What program to use if making a bound photo book?

[KidK9]

I'm looking to make a photobook of my first 5 years of diving. I was wondering if there is a specific program (besides Quark since it cost $600+) that I should be using to put this together. Then what should I do? Take it to Kinko's? Or send it off somewhere? I'm really only planning on putting together 5 copies. THanks a ton for your help, I really appreciate it.

 

[hdtran]

I'm assuming you have a Windows-based platform. The least expensive solution is MS-Office or its Sun/Wordperfect clone. You can just insert JPEGS, lay them out, and add text. (Works, but painful). I have a semi-textbook which was put together in pretty much this way.

If you're going to Kinko's to print, you can print to KDF (Kinko's version of Adobe PDF) and print in color. One word of warning: Color lasers are nowhere near photo inkjets in quality, so consider using a photo inkjet or a dye printer for the photos.

 

[Scubatooth]

kid k9

for printing a book you may want to look at mypublisher.com to see if that will help you in your searh. as for a program your not going to like this but to me at minimum your going to need either adobe pagemaker and/or illistrator for layout and design as these are generally the most used programs on the market, quark is another one you can use but a majority of the priniting houses i have contacted have said they would prefer a illistrator file or a pagemaker file for doing printing.

then for the quality level of reproduction i will second the comment on the laser printers, you need high quality duo tone or pigment inking process for good reproduction.

FWIW

Tooth

 

[dsafanda]

The information above is a bit out of date. Adobe PageMaker has pretty much been made obsolete by Adobe InDesign which is Adobes answer to Quark. It's a great applciation but it's not really any cheaper than Quark so I doubt that it is an acceptable alternative for you. Illustrator is a powerful illustration application that is ideal for single page ads or 2-3 page brochures but it would be cumbersome to try laying out an entire book in Illustrator.

Check out "Microsoft Publisher".

 

[diversteve]

How about Microsoft Publisher 2003? Not the latest or greatest but it may do what you want.

$150 at Tigerdirect: http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=671853&CatId=0

You can get Adobe Pagemaker 7.0 for around $500. Slightly cheaper than Quark and I think easier to learn. I've used both and prefer Pagemaker.

Use Froogle to find the best price for either. If you're in some way affiliated with an educational institution, you can get Pagemaker for around/under $200.

 

[hdtran]

I've used MS Picture-it-Publishing and Stripped-Down-Publisher-in-MS-Works. Picture-it is nice for doing cards & single page projects. It's a real resource hog, though. MS-Works doesn't work

MS-Word was able to handle about 120 pgs with pictures in them, though it was grinding the hard drive really hard. For picture-intensive MS-Word, (a) depending on your version, try inserting each photo into a text box; (b) don't ever try resizing the photo within Word; (c) seriously consider breaking your book into chunks of 20-30 pgs.

 

[Kim]

Actually you can get 30 day try outs of Adobe products - so if you can do it within that time!
The Adobe InDesign is available here from Adobe:
http://www.adobe.com/products/tryadobe/main.jsp#product=31

I have never used it so I have no idea what the learning curve is like, but I bet within 30 days you should be able to achieve something!!!

 

[alcina]

btw - if you use mypublisher.com you don't need to do any of the layout externally. You simply download their stuff and modify as needed. I made a book last year for my Grandmother and it turned out nice. they have some great sales for multi copies sometimes, too.

 

[Mike Veitch]

i think apple and ophoto(kodak) make great books for pretty cheap

 

[Vie]

I would also recommend Adobe InDesign—it’s not an Adobe equivalent to Quark as it is WAY better. If you are already familiar with Illustrator and Photoshop, InDesign should be a breeze to pick up/figure out. Quark and PageMaker ARE acceptable alternatives (PageMaker is NOT acceptable to most competent graphic designer but that’s mostly due to typographic issues).