don't want to lay out the book yourself, I'd definitely recommend this option.
It's a good thing Picaboo offers so may page layout options, because you really can't alter them in any way once you've made your selection. Building the page is simple enough. A pane underneath the main window displays thumbnails of all the uploaded photos; I just dragged and dropped each in the preset layout I selected from Picaboo's list. If you want to do any photo editing within the program, this is the time to do it. The photos are automatically placed with a drop shadow (which can be turned off) and white border, but you can select from any number of border or corner options, or no border at all. There are quite a few choices for captions, including a broad selection of fonts and styles and the opportunity to create custom colors if you don't like the program's basic palette. Unfortunately, Picaboo doesn't warn you accurately if your captions are running a little long or going off the printable page: There are dotted lines that show you where your caption is supposed to end. I wanted mine as low on the page as possible, so I hit return until it was resting just above the line. But in printing, it cut off all the tails on my letters (like the bottoms of p's, g's, and j's). So the dotted line wasn't quite accurate.
I opted to design my own cover, instead of the default linen and leather cutout covers the program offers. I was very happy with the results; my book had a lovely glossy, laminated cover. Ordering was simple too. One of Picaboo's greatest strengths is the breadth of book selections it offers, starting at $9.99 for the basics and going up to $49.99. Regardless of the price (which is largely determined by the cover option you select) each book can hold up to 20 pages for the base fee and 140 additional pages for a little more per page. Even if you don't opt to buy a printed version, the photo book exists on your account and can be shared with other Picaboo members.
Though I didn't test it, Picaboo also offers a soundtrack option, where you can upload songs from your computer or download tunes from eMusic.
Despite my complaints with the process, with a little time and tinkering I was able to get the result I wanted. I wish that Picaboo was compatible with Macs and that the installation had run smoothly, but once it was up and running I had few complaints. My dad's book looks fantastic on the coffee table, and that's what really counts.by Nicole Price Fasig
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