I have thousands of travel photos on my computer (plus many more albums of prints, boxes of prints, and albums of slides, and boxes of ancestors' travel slides}. Even with some of my travel pictures used in travel articles which are framed and displayed not he walls of my home, my own family don't see the majority of the pictures. I want to enjoy them, and to pick out the best to show others. The answer is a photo book.
The cost of a coloured photo book is not cheap. At £20 for printing a paperback and double that for a hardback book, you can hardly make a living when you have to add in postage and double the price.
Lulu
The advantage of Lulu is that I have set it up already for all my other books. I am familiar with the login process, they have my address.
Apple
The advantage of the apple book is that you can ask for help during a one to one lesson if you are on an apple mac laptop and have already paid for a year's lessons.
Here are the results:
Lulu
I ordered a vertical paperback to display my caricatures, paintings and photos. You have a choice of themes. I wanted lots of warm orange or red as background for the front cover and inside.
But when I started making up the book, I discovered that the background colours seemed allocated to the size of the pictures. A large vertical picture with a caption box underneath came out with a green background. Two horizontal pictures with a text box between them had a yellow background.
If you alternated the pages with text boxed you would get two contrasting background colours. For example, green on the left, yellow background on the right.
If you selected all large pictures it would be a book with an orange cover and all green inside. You would have in a 20 page book, 20 large pictures, all double page spreads.
The cover was very good, colourful and striking, with a large space for a picture.
The title page had no picture, not even a tiny box for a publisher's logo (if you wanted to have a publisher's name and a logo, or for several types of books, two logo, such as one for adults' books, such as a city or country landmark, a drawing or photo of your home, or a postage stamp size picture of the author/photographer, another for children's books, such as a baby, your child for whom you had made a record of their childhood birthdays or holidays, or a children's swing.
Inside you could increase the number of pictures. If you chose on every page, four pictures on an orange background. The set of four took up the whole page and had no caption/ text box. My first attempt was to use the text box on the adjoining page. Then you had to decide how to make a consistent set of captions through the book. Would I caption the pictures 'Left to right top row, left to right lower row'.
When I was a sub-editor on Woman's Realm on IPC magazines, we were instructed to use the words upper and lower, not top and bottom which sounded rude and distracted the reader.
An alternative wording would be: Clockwise from upper left. This take up space of four words.
The other difficulty with a caption on a different page occurs when you move the pages. The Lulu option enables you to change the order of the pages. This is handy if you want to group two pictures of the same location or person. Or you could re-arrange your photos or paintings in date order. Fore example, our first trip / honeymoon to Paris, our anniversary in Paris, or Paris in the 1900s, our / our parents' trip(s) to Paris in the Fifties, our / their / your trip(s) to Paris in the Sixties.
The advantage of Lulu is that you have the choice of marketing your books to the public, or making them available for family and fiends to download through the system.
However, it seems odd to have nothing on the back cover, no photo or text box. A wasted space.
Apple
Apple is more designed for you to run off one or two copies for your own use and distribution.
However, as a display book of the sort of paintings, photos, caricatures, you can offer as a service for charity or as paying business, the Apple book enabled me to add text and photos on the the back cover. I inserted the text Caricatures by Angela from £5 to £500.
When I showed the family my Lulu book, they were delighted and impressed. When they saw the Apple book, they were even more impressed by the professional quality
The cost of a coloured photo book is not cheap. At £20 for printing a paperback and double that for a hardback book, you can hardly make a living when you have to add in postage and double the price.
Lulu
The advantage of Lulu is that I have set it up already for all my other books. I am familiar with the login process, they have my address.
Apple
The advantage of the apple book is that you can ask for help during a one to one lesson if you are on an apple mac laptop and have already paid for a year's lessons.
Here are the results:
Lulu
I ordered a vertical paperback to display my caricatures, paintings and photos. You have a choice of themes. I wanted lots of warm orange or red as background for the front cover and inside.
But when I started making up the book, I discovered that the background colours seemed allocated to the size of the pictures. A large vertical picture with a caption box underneath came out with a green background. Two horizontal pictures with a text box between them had a yellow background.
If you alternated the pages with text boxed you would get two contrasting background colours. For example, green on the left, yellow background on the right.
If you selected all large pictures it would be a book with an orange cover and all green inside. You would have in a 20 page book, 20 large pictures, all double page spreads.
The cover was very good, colourful and striking, with a large space for a picture.
The title page had no picture, not even a tiny box for a publisher's logo (if you wanted to have a publisher's name and a logo, or for several types of books, two logo, such as one for adults' books, such as a city or country landmark, a drawing or photo of your home, or a postage stamp size picture of the author/photographer, another for children's books, such as a baby, your child for whom you had made a record of their childhood birthdays or holidays, or a children's swing.
Inside you could increase the number of pictures. If you chose on every page, four pictures on an orange background. The set of four took up the whole page and had no caption/ text box. My first attempt was to use the text box on the adjoining page. Then you had to decide how to make a consistent set of captions through the book. Would I caption the pictures 'Left to right top row, left to right lower row'.
When I was a sub-editor on Woman's Realm on IPC magazines, we were instructed to use the words upper and lower, not top and bottom which sounded rude and distracted the reader.
An alternative wording would be: Clockwise from upper left. This take up space of four words.
The other difficulty with a caption on a different page occurs when you move the pages. The Lulu option enables you to change the order of the pages. This is handy if you want to group two pictures of the same location or person. Or you could re-arrange your photos or paintings in date order. Fore example, our first trip / honeymoon to Paris, our anniversary in Paris, or Paris in the 1900s, our / our parents' trip(s) to Paris in the Fifties, our / their / your trip(s) to Paris in the Sixties.
The advantage of Lulu is that you have the choice of marketing your books to the public, or making them available for family and fiends to download through the system.
However, it seems odd to have nothing on the back cover, no photo or text box. A wasted space.
Apple
Apple is more designed for you to run off one or two copies for your own use and distribution.
However, as a display book of the sort of paintings, photos, caricatures, you can offer as a service for charity or as paying business, the Apple book enabled me to add text and photos on the the back cover. I inserted the text Caricatures by Angela from £5 to £500.
When I showed the family my Lulu book, they were delighted and impressed. When they saw the Apple book, they were even more impressed by the professional quality
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