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In case you haven't been following us on Twitter or Facebook, Adorama's got a sweet iPhone contest going on RIGHT NOW. You can win great prizes, including an Adorama gift certificate for a cool thousand bucks, a Wacom Tablet, a Canon wireless printer, gift certificates from the Apple App Store AND of course, AdoramaPix photobooks. You have until February 16th to enter, so get busy! There's no limit to the number of times you can enter, so why not enter early and often? Winners will be announced March 22, 2010.

Oh, and why wouldn't you be following us on Twitter and Facebook? It's a great way to find out FIRST about sales and specials.

On Twitter: @AdoramaPix

On Facebook: www.facebook.com/AdoramaPix

Hey all, we've had some questions lately about the prices on our prepaid prints.

We have a base price for our prints, like every other lab, and it gives us some play in our pricing. This is how we are able to run our incredible sales and how we were able to recently drop the price on our 8x10 prints. We don't want our customers to have to wait for a sale to order, so we offer prepaid prints and we present them as specials that can and do change from time to time. We like being able to offer our customers lower prices when we are able to, and this is why the prepaid prices change. Hope this answers your questions, as usual, contact us with any feedback, or leave it in the comments!

Another great review of our hardcover photobooks! Have you ordered yours yet?

Er, good news anyway. We’re one of PhotoShelter’s new print vendors! Ta-Da!
As of December 22nd PhotoShelter users will be able to choose AdoramaPix for their print fulfillment. This is great news for us AND for PhotoShelter photogs!

We’re BIG fans of PhotoShelter and have been for a while now. We provided printing for some events and in general have had the warm fuzzies for Allen, Andrew, Caroline and crew so we’re beside ourselves that the details of this partnership have finally been worked out! Here's to providing a great product for a great company; looking forward to a great 2010 with PhotoShelter!

UPDATE: This will not be happening until after the first of the year. Stay tuned and we'll let you know when it's ready to go live.

Lots of people are calling and emailing us with questions related to creating photobooks. With the holiday pressure officially upon us (it starts earlier every year, no?) I thought some tips on how to tackle making a photobook might come in handy for those of you who are giving them as gifts, or just hurrying to finish your portfolio by the end of the year. So here you have them, my top ten tips for making your bookmaking easier.

1. This first one comes from Joe Holmes, NYC street photographer and photoblogger extraordinaire, I think it's maybe the most important. Stay true to your theme/idea. Joe says that even if you are doing a portfolio, it’s a good idea to really hone in on one style of photography that you do best, such as landscapes, street photography or portraiture. You can always do a separate book for each different style!
2. Even if you have lots of different kinds of images from, say, your vacation traveling through Italy, you can unify your book with appropriate quotations, a verse or two of a favorite poem, or some song lyrics. You can do an online search for quotations or verse on just about any subject (like Italy!) and come up with a few lines that can really bring a page or two of seemingly unrelated images together.
3. Make sure that the images in your book follow some sort of natural progression; there should be some kind of story to the order of the images. If the images are of a baby or bridal shower, start with images of the guests, then the food, and finish with some fun shots of the gifts or party games. If the book is for a portfolio with lots of different subjects (see tip #1!) one way you can organize the book is around the idea of a color spectrum. Images featuring one predominant color can be grouped together and the progression can move from blue to green to yellow or red to orange to yellow etc., depending what colors are featured in your images. You can also look for graphic lines in your photos to unify your page layouts.
4. Start with high-res images. The better quality images you have, the better your book is going to look.
5. Jean Miele says: Design to showcase your content, not compete with it. If you design from scratch, don’t go overboard on a busy background, plus frames around every image and a fancy font. If you choose a template, be careful that it doesn’t contain too many design elements that may detract from your images. Remember that all our templates are completely customizable; you can modify or simply delete any element in any of our templates, change the rotation of an image placeholder, add more text boxes or remove any you don’t want to use. Keep the focus on your images!
6. Choose images carefully. If you end up with 30 pages worth of pictures, eliminate at least four pages (to the 26 page length) rather than add 20 more to equal 50. It’s better to have less pages, but have each image be really strong than have lots and lots of pages filled with images that are not your best.
7. When submitting a multi-image collage as one flattened jpg, be sure to adjust your color and density (use our ICC profiles!) on each image before inserting it into a multi-image layout. Our correctors can’t adjust individual images in a flattened file.
8. Take a good look at your images before choosing a book size or template. Choose the book shape that matches the majority of your images, portrait or landscape. Of course, our square shaped books are great for a mix of both shapes.
9. Trust your instincts! It may seem overwhelming to have a pile of images and a blank book staring back at you from the computer screen, but it really doesn’t have to be hard. You are already visually-inclined or you wouldn’t be taking pictures, right? Trust your visual sense and if you think something looks good on the page, go for it!
10. Finally, for the best photobook available, be sure and choose an AdoramaPix photobook! They are printed on real photo paper for amazing color and durability and the bindings always open flat, with no seam, gutter or stitching down the middle.

*11. Bonus tip! To give a photobook as a gift this holiday season, place your order on or before December 10th!

If you are like me, you will probably put your holiday shopping off until the very last minute. That's ok, execpt that the very last minute will be here before you know it! 

Photo books: last day to order photobooks and receive by Dec 24 is Dec 10th.  

Photo prints: last day to order prints and receive by Dec 24th is Dec 15th.  

UPS orders: The deadline for getting your order to ship the same day is now 10AM Mon-Thur, not 2PM.  

Please note that the fee for Rush service (in-store NYC pick up only!) to get your order in one business day will now be 50% of the order.

Get shopping and we'll get shipping!