The Best Way to Make Your Own Photobook

Photobooks are becoming more and more popular as a way to tell a story with your photos, rather than just have them in an album. Photobooks are often described as similar to scrapbooks, the main difference being that the photobooks are actually printed, rather than having clippings and photos glued or tacked to the page itself.

The benefits of a photobook allows the creator to print a large number of books at a much cheaper cost than building them all by hand as you would with a scrapbook.

Photobooks have been very popular with weddings, graduations, and babies as they can show and tell a story of the subject from their birth and all of the way through their adulthood.

To create your very own photobook, you first must have all of your photos in a digital format. This means that for all of your loose photos, you must have them scanned into a computer so that you can manipulate the image digitally to fit the book. DVD Your Memories specializes in photo scanning using the best quality flatbed scanners available today... and we scan them all by hand!

Now, once your photos are digitized, you'll need to find the photobook service you'd like to use. There are now quite a few services, but I'll go over a couple of the more popular photobook services.

Shutterfly

Shutterfly is an image publishing service headquartered in Redwood City, CA. The company was founded in 1999, and focuses on its primary product and service which is photobooks. In addition to photobooks, they also can produce other products including stationery, greeting cards and custom smartphone/tablet cases.

Start by uploading your photos into your own online gallery and use one of 270+ pre-existing template layouts with more than 100 themes, or completely design your own creation! Shutterfly is easy to use, and has great prices thanks to online coupons and promotions year round. As for photobooks, Shutterfly offers 26 different sizes ranging from 7×5 to 12×12.

Mixbook

Mixbook is a newer photobook service that offers greetings cards and calendars in addition to their photobook line. One great thing about Mixbook is that it has an import utility that can import your photos from a variety of online sources such as Facebook, Photobucket, Picasa and more. This allows you to save a ton of time by not having to manually upload each and every photo individually.

Is It Better to Scan Photos or Negatives? Is There a Difference?

If you're considering scanning your photo collection, you've probably wondered if it's better to digitize the slide/negative or the photo itself. However, people commonly lose or misplace the original negatives, which basically leaves them with no choice but to scan the prints. If you're fortunate enough to still have the original negatives, it's recommended that you go with negative scanning. In almost all cases, you will get a higher quality scan if you can the film, negative or slide instead of the print or photo simply because the negatives contain much more information than a print provides.

A good way to think about this is to consider the negative as the 'original', and the printed photos as 'copies'. Like most things, you generally want to avoid making a copy of a copy, and always strive to copy from the original or master for best archival results. The same principal lies with image scanning.

Generally, photos are printed at a quality of about 300DPI. Sometimes you'll find higher quality prints can be upwards in the 600DPI range. Because of this, we recommend scanning your photos at 600DPI for photo archival quality. Scanning photos any higher than 600DPI won't provide much of an improvement in quality because at 600DPI, you're essentially capturing all of the available data from the print.

However, since slides and negatives contain much more data than prints do, you can scan negatives and slides at up to 4000DPI. As you can probably guess, scanning negatives results in a substantially larger file size, providing a much more detailed, true archival image.

Before making any decisions, there are a few points to consider:

- What kind of shape are your negatives in?

Often times people misplace or mix up their negatives, which can cause difficulties if you're trying to sort them out.

They can also be damaged from being stored or left in unsatisfactory conditions and suffer from a host of problems like mold, fading, scratching or warping.

- What kind of shape are your photos in?

Older photos are susceptible to color change, fading, bent corners and all sorts of ailments. If your photos are in rough shape, it might be better to look for the negatives instead.

- Will you be scanning yourself, or use a company?

This can be a deal breaker for some people, simply because the cost of good negative scanner is much higher than a flatbed photo scanner. Companies, however, will typically have very high-end scanning equipment available.

- What is your budget for this project?

In most cases, scanning photos is much cheaper overall. Generally the equipment for photo scanning is cheaper, and companies charge less to scan photos than slides or negatives. If your budget is slim, you way want to scan the photos for now, until you have the funds to move to the negatives.

People with lots and lots of images to scan will often opt for the photo scanning route, and then later picking our their favorite images to also scan from their negatives.

Aerial Video In Denton

Aerial photography has become a major mode of promoting events, festivals and services. Amusement and theme parks use it to highlight their business strengths. Different private and government organizations use aerial photography and videos for spotting locations for agriculture, construction, surveillance, wildlife management etc.

Aerial photography is used by different businesses all over the world. A state like Denton, with the tallest skyscrapers in the world and large geographical area uses aerial photography and videos for promoting its strengths.

Vast Geographical Area

Denton is the second largest and the second most populous state of the United States of America. It is located at a junction of several climate regions, which gives this state a highly variable climate. Aerial photography and videos in Denton can be used for surveillance, real estate development, construction, damage assessment etc.

The diverse geographical terrain of Denton provides aerial photographers unique opportunity to capture the beautiful and varied sceneries of the state of Denton. From the Guadalupe Mountains to the Denton Hill country to the Paulo Duro Canyon, Denton supplies ample prospects for scenic aerial photography and videos.

What a view!

Denton has the tallest composite building in the world, JP Morgan Chase Tower, in Houston. It is world famous and its aerial pictures are a sight to behold! The aerial photography and videos of Denton are stunning.

Architectural Landmarks

Some famous architectural landmarks in Denton include the Denton State Capital and the Chapel Alamo Mission in Saint Antonio. These landmarks are famous for their political and historical importance and are sought by aerial photographers.

Tourist Attraction

Denton is a tourist attraction mainly because of its being host to the Houston Grand Opera, Houston Symphony Orchestra and the Alley Theatre etc. Moreover, NASA's Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center is also a major tourist attraction. Pictures of the Space Center help to promote this attraction to the tourists.

Sports Events

Denton has multiple teams in all major sports of the country. Sports enthusiasts' crowd into the huge stadiums to watch their state teams play. Aerial images and videos of these events are telecasted all over the country.

Economical Hub

Denton is an economical hub of the country. The state has the most number of farms in the United States, and is the leader in making cement, gravel, salt, lime etc. Aerial pictures and videos of these areas are surveyed and checked for assisting in calculating the crop yield and mineral resources.

Denton has a port in Houston, which is the tenth largest port in the world. Aerial images of the port activities and construction sites assist the authorities in keeping a check and balance over the locations.