Overview of the digital books making process

Overview This article is the first in a series of three articles dealing with the topic of digital photo albums.The two subsequent articles deal with the album making software with the final article presenting a walk through of how the album is digital format is transformed in to its physical format.

The digital photo album - something for all occasions

A digital photo album is a physical photo album made by printing digital photos and text on to a page and then binding all the pages in to a book. A digital photo album is something you can hold in your hands, place on your coffee table or book shelf. It is a piece of joy that rekindles the fond memories of wonderful times spent together with friends and family. They can immortalize the important moments of your life such as your wedding, the birth of your children, their school life, your parent’s life and special birthdays.

Digital photo albums are also called digital photo books.

Making a digital photo album

Traditional photo albums were made by gathering together photo prints and then fixing those prints on to the album’s pages. Some traditional albums had pages with a sticky surface that held the photo. Others required using photo corners.Text could be added by either writing directly on to the album page or writing/typing the text on to a label and then placing the label on the page.

Today, thanks to computers and digital cameras, you can create your album on screen creating a digital representation of the album’s pages. Software makes this an error free process allowing you to try out different combinations, erase them and try others until you find what looks best. You use your mouse to select a design from the list of page designs. For example let’s say you have four photos you’d like to place together on a page with some text. From the list of designs you locate the desired design and click on it to make it active You then select a photo and drag and drop it on to the page in the desired location.Adjust its cropping by zooming in and moving it around. Add captions by clicking on the text box, selecting a font, size as well as color followed by typing in your text.

At any stage in the design process you can review your album’s pages, make changes to them, rearrange their order or even delete them.

How you order your finished digital photo album

Upon finishing your album you close it to further changes.This starts a verification check to ensure your album can be produced at its highest quality.Potential problems such as photos that are too low of resolution as identified and you are given a chance to correct them or just proceed on.

Once everything has been verified you can then place an order for your album.If you choose hard bound you can then select whether you’d like a cloth, leather or printed cover. If cloth or leather whether you’d like a personalized title stamped on the front cover.One big difference between the digital photo album providers can be found in the types of digital photo albums they offer. Differences can be in page size, binding method, hard bound cover options, paper types offered.Note that not all digital photo album providers will offer this list of options. This is what we offer at Fotocodex.

Having specified your album’s cover details you then enter in your billing and shipping information.You will be given a chance to confirm or change the cover options.The last step in the ordering process is providing your payment information. The most common payment accepted is credit card.

At this point, if you are using album creation software that you had installed on your computer it will automatically start to upload your finished album to the provider’s server on the Internet. If you are using a web based album making system your album is already on the server and so you are finished.

Average production times are between 3 to 10 working days.

In our next article we’ll take a look at how your album is transformed from its digital representation to its physical manifestation.

John Carbajal, Fotocodex Founder. Fotocodex’s web based digital photo album making software is easy and fun to use. It has been specially designed to handle life’s important social events such as weddings, christenings, bar–, special birthdays, retirements, basically any of life’s special moments where friends and family have something important to contribute. Visit us today to immortalize your life’s momentous events.

- John Carbajal