How to Make a Book Using Travel Photos

You've traveled far and wide with your digital camera, taken hundreds of photos. Now you want to place your best travel photographs on the pages of a real book personalized with your name, captions, and stories. To make your own travel photo book, Blurb provides free software to layout your travel photos and turn them into a coffee-table book.

Instructions

Making a Travel Book

1

Decide on the focus of your travel photo book. Will you use pictures from one particular trip or many trips combined? Will you focus on just one place or will you use images from many destinations? Knowing your book's focus will help you keep it on track.

2

Think about the focus of your book and then select your photos. There is no limit to how many travel photos you can use, but you should select your best images. Another tip is to avoid repetitive images. For example, it's better to show a few great photos of that cute deer in Yosemite instead of 25 that all look alike. After all, you want to make an interesting travel photo book, not put people to sleep.

3

Make sure that each photograph jpg file has consistent image quality. Shoot for a minimum of 300 DPI and a maximum of 3900x3300 pixels. This will help your book look as beautiful and professional as possible. If you want to use prints of your travel photos, simply scan them at 300 DPI and 8 bits per channel; this will give you jpg files you can use to make your book.

4

Register at Blurb and download Blurb BookSmart, the free bookmaking software you'll use to easily layout your travel photo book.

5

Open Blurb BookSmart and decide on a size for your book.

6

Choose whether or not you want to use Blurb's built-in travel theme to create book pages that combine your photos with Blurb's travel-related illustrations and photo borders. If you don't want to use the travel theme, you can simply create your own travel photo book pages in BookSmart, customizing them as you go.

7

Add your photos to the BookSmart page templates. If you choose pages with room for photos and text, you can add captions to describe your travel photos or longer stories about your trip.

8

Once you've made your travel photo book, print out a preview on your printer and review it carefully. Check for spelling, accuracy, clarity, and quality of your images. Adjust your book if necessary.

9

Make your final edits if you have any and order your printed travel photo book. You do this by clicking Preview Book, then Order Book in Blurb BookSmart. It should only take a few minutes to upload your book's file to Blurb. If you have the time and plan to print more than one copy, Blurb recommends that you start by ordering one book as a test to ensure that your photographs print to your expectations.