Volumes of memories

The Courier Journal
By John Hultgren
April 2, 2005

Software lets you publish your cherished photos

Do you have a collection of photographs of family members or special events? Wouldn't they look great on display in your living room in a coffee table book? Now anyone can publish their own coffee-table book of photographs easily, and relatively inexpensively, with a service offered by MyPublisher.com.

MyPublisher.com makes free computer software available that covers all aspects of designing and publishing your book, with the exception of converting your photographs into electronic files. (This isn't a problem for those who own digital cameras, and scanning other photographs has become a simple and easy task.) The MyPublisher Bookmaker software can be downloaded from their Internet site (www.mypublisher.com) and is only 1.2 MB in size.

Once you install the software, you will notice five tabs within the computer program that will guide you through the bookmaking process.

The first tab, called "Get Photos," presents you with a window of your computer files so that you can select the photos you want to include in your book. The second tab, called "Organize," lets you arrange the photos by simply dragging the photo to its desired location.

The third tab, called "Enhance," allows you to select any of your photos and selectively apply some elementary photographic enhancements to them. These include rotating or flipping your photos, changing them to black and white, auto-adjusting the colors and tone and cropping. While you won't find many of the advanced features that other graphic software may include, these are all basic and simple tasks that almost anyone can use and that can go a long way toward making your photos spectacular.

The fourth tab, called "Book," is where you design the layout of each page. Although the software defaults to a style that randomly mixes pages containing one or more photos, you can click the "Advanced" button and drag one of 16 blank page templates into your project to create a new blank page. From there, you can move photos to a position in the template manually, simply by dragging them from any other page (and then deleting any empty default pages left over). Pages also can be dragged into a new position, too.

I preferred this method because it was simple but gave me much more creative control. I would decide if I wanted one, two, three or four photos per page, and decided which of those photos would be horizontal or vertical. Once the photo has been placed into your page template, selecting the photo with your mouse brings up additional controls that allow you to apply color correction and cropping.

Beside each photo is a blank text box where you can enter text that describes the photo. If you decide to move the photo later, the text will move with it. There are six font styles that you can select from. You also can turn on page numbering and add a page footer.

The fifth tab is titled "Purchase." This will connect you to the MyPublisher Internet site where you pick your book style and cover color. One of your three book-style choices is a paperback book with glossy pages currently selling for $9.95 for up to 20 pages and 80 photos (not including shipping). A cloth hardcover book sells for $19.80 for 20 pages and up to 160 photos. A 12-by-16-inch hardcover book was recently introduced that sells for $59.80 for 20 pages and up to 240 photos. Shipping has run about $5 per book.

After you place your order your book is uploaded over the Internet to the MyPublisher Web site. Your book is usually printed and shipped within one week.

I'm quite comfortable with computer graphic software, and I like to think I am pretty good with design, so I was a little disappointed that I had to stay within the confines of the template. And the printed photos don't rival photographic paper, but they do have a fine offset print quality on glossy paper that is very attractive. I was pleased with the finished product and I think the template concept allows anyone, with even marginal computer skills, to make a very nice coffee-table book.

I've now "published myself" three times. I made a paperback book that I use as a catalog for the nature photographs that I sell. I printed a few copies of a collection of family photos that I gave away as Christmas gifts to other family members. I also made a "memory book" that included quoted remembrances and photographs of a co-worker who passed away to be presented to his family.

I am certain that if you made you own book, with your own photographs, the book would really be priceless and would be cherished by family members for years to come.