Using Photobox To Make A Disney Photobook

If you are a long time reader of The Purple Pumpkin Blog, you will know that I was selected as a Panasonic Brit Blogger last year for their imaging products. I was very excited to have been chosen, as I’ve been a user of Panasonic cameras for around 10 years now, and pretty much every photo of mine that you see on my blog has been taken with a Panasonic camera of some sort.

Last summer we tested out the Panasonic Lumix DMC-FT5 tough compact camera at a water park in Orlando with very good results, and it has replaced our already ownded DMC-FT2.

I take a LOT of photographs, I think there were around 8000 taken on our last holiday alone! With digital photography you can take as many as you like (memory card size allowing of course!) and since we pay a lot of money for our holidays, I want to make sure I capture the memories as we go along, which is how I end up with so many. That said, I have become pretty good (and ruthless!) at going through photographs and deleting the ones that are out of focus, that are complete rubbish, or duplicates. I like to think I’m getting better at capturing a moment first time, but I often take another two or three pics, just in case, and so, that’s why I end up with so many photographs. It’s an obsession, I can’t help it!

Remember in the days of film cameras, when you’d send the finished film off to be processed, sometimes waiting 2 weeks for them to come back? The younger folk have no idea of that struggle! The thing is, with digital photography, I am very guilty of not getting my photos printed, and they languish forever inside my computer and on a memory card. I’ve been meaning to make a photo book (which I prefer over individual photos) of our Florida holidays since our first trip in 2011, where have all those years gone, because I never did get it done!

Then, the lovely folks at Photobox gave me the opportunity to create an A4 2014 photobook, and whilst it’s taken me several months to actually design my book, I finally have one completed and in my hands!

The hardest task in the whole process was whittling down which photographs I wanted to go in the book! I decided to use photos from the first week (ish) of our 2014 trip to Walt Disney World, which included our day at Blizzard Beach using the Panasonic Lumix DMC-FT5.

I uploaded my photos to the same album and selected them all to go into the book.

Photobooks have a set amount of pages per book for a fixed price, but you can add additional pages (for additional cost). Bear this in mind when you’re selecting your photographs, as you may find yourself adding lots of extra pages, and the costs going up and up! I did add additional pages, because I like to tell a story through my photographs, both on my blog and in printed books, and I’m also quite fussy with the layouts and number of photos on a page. This means that the instant feature is of no use to me – I have to create my photobooks from scratch!

With the instant book feature, you can still edit your book. There are lots of options for your pages – different backgrounds, colours, layouts, text, illustrations and embellishments, so the best thing to do is just experiment with them.

One feature I really liked was the ability to hide the photos that you have already used, which makes sure you don’t duplicate the images through your book (easy to do if you have a couple of hundred photos like I did.) You can view all your photos very easily, if you should want a repeat any. You can zoom in and out of the pages easily, and even move pages about.

I didn’t feel like there was a steep learning curve to using Photobox’s software, and it was intuitive to use, and despite my fussiness of things looking a certain way, I was finishing up my book and ordering it.

My Disney photobook arrived a few days after ordering and it was very exciting to unwrap the plastic covering and take a peek inside! I loved it. The quality was fab, the colour was excellent, and seeing my photographs in print, made me very happy indeed!

Now all I have to do is make another book for the last week of our holiday, and then catch up from 2011!

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