How to Create Your Own Photo Book

A printed photo always has more magic than a digital one, because it lets you hold the memories your camera has captured in your hands. You’ve got them all nicely together in one book. Print the photos from your vacation or wedding, maybe for yourself or maybe for your loved ones, and create your own professional-looking photo book.

Besides just photo editing, Zoner Photo Studio X helps you create photo products too. Photo books are among the most popular. In the following lines you’ll read how to turn the photos on your disk into a book to store your memories. 

Choose a Format to Get Started

To create a photo book, start up Zoner Photo Studio, go to the Create module, and click +Create New Project.

Click on Photo Book and create a new project.

Start by thinking through what format to use for your photo book. Your options are A4 photo books in portrait or landscape orientation, or square books with a size of 20 centimeters on each side. The HD versions have the same dimensions; they differ in their quality. These are photo books with top-quality printing and materials, with a new production technology that reduces problems with the fold in two-page spreads. We’ve managed to flatten the fold so much that you can run a photo across a whole two-page spread, and the fold will only cause you minimal problems.

Choose a format for your photo book.

Choose the Colors

We’ve prepared colorful Project Templates for you with background and text colors that fit each other well. But don’t feel limited to just these. You can pick your own colors to suit your needs.

A Page Layout That Adapts to You

Under Page Layout you’ll find templates for individual two-page spreads. These are classified by the number of photos per spread. The templates are either photo-only or provide room for text as well. 

But you don’t really have to worry about the photo counts in the Page Layout options at all. Just drag all the photos that you want in a two-page spread into that spread, and the program will automatically offer a suitable template for your chosen number of photos. So the templates adapt to what you want to have on each pair of pages.

The program automatically offers suitable templates based on the number of photos per page.

Drag photos into your photo book from the Filmstrip.

Adjust Your Photos’ Cropping

To adjust the photos on an individual page, double-click that page. Then reposition photos to get the composition you need. You’ll also find tools here for rotating photos, placing them, and deleting them. 

Want to add another photo or text to a spread without being limited by your choice of Page Layout? No problem—use the buttons in the right panel to add the extra text or photo.

Double-click a page to open it and adjust photo frames.

Fit the Photos or Fit the Format?

This innocent-looking option is a fundamental one and worth your attention. Fit Template to Format means that your photos will fill up all the space in the two-page spread. But you should count on them being cropped slightly to achieve this.

Set whether the photos should be cropped or fit.

The second option, Fit Template to Photos, means that the photos will stay completely uncropped—but some borders will be visible on the page because of this.

Fitting the template to the photos prevents unwanted cropping.

The last option is Fit the frame to square photos, which crops absolutely everything to a 1:1 ratio of sides. Choosing Fit Template to Format generally gives the best-looking result, but the auto-cropping might end up cutting away something important at a photo’s edges here and there. That’s why you get a choice and can change the cropping.

Give Frames a Try Too

Last but not least, test whether your photos will look good with frames and borders. You can choose from any color you like and use sharp or rounded corners. Use the sliders to adjust the thickness of the frames and how far the photos are from each other. You don’t need to set this up for each page of the book separately. To give each page the same settings here, click on Set for All.

You can add frames to your photos and configure their settings.

Add Some Descriptions

Certain templates, including those for opening pages, have text boxes in them. Clicking a box shows a window for adjusting the text settings.

Click into a text box to add text.

Some of the templates have text boxes at the bottom. These let you add a story to your photos describing where they were taken or a note that you’ll appreciate when you go back to browse the photo book after a long time.

Some of the templates have text boxes at the bottom.

Once your photo book is done, you can save it to PDF, print it out, or click straight away on the Order button to have it mailed straight to your home. 

Save your final photo book, or order a copy of it.

Create Your Own Unique Keepsakes Today 

Download Zoner Photo Studio X, try it free for 30 days, and create your own photo book! 

Last updated 5. May 2020