iPhoto Book Themes

Back before Google (shoot, before Altavista, or any of them), I used to offer my readers a spot in a gallery of Web sites that I published on my Web site. It was a huge job to compile them because I insisted on visiting each one to make sure I really wanted to link to it. At the same time, it was a job that I loved, because I got to see what people were making with my books. And they were incredible. There were sites about everything. They (you!) were and are so inspiring.

One of those sites was from a guy in London who took pictures of his two sons on the same day each year on the same bench in Hyde Park. On the Web site you could see how the kids grew every year while the bench and the trees around them stayed pretty much the same. His kids must be teenagers now! At any rate, I decided that I would do that too.

Which brings me to the point of this whole post. I've been meaning to make an iPhoto book with those photos for years. One of the things that has stopped me is that I can never decide which iPhoto book theme I should use.

And one of the reasons I can't decide is that it's so hard to tell what's available in each theme. Sure, Apple shows you a sample page and a sample cover, but there is so much variety within each theme and until you play around with it a little, you can't tell what you can and can't do. It's hard enough to decide between the Picture Book and the Crayon, but what if I decide I have to have captions on each page, or I really need a layout with 8 photos? Only some of the layouts will satisfy those criteria, but which ones?

In addition, a lot of the layouts depend on what I call the original orientation of the photos. That means that if you use a horizontal or landscape photo you get a different layout than if you use a vertical, or portrait, photo. Even when you've chosen the exact same option in the Layouts menu. And that means you can't see every possible layout until you actually place the photos.

So, I decided that I would place all the photos necessary in order to document every possibility of every layout in every iBook theme--all so that I could choose the right theme for my iPhoto book. But then I discovered Skitch, this amazing tool that not only makes it really easy to take screenshots of examples on screen, but lets you annotate them, and then so completely automates the upload process that you feel like you can be luxurious about including as many as you need. Skitch made me want to put every layout online.

So here's my new iPhoto Book Themes Web site. Take a look. I hope you find it useful. Maybe you've got an iPhoto book project you've been meaning to work on. Please let me know if you have any suggestions.