Who needs a photo book?

Photo books have a variety of uses both personal and commercial. They can be used to commemorate the birth of a child, display your wedding or travel photos, as a portfolio of your work, or to showcase your company’s products. The quality of AdoramaPix books ensures that books made for personal use will remain in the family for generations to come, and that books made for commercial use will impress your customers and clients.

• Things you’ll need

  In order to get started, you’ll need five things:

  1. Digital photos
  2. A computer with an internet connection
  3. An internet browser (E.g. Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, Safari)
  4. Adobe Flash (version 9 or newer)
  5. An AdoramaPix account

  if you don’t already have one, creating an AdoramaPix account is free and will take only moments. Just click on the orange button below to get started.

  If you already have an account, then you’re ready to create a book. You can start by logging into your account and clicking the big orange button on the photo books page. Now we’ll take you through the 8 easy steps to creating your very own photo book:

  1. Choose your size and style of book
  2. Choose a theme
  3. Import images to your project
  4. Name your project
  5. Add photo to your photo book
  6. Edit your photo book
  7. Previewing the book
  8. Place an order

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• Choosing your size and style of book

  

  Step number one is to decide on what size and style of photo book will best fit your needs. AdoramaPix gives you lots of options to choose from.

  Choosing a shape

  AdoramaPix photo books come in a variety of shapes. The shapes are broken down into portrait (taller than they are wide), square, and landscape (wider than they are tall). Choose the one that

  you think will best suit the types of photos you have. For example, if you have a lot of vertical photos of people, then a portrait shaped book is probably the best choice.

  Choosing a size

  Each book shape comes in several sizes. Clicking on the different sizes will show an example of what that size looks like. You’ll also see the prices for your chosen size at the bottom of the page. Browse through the different sizes until you find the one you want.

  NOTE: AdoramaPix allows you to order smaller versions of books that have exactly the same shape. For example, you can make a 12x12 wedding album for the bride and groom and then order additional copies in 8x8 or 6x6 sizes. For image quality reasons you can only order smaller versions of a book, not larger ones. Therefore it is important to create the original book in the largest size you’re likely to need.

  Choose a page count

  Choose a number of pages for your book based on the number of photos you have. Since you haven’t picked a theme or loaded your photos yet, this number will be a guess. Don’t worry about it if you’re not sure, you can always change your mind later.

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• Choose a theme

  

  The next step is to decide on the theme of your book. AdoramaPix provides a number of pre-designed book templates suitable for common themes such as travel, holidays, portfolios, or weddings. You can also choose to ‘build your own’ if you want to create a theme from scratch.

  We recommend that you browse through our themes to see if one of them is more or less what you want. Keep in mind that you can change anything you want later so it doesn’t have to be perfect. Clicking the thumbnails on the left will display a preview of that theme to the right. Clicking on the pages of the preview will let you flip through the template to see what it looks like. We have dozens of themes to choose from so chances are good that one of them will suit your needs.See a video example.

  Building your own means you start out with a blank book and get to design your book exactly the way you want to. AdoramaPix has a powerful photo book editor that will give you plenty of freedom and creative control. Starting from scratch will take longer than using one of our templates as a starting point, but it lets you create something that is uniquely yours.

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• Import your photos

  

  You can choose to import the photos for your book from three sources.

  1. Your AdoramaPix galleries.
  2. Directly from your camera or personal computer
  3. From a photo-sharing site such as Flickr or Picasa

  Importing photos is easy. The import screen (shown below) is divided into three parts, a list of photo sources on the left, the photos available at that source in the center, and the photos to be used in your project on the right.

  Choose the source for your photos from the left hand panel. If the source is an AdoramaPix Gallery, your photos already reside on our server and can be browsed in the center panel. Select the photos from the center panel and drag them over to the panel on the right or click the ‘add all’ button. See a video example

  If the source is from your personal computer, select your photos using your computer’s file browser and our Flash uploader will be launched automatically in the center panel. As your files upload, they will be added to the project photos on the right automatically. See a video example

  If the source is Flickr or Picasa, browse your photos in the center panel. You can drag the photos to the project panel or use the ‘add all’ button the same way you would with AdoramaPix galleries, except you’ll have to wait for them to be uploaded to us by the photo sharing site. See a video example

  Once the project panel contains all the photos you want in your book, you can proceed to the next step. Don’t worry if you forgot some photos, you can always come back and add more pictures later.

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• Name your project

  

  What’s in a name?

  This part is easy. Just choose a name for your book project. You can name it anything you want, but we suggest you make the name relevant to the content of the book. E.g. “Amy’s Wedding Album” so you’ll know what’s in it later when you have multiple projects. This name is also what will show up as the title of your book if you choose to share it on the Internet.

• Add photos to your book

  

  Once you’ve chosen your name the fun part begins. Now you get to take the photos you put into your project folder during the import step and add them to your photo book. There are two ways to do this – automatically, and manually.

  The automatic way to add photos is using our convenient Auto-Fill feature. When the editor first opens you’ll see a panel with the heading Images on the left side of the screen filled with thumbnails of your pictures. Just above those thumbnails are two buttons marked import images and Auto-Fill. The first button takes you back to the import step if you need more photos. The Auto-Fill button will take the photos you added to your project during the import step and add them to your book in the same order they are listed in. If you want them to be added in a different order, just click and drag your photo thumbnails around in the images panel until they’re in the order you want. See a video example.

  The manual way to enter them is to click on a photo thumbnail and drag it over one of the photo placeholders on a page. When you release the mouse button, the photo will be added to that placeholder.

  NOTE:You don’t have to use the place holders. If you drag a thumbnail over any open space on a page and release the mouse button, the photo gets dropped right there. You can add as many photos as you want to your pages in this way. See a video example.

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• Edit your photo book

  

  If you used a one of our pre-designed templates and added your pictures, this is the point at which you would flip through your book and add any finishing touches. These might include text captions next to your photos, or making slight adjustments to the size or positioning of the photos. If you think your book looks perfect as it is, just skip this step altogether.

  If you built your book from scratch or are changing the layout substantially, an explanation of all the things you could do is beyond the scope of this tutorial. So what we’ll do instead is provide you with a summary of some of the more common changes you might like to make to a book.

  Fixing mistakes.

  If anything you do produces an outcome you don’t like - undo it. The first option on the orange bar along the top of the screen is a white square with a curved arrow that says Undo beneath it. Click on the square until the mistake is corrected.

  Moving pages around in your book

  At the bottom of the screen you’ll see thumbnails of your book pages. You can click on those thumbnails and drag them to a new place in the book.

  Moving things around on your pages.

  Click the object you want to move so it is framed by a dotted line. Now you can click and drag that object around to wherever you want.

  Removing unwanted elements

  Click the object you want to remove so it is framed by a dotted line. Hit the DEL or DELETE key on your keyboard.

  Resizing your photos or text captions.

  Click the thing you want to resize so it is framed by a dotted line. Click and drag on the grey squares on the corners of the dotted frame.

  Cropping your photos.

  Click the photo you want to crop so it is framed by a dotted line. An orange bar will pop up by the photo. The first option on the bar is Crop . Click it and use the slider to crop your photo.

  Adjusting your photos in the frame

  Click the photo you want to adjust so it is framed by a dotted line. An orange bar will pop up next to the photo. The second option on the bar is Pan . Click pan to see the entire photo displayed under the frame. Click on the photo and drag it to where you want it.

  Adding a text caption.

  Click the grey bar marked Text to the left of the screen. Drag the word “Text” onto your book and release the mouse button.

  Editing a text caption.

  Double click on the text caption and start typing. To change the font, style or color of the text, those options are on the orange bar that appeared beside the text when you clicked it.

  Changing a page background.

  Click the grey bar marked Backgrounds to the left of the screen. Select a category. Drag the background you like onto your page and release the mouse button.

  Rotating a photo.

  Click a photo so that it is framed by a dotted line. A circle with an arrow on it will be attached to the dotted line frame. Click on that circle and drag it to rotate the photo.

  For additional information on how to edit photo books please refer to our HELP area.

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• Preview your book

  

  Whether your book is finished, or you just want to see how it’s looking so far, you can click the preview button at any time. Previewing your book will open a viewer that lets you flip through the pages of your book in a simulation of what it would look like if printed.

  To flip through the book you can click on the pages, click and drag the corners of the pages, or click on the arrows underneath the preview. If you’re happy with the way your book looks, you can go straight to order. If you want to change something, you can go back and edit some more. See a video example.

  Don’t worry if the preview looks a little soft. Your computer monitor is much lower resolution than your book will be printed at. Rest assured if your photos were sharp when you took them, they’ll be every bit as sharp in your AdoramaPix book.

  NOTE: Empty text placeholders and empty photo placeholders will not be printed when you order your book, so they won’t show up in the preview either. As far as layout and positioning goes, what you see in the preview is what your final book will look like – only sharper and more colorful.

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• Place an order

  

  When you click on the order button you will be taken to a preview of your book. This is your last chance to look through your book and make sure everything looks the way you want it to. Take a moment to inspect your book and make sure you’re happy with it.

  If you click the order button again, our PixBuilder tool will quickly scan through your book and look for anything you may have missed. If any potential problems are found, you will be provided with a list of them as well as the pages on which they occurred.

  Don’t panic if warnings come up. Some warnings are just us being thorough to make sure you didn’t accidentally miss something.

  There are two types of problems that can be brought to your attention – errors and warnings. Errors such as having no photos at all in your photo book must be fixed before you can order. Warnings such as an empty photo placeholder should be investigated just to make sure it’s what you intended. Once any errors have been addressed and you’re sure that any warnings aren’t a concern, just click order again to skip to the summary page.

  The summary page lets you review your order. If everything is to your satisfaction, click “add to cart” to move on to the shipping and billing information.

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