Posted on 30 Comments

apple photo books

I think I mentioned pre-holiday that I had a happy customer service story to tell. Won’t come as much of a surprise that it’s Apple. I made my parents an Apple photo book for Christmas and it went missing. FedEx lost it. After months of scanning old family photos, cropping to the right dimensions, sorting by date, laying out a 50+ pg book, the stupid FedEx guy evidentally delivered it to the wrong address or dumped it in a snowbank and marked it as delivered. Apple sent me another copy, free, the day after I called them, express. Amazing. I love them. They saved Christmas. And they saved me from having a complete frickin nervous breakdown.

I ordered a hard cover book and it’s lovely. I want to make a bunch more. Maybe an annual one of the kids. It was super easy. I didn’t bother with captions or anything fussy, just photos laid out on white background with a black cover. I really don’t want to bother with albums anymore. They’re so bulky and the ones I have are all hodge podge and the kids want to rip the photos out of the sleeves and run off with them. And honestly, in this digital camera age I need something to force me to edit. I can fill a 200 photo album with just three months worth of photos. Maybe this way I can pick just one or two from the pumpkin patch instead of all 50 photos. Kids and pumpkins though.. just so cute.

30 thoughts on “apple photo books

  1. I’ve been looking at doing one of these books and it’s nice to hear you had such a good experience. Your book looks beautiful.

  2. I had a really good experience making photobooks at Shutterfly this year. Fun and easy, sounds good to me!

  3. Thanks for sharing. Sometimes I feel so burdened by photos. This might be a good solution for us, too.

  4. I totally agree. I’ve recently created some through Kodak and others and LOVE them. I’m starting to get a bit creative, for instance for my daughter’s first year album I snapped shots of great illustrations from her favorite book and used those as the “intro” pages for each month. As well, I now take some “art” shots to showcase places we went or activities, e.g. we visited the American Doll store while in LA recently and made sure to take some photos of signage, dolls, displays, etc to be incorporated into our vacation book.

  5. I’ve ordered a few books from Apple and had very good results each time. I totally hear you about the need to be forced to edit. My computer and external drive are loaded with photos – there’s just no way I am going to print them all! Making a book with the best ones is very much worth the time it takes to go through all those files!

  6. Pshaw. It takes you 3 months to fill up a 200 photo photobook? Try 1 month. Or 1 week when it comes to vacations. I hear ya on the editing. Writing a blog has helped me with that to some extent. My husband is ALWAYS telling me I don’t need to order ALL OF THE PHOTOS to put in the album. I’m slowly catching on. Photo books rock. I’m using blurb to make mine right now.

  7. I have 10 photo book sites bookmarked but have yet to make one…
    Filling an album with a single month’s photos is ok if it’s been your only trip home in 4 years, though, isn’t it?

  8. I ordered iPhoto books for both of our parents and then ordered one for us– and ours has been lost too! The important people got theirs before Christmas, but I keep hoping and checking for ours, but no dice. I’m glad to hear your happy story. I’ll have to give Apple a call ASAP!

  9. great idea! i need to get on that.

  10. We did shutterfly albums for my parents, my in-laws, and my grandparents this year and they turned out lovely! They were fun to do and I had so many options : ) I loved the experience

  11. What is that with the kids wanting to take the pictures out and run off with them? My daughter is so into that. I thought she would outgrow but she hasn’t- just getting faster and sneakier. Clearly, I need to get with the photobooks for more than just gifts…

  12. We made a book this year too, via snapfish (for FREE! Thanks Oprah!) My husband loved it so much, he wants to make more! One a year is a GREAT idea! I’ve got thousands of pictures and my little guy has only been on this earth for five months (today!)

  13. Photo books are awesome. I love the idea of scrapbooking but could never get into it. I’ve been making a photo book for the past 3 years for my husband for Christmas. It’s not a surprise anymore but he cherishes them.

  14. Ok, I’m totally ignorant. Is this a book that you make via your Apple computer? Gotta go Google. 🙂

  15. I’ve made yearly albums on kodak’s site for three years now – it’s hard to edit down a year into a managable size album, but it’s been great – I order 5 each year, to send to the grandparents, great grandparents, and one for us to keep. 🙂

  16. We send a book our 4 sets of parents (steps included) every year. They love the books more than anything else we could give them – especially because they are of the grandkids. I love Apple – have always been a big fan. They just make stuff easy. I’m glad you got your book fast – it looks like a good one.

  17. Ooooh – I love the idea of scanning old photos in and using them in the photo book! What a great way to get copies of all the old pictures for extended family!
    I love photo books, and it’s no surprise that the apple ones are so great. My goal has been to start doing quarterly books so we can have a summer/fall/winter/spring book from each year, and perhaps pull from those favorites to make an annual one for grandparents. I’ve found that they are also great for the kids’ classes at schools. If parents email pictures to me, I can easily whip up a book that can be used as a teacher gift, and then if the other parents want copies for themselves, they can order them!
    Hurrah for photo books! 🙂

  18. I had already thought about ordering these, but now it is CONFIRMED! Thanks!

  19. i first saw this some months back at my friends house. it was this amazing book filled with pictures of her and her family on their holiday in france and london etc… there it was just sitting on the coffee table! i loved it. %*_*%

  20. Glad to hear a nice customer service story! We ordered iphoto calendars this year for christmas and they turned out really well. I was impressed with the quality and the price wasn’t bad either!

  21. Thanks for the inspiration. We have been talking about this for ages and now we will do it! Photobooks are the perfect gift for grandparents, especially when we live so far away.

  22. This is great info. I’m glad to hear about it. We made a 2008 book for the grandparents via Snapfish, had a problem before shipping and Snapfish royally sucked about it. 45 days later, in 2009, the book showed up and now I have to mail it to the East Coast since the grandparents are back home. Next year we will try a new company, so I’m looking into Apple.

  23. i forgot how cool iPhoto books are, you inspired me to go put together a calendar for my kitchen. I thought this would only take a few minutes. After an hour of switching countless photos and my head starting to spin, I realized I have a little problem making choices.

  24. A few years ago I started making an annual photo book for my in-laws, who live across the country, since they bought us a digital camera for our wedding and they aren’t around to see us much. They LOVE the books — small and professional-looking, with a few captions to explain things, and perfect for showing off to friends. My husband has gotten so excited about the idea that we recently ordered a copy of all the old books for ourselves to keep, too. That’s another thing I love about the books: Kodak (the online site I use) keeps them stored, so you can always reorder if they get lost or damaged.

  25. Smart, wonderful, inspirational Hillary. Why can’t I think of solutions like that? Now I now what I’m going to do w/the tons of photos I have. Happy New Year!

  26. i do this every june to mark another year in my daughter’s life. her birthday is in june so the book runs from june 05 to june 06, for example. my plan is to do this every year until she’s eighteen at which point i’ll pass the books on to her. hopefully, at some point, she’ll help choose the photos that best capture that year. btw, i use shutterfly and love it.

  27. How sweet! I made a photo book this year, too and it was so much fun! What a great story with a happy ending!

  28. Nice! It looks lovely. I also made one this year– a much shorter one– of pictures of my nephew. I used Blurb and am pretty happy with how it came out, although next time I’ll definitely get the hard cover. I originally planned to use the Apple program, but I couldn’t figure out how to make the book longer than 20 pages…must keep playing with that.
    Happy new year!

  29. I totally agree. I use kodak, though. They use the usps. I have made 3 books, now, and my boys show no preference between the fancy shmancy albums I made or the photo books, they love to look at them all. Thank goodness for technology!!

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