How do you do your photo albums?

[TheWife]

I'm determined to get our family's photo albums done before I have this baby, the only problem is, I don't really know where to start. I scrapbooked our wedding album, and an album of all the pictures I had from my childhood up to our wedding day, and then started one for Caleb that went to 7 months old before I never got back to it, and that's where I'm at. I am wanting to switch to digital though. Those 3 albums were all done the "old fashioned" way, cutting out paper and sticking stickers and crap all over the pages, takes hours and costs a LOT.

So I want to go to just digital, my plan is to just make a somewhat basic page, print it out, but then print the photos separately on photo paper and cut them out and stick them into the page layout. I plan on doing it that way so that the photos look nicer and are on genuine photo paper, but I'm not wasting a ton of photo paper and ink by having the entire page (layout) be on photo paper, KWIM? This will also give it a tiny bit of dimension since the pictures will be separate and glued in, w/o having to cover the page in expensive doo-hickeys just to give it that dimension.

So issue one I'm facing is, do I go back? I am kind of an anal person, I like things to be all matchy-matchy and "even" and stuff. So I'm tempted to go back and do the 3 previous albums again so they are done the same way. At the very least, I'll probably start over w/ Caleb's since his only went to age 7 months. Then the next issue is do I do one big family album w/ all pictures? Do I do one album geared toward each child and just make duplicates for family pictures? Do I do a family album AND child albums so that they have an album they could take w/ them when they leave home? Do I just make copies of the family album for each kid, so it's the same album and not like one w/ just their own pics? I don't know if that made any sense.

Next issue, how to "group" pictures or events in the albums. Say I start with just one family album and figure out what to do for the kids later. So in the family album, going chronological makes the most sense, but what do you do when you have like one or two random pictures here and there, scattered throughout, and then you have events like a vacation, where there is like 10 pictures or so? Do you just group some of the random pictures together just to make more pictures on a page and then they maybe just end up a little out of order?

And what do you do w/ pictures that are more portrait like? Just put them in as well? I was thinking maybe of having like "candid" family album, and then maybe a nicer one that is for the nicer portrait or art-like shots, maybe do them all in sepia or black and white? I think that would look really nice to give the more artsy pics a separate album, but then I think, ok, so then those pictures aren't in the family album and since that's generally the only time I'm in a picture, it puts like no pictures of me in the family album. So do I do both? Or just skip the artsy album??

Ok, I don't know how much of that made any sense...but I'm in the process of doing editing for red-eye and lighting and what not, and then I need to have a game plan, I don't want to start this and change my mind about how to do it, so I want to get this figured out before I start, and have a pretty good plan in mind for how to go about it. Thanks!

[SeatClutcher]

Do you just group some of the random pictures together just to make more pictures on a page and then they maybe just end up a little out of order?

Reading your post made me feel overwhelmed! Were I to apply that much organization to photo albums, if I had some stragglers, I think I'd probably buy little books/albums and use them for the vacations. One album might have "Maui" titled inside on a page, and would be followed by Maui pictures. After the Maui pictures ran out, I'd put "Seattle" on the next page/divider, and stick the Seattle pictures in there.

[Imachickadee75]

Theoretically, I have a chronological photo album of all the picts I take. This I'm way behind on just becuase I can't afford to print them all.

Then I have started special books for special events. The idea is that you take one picture for that event each year and put it in the book. For example, in Jason's birthday book he is standing in his dad's work boots for the last two years and every year to come. He has a Christmas, Valentines Day, Easter, 4th of July, Halloween, Thanksgiving, 1st day of school and Birthday book. Some will be the same every year -My mom took a picture of us by the same gate every year on the first day of school, and we all had to pose on the stairs Christmas morning. I think I can manage to do one picture for each event and stay on top of it, KWIM?

I also keep a CD folder of all our Digital pictures with an index print of what's on the CD for easy reference.

I also love to do a collage of pictures of events in Picture it on just one picture and if I have time might do that as the one picture in the book.

Jackie

[Regina]

I like those digital books from snapfish, but, boy, arte they expensive! On the otherhand, by the time you buy all the scrapbooking supplies, that is expensive too! Cvs has one for about a quarter of the price. It just didn't seem as nice. You could look at snapfish's website to get some ideas.

As far as organizing them, i haven't gotten that far yet. Your post made me realice that i have a bunch of household things to organize, and then i will get to the albums. First thing first for me. I would like to have a special album for each child, but the other photos will be placed according to time.

Good luck

[Brenda]

OMG! I wish I was organized and even had some sort of plan for my albums. I did great for the first yr of my first son, 6 yrs ago! Then the pages stopped. With my second, all I have is his foot prints from the hospital! With Victoria, well, I have the album, but nothing in it.
I'm still trying to deal with getting myself, this house and my children in order. I'm on my way, I'm writing my list of to do's for the yr and photo albums is on it! I really want to work on a wall gallery too for the house!

[jr_lenz]

I scrapbook, but I went from doing every event and every picture, to more of a journling book. I do pic and stories that mean something to me and want to pass on. I haven't done a "birthday" page in years. However, I try to write T a letter every year for his b-day and put that in his scrapbook. As far as all the event pics, I organize them into chor order on the computer(Jan - Dec) then make a digtal movie of that year, so we can pop it in and watch it. I aslo make a pic. cd of the year so I can go back and print indiviadual pics in needed/wanted. As for Vacations, I do mini albums where I put in all the the pics with no fluff, but I do journling and background info on the places we go, and for those pages I use some colored papers and a little bit of fluff.

but like everyone else I have piles that need to get done. I am working on (I have been for a few years now, and I am getting better) of having the strenght to throw away pics....how many shots of that mountain do we need, and why do hang on to those that are in truth pretty crappy shots????

[Kristie]

for me, i just keep all my scrapbooks digital using a scrapbook program. printing out the photos is just too expensive now a days and you want to keep them on disc anyways in case you ever have to grab and run.

Good luck with it! I just don't have that type of patience to sit there and do it manually outside of the computer. haha

I too want to do a wall gallery, we don't have anything like that in our house and i'd love to put up some photos but just don't know how or where...been thinking about that for over a year now, i should just do it and use "a" wall. haha

[TheWife]

I'm not doing it outside the computer, I'm doing it ON it, that way there is a digital copy, which will be duplicated and kept elsewhere. But I still want something that people can sit and look through, so I'm going to print some of them. I've taken about 5000 pictures in the last 6 years though, so I for sure won't be printing even most of them, just the best ones. My kids are always wanting to see what they looked like as babies, and I want them to have an album to look at, not just "here, come look on mommy's computer".

[Kristie]

What i'm doing is creating personal albums about those people...like i'm doing one for my mom (her 10 yr death anniversary is coming up) and one for my brother (when his 5 yr comes up)...in each, i'm using family photos as well as photos of them for memory sake.

I like photo albums that are more personalized to the person and/or family... i bet your kids would probably like them personalized for just them as well (so they don't feel like one was a "copied" version of the other kwim?!)...

I do everything chronologically whether or not they're events...all the photos are time related more than anything.

I like candid and portrait in one album... that way, it breaks up the monotony of portrait photos (by sticking some outrageously funny scenes in).

on a personal note, i wouldn't redo your 3 other albums... you did those a certain way for a certain reason at the time and as time goes by, each photo album is going to evolve differently anyways, so why go back?

I thought for some reason, you were going to do the scrapbook the "original" way... if that would have been so, you'd probably end up burning yourself out... with doing it electronically, you have more availability and more options and can do more albums easier, so it shouldn't be as big of a deal/time consumer to do each kid separately.

if you still had your mac, i would have suggested using iphoto to put them together and then send in for the book. altho i think you'd have to use iweb in order to get the scrapbook feel of it. but regardless, that's only if you were still using the mac

HTH

edit: here's another idea... what about those digital frames? with those coming out & down in price, you almost don't need to create a scrapbook....you could create a slideshow and let the frame do all the work.

[TheWife]

I do still have the Mac, not sure why though lol. But I'm getting used to it, despite it's many quirks like freezing, shutting down, kicking me out of programs, etc. I have been sorting the photos in iphoto. I have Memory Mixer for a digital scrapbook program and I'll probably just do really simple layouts from their predesigned pages, and print them out. I don't want to order one of the books because I want to be able to add to it as needed. I also want to be able to add to anywhere, not just the end, like say I came across some pics grandma has or something, and I want to add them to the book in the right order.

Good point that putting the candid w/ the portraits breaks them up, that's the one I was really trying to figure out. They seem like such different mediums (if that word works that way lol), so I wasn't sure if it was weird to have them in the same album.

I think the digital frames will come down a lot more in price in about 3-6 months, I'm kind of surprised at what they cost right now! I mean, you can get a pretty decent DVD player for $90, but some digital frames are almost $200. But I think it would be fun to have one for the digital scrapbook, that makes it a fun way for visitors to see it, but then the kids like looking through an actual book too. So I don't know...more thinking to do! LOL. Thanks for all the ideas!