For photographers that swear they'll get organized SOMEDAY...read on!

Photo albums have been on my list of things to do since my girls were born and when I made this proclamation, I though "Oh yeah, I'll just pump out a book each year". I know, you’re all secretly saying “Yeah Right” in your heads. We’ll okay, you win! Until I started taking advantage of my Mac Computer and all the riches of Apple’s PHOTOS application, I was sunk. I didn’t know where to start and I felt like my photos were piling up on top of me (metaphorically speaking…I really just bought another external hard-drive). But, I took some time and figured out a method and now I seemingly have a solid lock on my digital photos! A process I'm hoping to share with you because we all know--we all WANT to get those pictures off our devices. I can proudly say I've produced an album for every year. I’ve also been able to take advantage of promo codes so that I can order multiple books—one for each of my daughters and one for us (my husband and me). I think, they will be the best gift I’ll give my girls down the road.
 
So here goes—try it out. Follow along if you own a Mac and Apple products or are able to sync your non-Apple products with a Mac. We have a Canon D60, our iPhones and an iPad and we haven’t encountered any issues.

GET BACK YOUR MEMORIES—IN PRINT!
A HOW-TO…
 
STEP ONE:

• SYNC + UPLOAD EVERYTHING | Sync all your devices using PHOTOS on your Mac. Grab a glass of wine and systematically upload all your photos from each device.
• SPACE SAVER | Click on the box to delete photos after upload and free up some significant space on you phone!
• Now, like magic, all your photos will be chronologically ordered by month and by year (no matter what device you used)
• TIME COMMITMENT | 30 min to 1 hour

 
STEP TWO:

• You know that 20 minutes after lunch or at 3pm when you’d rather be eating a giant CinnaBon than doing work. Curb your craving by taking 15 minutes to check out a few great On-line photo book sites—Snapfish, Shutterfly, PrintNinja or Picaboo to name a few!
• DO YOUR RESEARCH
  • STYLE, SIZE + FINISHING | Figure out what style of book you’d like? Some companies offer different templates. Some templates are more modern and others more whimsical or artistic. Figure out what style matches yours. Another point, do you want this for your coffee table? For a purse to share with friends on the go? And lastly, figure out what sort of finishing options you’d like? Some sites specialize or have great deals on different production options—saddle stich, perfect (soft cover), case (hard cover) or even finish your photo album as a board book. Know what’s out there!
  • PRICING | There are SO many sites that it can get overwhelming.
    • SITE PROMOS | Narrow things down to one or two sites and then check out their promos or deals.
    • MAILING LIST DEALS | Get on their mailing list so that when a sale hits, you can push PRINT on your on-line photo book production!
• TIME COMMITMENT | 15 minutes okay, maybe 20. 

 
STEP THREE:

• CREATE A ‘BEST OF’ FOLDER | Create a folder in PHOTOS and label it ‘BEST OF [YEAR]’
• DATE NIGHT, KINDA | Again, grab a glass of wine (are you seeing a trend…) and go through all your photos for ONE YEAR and select your favorites. My husband and I both did this together and it was a fun way to spend an hour—figuring out the ‘best’ photos of our girls over the year. We made a mini-date night out of it!
• TIME COMMITMENT: 30 min to 1 hour

 
STEP FOUR:

• ON-LINE MOCK-UP TIME | Now this can go quickly or it can take you some time…you choose…
• PRE-POPULATE | Check to see if the site you’re using has a ‘pre-populate’ feature as this will save you time. We used SNAPFISH and they essentially uploaded our entire ‘BEST OF’ folder and then pre-populated their book template with our photos. All we needed to do after was to arrange, re-arrange and add text where necessary.
• TIME COMMITMENT: 1 – 2 hours

 
STEP FIVE: 

• SEND IT TO PRINT OR PRODUCTION| Take one last look at your pages, photos, text entries. Most companies have a scrolling ‘Final Version’ view that lets you flip through your book. Everything look fantastic? Then press PRINT, PAY + WAIT!!
• TIME COMMITMENT: 15 minutes ​

​Not so daunting, right? When you break it into STEPS, it makes it a little more bit-sized—less overwhelming. That’s what we’ve done and over a few months--we'd do a few, take a break, do a few more... I’ve decided to create a ‘Best Of’ Book for each year. I have three copies printed; one for my husband and me, and one for both of our girls to be held for them until they're at an age where it makes sense to hand them over. I also bought individual modern 'hope' chests for both girls which I've been keeping each album safe in until I'm ready to gift 
 
CATCH UP | This might seem to be a lot of work but each book can be competed over the course of a few evenings.
If you’re compiling books by YEAR, try composing one book per month…you’ll be caught up before you know it!
 
ANOTHER IDEA | Consider making multiple books and mail both sets of Grandparents’ hearts this holiday season!
 
Go get ‘em digital (soon to be printed) photographers!