Your fabulous holiday trip is over, and you've downloaded the 1000+ digital photos from your 1, 2 (or more) cameras. Now what do you do? Do you preserve those photos and memories for viewing, or leave them piling up, unseen and unloved on your computer's hard drive?
In the digital age, it seems harder than ever to keep up with photo albums and scrap-booking your trips and daily lives. There are so many photos to go through, and that process can be really time-consuming.
But the good news is that the digital photo book software that is out there now is fantastic, and can be as sophisticated as you wish, or can handle.
I recently came across this article in the October issue of Martha Stewart Living Magazine The article gives a short and brief summary of 5 different digital photo book basics, and offers some good tips about what kind of software program and photo book options might suit your style of memory-keeping.
I've been scrap-booking and compiling photo albums since our kids were born. They like nothing better than sitting down and looking at their baby pictures. They can even look at mine, as my own mother kept a photo album of my childhood which she gave me when I left home - a wonderful, precious gift.
I use Apple's Aperture professional photograhy software for our family's digital photo organization and for compiling photo books. It is very powerful and more than an average user needs. I've also used and would recommend iPhoto for Apple Mac users. It is a strong, user-friendly photo book program that produces clean and high-quality layouts and photo books.
Both of these programs permit you to enter titles and text to accompany the photos. On all of our holidays, I maintain a daily journal of our activities, the sights visited and even our trip mileage! Much of this information is added to our photo books when I create them, so that the dates, people and locations are preserved forever. This is especially important if you're months behind in your memory-keeping, as I usually am!
The time spent on creating a photo book of your trips, or of each year in the life of your family is priceless. And it's never too late to start.
[travellingmom tips: Do some initial research into what kind of photo book software works best for you. Choose a program that is not too complicated so you'll actually know how and want to use it! Sort through your photos as soon as you can after every trip, and create a file of the best ones you'd like to include in your photo book. This is a big job, and half the battle of getting the photo book done. Once you've chosen the photos, you can pick each page layout to best suit the photos and stories you want to tell. Send to the printer and voila! Memories and photos preserved.]