My VERY Special Snapfish Book

My second book on Snapfish was one I put together for my family as a remembrance of my grandparents who passed away within days of eachother at the end of 2006.

A few months after my grandparents died, I visited my aunt, who was safekeeping all of my grandparents effects in her house. She and I spent the day going through old photographs and files. We found some touching letters from my grandfather to his parents (my great grandparents) and his future in-laws expressing his love for my grandmother, and asking for permission to marry her when he returned from WWII. My aunt said she had never seen these letters before and when I talked with my mother, she said the same. I also saw some of their wedding photos and other family photos in their collection that I wasn't familiar with. I decided that I would make a book to share these momentos with the rest of the family.

I had to make a second visit to my aunt's house (this time with my mother) we spent a few more hours scanning in the letters and photos I needed for the book. I also took my grandfather's old laptop home with me, I later discovered he had scanned most of his collection of photos (with captions).

That weekend, my mother and I did a rough layout of the content of the book. We decided that it would incorporate the letters, newspaper articles from the time leading into the wedding, the story my grandfather had documented (on his laptop) about how they first met, as well as photographs telling about the different places they lived from the time they were married, New Jersey, Upstate NY, Florida, and Delaware. I wanted to include the other family members in the project, so I sent an email to the immediate family asking them to send me their special memories of Grandma and Grandpa. I also included some family recipes that were part of many of our memories (at Christmas and other family gatherings).

As I started put together the first few pages of the book in Snapfish with my mother, I realized that this book would be very different from my China Book. It was more of a collection of scanned documents such as letters and newspaper articles, PLUS photos. The templates Snapfish offered did not allow for this. I had to come up with a creative solution to this issue. The end result needed to be perfectly bound color photo book.

Here's what I did:

Created my own templates: I used the full page graphic template for my free form layouts. I designed each page using a combination of software, such as Pagemaker, Photoshop and Snagit and created a Jpeg for each page that would take up the full page image size was 8.5 x 11.5''.

There may be an easier way to make the final jpegs, but here is what worked for me:

1) First, I used Photoshop create an image that was 8.5 x 11.5". Then I layered in any photos that I wanted to appear on the page.

2) Then I created the copy/captions on the page in Pagemaker. (I tried to use the text option in Photoshop, but the end result was very pixely. A graphic designer friend told me to use Pagemaker for text). When I was done laying out captions, I sent the Pagemaker page to print to Snagit (which took the captions and made them into graphics). From there, I would select the section that I wanted to include, copy and then toggle over to Photoshop and paste it into the image.

3) In Photoshop, I would make sure everything looked correct (especially with the cutting and pasting). Then save the document as a Jpeg and uploaded to a Snapfish Photo Album.

4) In Snapfish, I pulled these Jpegs into the full page graphic template.

The book turned out BEAUTIFUL...better than I expected. I am not going to lie, it wasn't easy. It took 4 weeks to make a 30 page book. Part of this is because I had a lot of work to do in Photoshop (Snagit and Pagemaker). Snapfish was also a bit slow, due to the size of the graphics I was working with. I had to keep reminding myself to save my work. Like with the China book, I had to restart my computer many times.

Here's how I saved money on Snapfish: I searched google for Snapfish Coupons. I found a 25% off coupon for all photo gifts (this includes Photo Books). I made 11 copies and also got a 25% off discount for duplicates. The entire project cost was about $300 (for 11 books) with S&H.



In my next posting, I'll share a little something about Snapfish's customer service with this particular book. It was INCREDIBLE. Later I'll share the lessons learned about putting together this type of book. (Then I promise to return to more mainstream publishing discussions.)