Which photo book voucher should I buy?

Which photo book voucher should I buy?

Do you see photo book sales all the time but are still stuck trying to figure out which of the many book size and shape configurations to buy a voucher for?

Today’s blog is about picking the right size and shape book for your project and includes some methods you might want to use to help choose

Let’s start with, what do I mean by size and shape?

SHAPE:

This refers to the shape and orientation of the book.  The usual shapes in centimetres are;

  • Square 20×20
  • Square 30 x30
  • A4 Landscape
  • A4 Portrait

Some like our good friends and favourites at Momento have 9 options 

SIZE:

Refers to the length of the book.  Most suppliers come with a set number of free pages then you pay per page after that.  Others you buy a set length book ranging from 20pages to 150pages.

Choosing a shape and size for your photo book before you start can be not only important but necessary.

  1. Depending on the supplier you have no choice than to pick the predetermined size
  2. You can stick to a budget

Now on to some things to think about to help you pick the right size and shape for your project.

  1. Budget

There is no point diving in with all your holiday photos and add every single one to a book, working on a design for hours and hours, falling in love with your creation only to end up with $200 worth of page additions to pay for.  Decide what you are willing to pay for, set your budget and then pick a size based on what you can afford

  1. Photo orientation

Do you take most of your photos in portrait or landscape orientation?  Sweeping landscapes are going to be best suited to a landscape book.  Note if you choose a square book your landscapes will be cropped significantly.

  1. How many photos you have?

Ideally you will have all the photos for your project in one folder.  Say for example you went on holiday and took 400 photos. At MOST half of those are going to be book worthy (and that is a super generous percentage given today’s photo taking averages).

That would leave you with 200 images.

If you have budgeted for 40 page book then you are looking at approx. 5 photos per page, maximum.

You can break the numbers down further based on how much text you want to include and how many full-page spreads you want for ‘money’ shots.

Working through exercises like this and having a plan before you jump into layout and design will save you time and heart ache later in the process.

Let us know in the comments.  Did you snap up a bargain in the EOFYS?  What projects are you planning?

Remember if you need more help with photo books, we offer one on one coaching for your unique needs.  We can devise a process that we will help you implement on your first project ensuring that it is repeatable so that you can continue to apply the techniques you have learned to create photo books for many years to come. We also offer done for you design services.  Book in for a free no obligations chat about your project

Until next time

Have a magical day

Mara

P.S Whilst this planning exercise is a great practice and we highly recommend you work through it. The other thing we love about Momento is that there sales are for a dollar value and don’t lock you into a specific page number.  Check out their MID YEAR SALE

 

3 Comments
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    […] Once I am happy with my stories, I revisit the photo selection and make sure the images I’ve chosen adequately represent what I have written.  If needed I select extras from my digital photo hub (DPH) or I can delete excess from the project folder and not upload those at all. Read more about how I do some sums to determine how many photos to include in a book in this post. […]