They did it! You did it! And you couldn’t be more proud. There are few moments in life that make us more proud than watching our kids, family or friends graduate. Show your pride in a photo book gift featuring graduation day photos or make a memory book with all those old school pictures from kindergarten to the senior prom. You will love making it and your grad will cherish it for years to come. Choose from hundreds of stylish backgrounds, including our new graduation photo book theme or upload your own custom pages. Your books will arrive in 7-10 business days.

Order your book at regular price by Friday, June 5, 2009 using the coupon code INKUGRAD09 and get a second copy of the same book for 50% off.

*Offer cannot be combined with any other offer or promotion. Coupon code may be used one time per customer.

It’s too late to make a photo book for mom but it’s not too late to order her an Inkubook gift card. Photo book gift cards make great gifts for moms who love to make digital scrapbooks & photo books. Just order online and you can have it sent electronically or print it out and put it in a card. It doesn’t get much easier than that. 

Check it out: http://inkubook.com/gift_cards/default.aspx

For those of you who have been pregnant or have lived with someone pregnant, you’re likely aware of the “nesting instinct” that sets in just before baby arrives. This instinct causes many women to make cleaning, shopping and organizing top priorities. At 39 weeks pregnant, I had cleaned everything, bought all that I could, and organized and reorganized every nook and cranny in the house. When there was nothing left to do, I came up with something … getting a jump-start on baby’s first photo book.

Baby photo books made at Inkubook are printed on 100 lb. archival-quality
silk paper, which means they will stand up to years of enjoyment.

When my first daughter was born two years ago, I made a baby photo book  outlining our trip to the hospital, her birth, our time at the hospital, her first car ride and the first 72 hours at home, including her first bath on the kitchen counter. I finally got around to making that book when she was about 8 months old. I wish I had made that photo book sooner, when the events were fresher in my sleep-deprived mind.

This time would be different. This time, I had experience and a little inspiration from Laura, the professional organizer, mom of three and blogger of OrgJunkie on my side. Having made a baby photo book like this before, I already knew what sort of pictures I wanted to include. So, I logged on to Inkubook.com, and started the Simple Square baby photo book. The 8.5 square soft cover book fits nicely on a bookshelf and coffee table and in the diaper bag. I chose the Baby’s 1st Year theme. And in my super-organization state-of-mind, I began to lay out the photo book and write in some of the text I know I’ll want.

Photos you might want to include in your baby photo book:
- Mommy’s belly before and at hospital
- Cord cutting, hospital bath, bracelet
- Mommy, daddy, sibling, grandparents w/baby
- “Birth day” cake
- Car ride home
- First 72 hours at home – feeding, changing, napping, bath

After baby girl arrives and is finally taking a nap longer than 20 minutes, I’ll be able to upload all of the photos and place them in the book, share it with family and friends through Inkubook’s Invite Friends feature and order the photo book before she wakes for her next feeding. How’s that for organized?

Today Inkubook announced a partnership to become the official photo book provider of the NFL Alumni, Inc. Indianapolis Chapter. Under the agreement, Alumni members, family and friends will use Inkubook to create photo books commemorating special events, including the organization’s charitable golf tournament. These photo books will be made available for sale to benefit the chapter’s mission “Caring for Kids.”

NFL Alumni Indy Chapter captures the memories of the
2008 Charity Golf Classic in a gorgeous
Ultimate Portrait Inkubook photo book.

“We look forward to working with Inkubook to capture the memories of our events in photo book keepsakes that will help us raise money for some great charities including the Super Bowl XLVI Legacy Fund, Tony Dungy’s All-Pro Dad and Peyton Manning’s Peyback Foundation,” said Barry Krauss, president of the Indianapolis Chapter of NFL Alumni, Inc.

“We’re pleased to add the NFL Alumni, Inc. Indy Chapter to our inaugural group of partners,” said Inkubook General Manager Ken Kratz. “The collaborative nature of Inkubook, as well as our flexible partnership program, makes it the perfect option for any organization that relies on group events to drive fundraising.”

You don’t even have to be a former pro football player to join the team. If you would like to make a gorgeous photo book and help out the NFL Alumni, Inc. Indy Chapter in its mission of “Caring for Kids” at the same time visit http://inkubook.com/NFL-Alumni-Indy to learn more.

Well, it’s here, that part of winter that’s blisteringly cold and inhospitable. The time of year when it seems like going outdoors should be outlawed. One day the temperatures might be relatively mild, but the next is outrageously frigid. This is the type of weather that’s best for staying warm with a nice indoor activity.

Snow day memories can last forever in a gorgeous
winter-themed Inkubook photo book.

Call us predictable, but we’re going to give you a suggestion for an indoor activity, and you can probably guess what it is. When you’re snowbound (or just trapped inside because it’s significantly below freezing outside), it’s a good time to work on a photo book. With our collections of Winter and Contemporary Christmas backgrounds, you can pretend to be enjoying the seasonably cold temperatures without actually setting foot outside.

It’s a perfect time to organize your photos from the holidays and put them in a photo book adorned with our Contemporary Christmas backgrounds. As you can see from the swatches, the Contemporary Christmas theme says Christmas, but it does it by updating the look of traditional pine green and candy-cane red. The green is a little more muted and the red has more of a cranberry hue. Trees and ornaments have modern shapes and designs. If you prefer something a little more traditional, we still have the regular Christmas theme that includes more classic colors and patterns.

Inkubook Contemporary Christmas Theme

While it might be too cold to go sledding, ice skating, or snowman-building right now, it’s a good time to remember the last winter adventure you had by building a book with some frosty backgrounds. Designed with images and colors that evoke memories clear, crisp days full of sunshine and snow, the Winter theme looks adorable when framing photos of people joyously playing in the snow.

Inkubook Winter Theme

If the last thing you want to do is be faced with the imagery that makes you think of winter, don’t fear. We still have all the backgrounds that are reminiscent of warmer time, such as the Summer and Family Beach Vacation themes. You can turn your heat up to 88, put on a pair of shorts, sip a refreshing glass of iced tea, and focus on the history of last summer instead of the history of last month.

Holiday season 2008 is in the near distant past, but that doesn’t mean it’s too early to start thinking about what kind of special gift you might make for someone in 2009. In case you haven’t already thought about taking all your old traditional photos and putting them into a photo book, or in case you think it would be too difficult, it might be time for you to think about it a little more. Inkubook member Dick Fey made three books for his children and wrote us to say how pleased he was with them, so we asked Dick if he’d let us tell everyone a little about his experiences with Inkubook.

Dick is a semi-retired business ownder from Leawood, Kansas, which is a suburb of Kansas City. His plan had been to make DVD videos of old 8mm film for his children as a Christmas present. He sent many rolls of 30-year-old film to a company for professional transfer to digital format, and he also scanned lots of pictures himself. Then he made a video slide show and put it on DVDs. Once he got that part done he thought he was finished with his gift. Then he found Inkubook. Here’s what he had to say:

“I’d never heard of you, but your website looked interesting, so I decided to play with it a little. It was perfect timing, since I already had all the pictures readily available. I thought that perhaps having a ‘coffee table book’ of the pictures would be a perfect addition to the gift pack. I’d never made a picture book before–in fact I didn’t even know the technology existed. I found the website very easy to comprehend and use, and had a good time doing it.

Dick Fey and his children with their books.

“Initially I was concerned about quality; buying over the Internet when you can’t actually touch or feel the product is difficult, at least for me. I was pleasantly surprised when I began to receive the books. They were better than I had expected. Even pictures that Inkubook had marked as questionable came out OK.

“We gave our children the books for Christmas, and, boy, were they thrilled! I think the immediate gratification of the photo book was even more important to them than the videos.”

So whether you’re in the market for a good mid-winter activity to keep you busy or you want to get started on a present for holiday season 2009, think about scanning some of those old photos and putting them in a modern and attractive photo book. Dick Fey is happy he did, and you will be, too.

At Inkubook, we’ve created background schemes to complement many different calendar and life events (such as weddings, babys’ births, and different seasons), and Halloween is no exception. While none of our backgrounds is so terrifying that your hair will turn white with fright, all of them are awfully cute and seasonable.

The Kughens get busy decorating pumpkins.

As you can see, I’ve used the Candy Corn and Happy Jack o’ Lantern backgrounds with photos from this year’s pumpkin decorating. I think they make the perfect backdrop for our pumpkin construction process. Here’s a peek at the full collection of Halloween backgrounds:

One of my favorite things about the Inkubook background collections is that you don’t have to use only the backgrounds that are in the theme you pick when you first start your book. For example, my husband and I will be making a book to give to our mothers for Christmas. It’ll cover the past 12 months, starting with Christmas of last year, so of course we’ll want to use a variety of backgrounds that coordinate with each type of photo we have. Seashells and flip-flops for our trip to Florida, Meow and Woof for our cat and dog, and, of course, the aforementioned backgrounds for Halloween.

If it comes as a surprise to you that you can add more backgrounds to your Backgrounds gallery, here’s a brief tutorial. (This also gives me an opportunity to mention that we gave our editor a little makeover at the end of last week. Things are better organized and easier to find than before, so make sure to check it out.)

The tabs at the top of the updated editor,
with the Backgrounds tab highlighted. Notice
the blue Get More Backgrounds button.

When you’re ready to browse for backgrounds that aren’t in the collection that goes with the theme you chose when you started your book, make sure you’re on the Backgrounds tab (now located at the top of your editor screen) and click the blue Get More Backgrounds button. A screen with the full array of backgrounds will open. You can browse them all and decide which you want to include in your book. Click the one you want then click Apply. The background will be applied to the active page in your book and it’ll be added to your Backgrounds gallery. (Before long it’ll be possible to choose and add several backgrounds at once.)

Use our feedback form or leave a comment on this post to let us know what kind of backgrounds you’d like to see us add, and we’ll send you a t-shirt to thank you for your suggestion.

Some time ago I confessed that I have a secret desire to learn to take really impressive pictures that would look wonderful in a photo book. So when I saw Bob Ross’s Inkubook Serene Moments: The Photography of Bob Ross, I was more than a little jealous.

Bob has been a serious amateur photographer for about 40 years, and now that he’s retired and doesn’t have the demands of raising a young family he has more time available to devote to photography. Before he retired he spent a lot of time traveling by car on business trips, and he found that his love of photography gave him a greater appreciation for his surroundings than he otherwise would have had. Now he takes pictures on a monthly basis, and he sees it as some people see fishing: It’s great when he comes home with something nice, but it’s just as great when he doesn’t.

Bob was kind enough to share some tips that he feels contribute to his ability to take fantastic photos, so we’re sharing them with you today. This weekend, get out in the fresh air to try your hand with some of these suggestions. The change of seasons is a perfect opportunity to take photos of your surroundings. After all, practice makes perfect!

Photography Tips
1. Use a tripod whenever possible.
2. If your camera accepts filters, use a polarizing filter. It reduces glare and increases the color saturation, as well as darkens blue skies. Caution: Look through the viewfinder and rotate the polarizer to see the effect you want or it could have the opposite effect from what you’re seeking.
3. The first hour after dawn and the last hour before sunset are the best times for shooting. The low light models objects better and increases color saturation. Sun directly overhead is the poorest light, but if you like the scene and it’s midday, shoot it anyway. An overcast day is also great for fall photography.
4. Backlighting of fall leaves is wonderful. Backlighting is where the sun is coming from behind the object you’re shooting and lighting up translucent objects such as leaves. Be careful, however, to avoid the sun shining directly on the front of the camera lens.
5. When composing the scene, try to place objects of the greatest interest (such as a lone tree in a field or a church steeple set against a hillside) anywhere other than dead center in the picture. Moving objects of interest to the upper right, lower right, upper left, or lower left is more attractive placement than having them in the center. Try it. You’ll see the difference.
6. If there is a horizon in your picture, it is best to NOT place it right in the center. Move it up if you’re emphasizing the foreground or down if you want to emphasize the sky. Having the horizon in the center is static unless you’re shooting something with a reflection of itself in a pond or lake.
7. Close-ups are always a good idea. A few leaves on the ground or berries are appealing subjects for close-ups if your camera allows.

Tips for Digital Processing
Most digital cameras default to a setting that yields softer and less colorful pictures. That’s because so many shots are taken of people. When working with nature photography, you overcome this by using the software that came with your camera to process the photos on your PC. Experiment with increasing color saturation, contrast, and sharpness. Always sharpen a photo LAST, after having made all other changes. You’ll find that you can double the impact of a digital photo by careful use of the adjustment options that come with the software. After you’ve made your adjustments, you’ll want to click on File then Save As. Rename the picture, and when you finally save it you’ll be making a clone of the original with all your changes while saving the original so that you can go back to it if you don’t like the results or want to experiment more.

General Suggestions
Consider these scenes for your fall photography: waterfalls, decrepit old barns with colorful trees beside them, lovely old homes, or any kind of water such as a stream, a pond, or a lake. You can photograph property without permission from a public position, but always ask permission before going onto private property.

Lucy’s First Year

To conclude our week-long tribute to all things kid-related, we’re featuring a book called Lucy’s First Year. “The Lucy book,” as we like to call it around here, was created by Betsy Braun. Betsy was one of our first customers, and her book has had an interesting history.

Betsy created the book way back in early summer as a surprise for her sister and brother-in-law. It chronicles the first year of her niece’s life plus a little bit from the pre-Lucy era (Betsy included a some ultrasound pictures and photos from her sister’s baby shower). Betsy collected stories and thoughts from other family members to add some narrative interest to the book. Because the book was a surprise, she collected the stories manually rather than using the Invite Friends feature. Betsy said, “I wanted to keep as much of the book as possible a surprise and was worried that a few people might sneak or allow my sister and brother-in-law…to take a look…. I plan to use the built-in invitation feature in the future to allow more sharing.”

Betsy received her book and was very happy with it, but a few months later she had an opportunity to go back and make a few revisions using the updated version of Inkubook. She found the improvements we’d made to be quite helpful. “It was much easier the second time around to format the text exactly how I wanted it,” Betsy said. “Also, the many different background options made the book much more colorful. My most favorite part of the updated book was the matte cover–it looked amazing. I liked the cover before, but as soon as I saw the new book I LOVED the cover! The matte cover really put the final professional touches on the book that I wanted.”

We’re thrilled that Betsy enjoyed her book-making experience so much, and we’re especially pleased that she found our improvements and enhancements helpful. If you’re new to Inkubook, you’re lucky to get to try us out for the first time after we’ve already worked out some of those early kinks. We’re constantly working on improvements, so things will get even more slick and fancy over time.

Here we are at the end of our journey: Part IV of the ”Making Photo Books: Planning Your Approach” series. For those of you who have been with me since the beginning of the series, give yourself a pat on the back. For those of you who are just joining me, you might want to revisit the other parts in this series about forming a plan to make a book:

• Part I covers deciding what type of book to make
• Part II is about making a simple outline and starting to organize your photos
• Part III discusses making scans of odds and ends to include in your book and how best to name your photo files

In many photo books, getting the photos ready is the task that takes the bulk of the time. After all, photos tend to be the centerpiece of photo books. But sometimes there are a few other loose ends to tie up before you really launch into making a book. Sometimes, it helps to…

6. Type the Stories

For the most part, I type my text directly into the Inkubook text editor. That way, I know which photos I’ve placed on which pages and I can easily refer to them or customize my narration according to what’s on the page. I can also judge more accurately how much space I have in the layout where the text belongs.

There are times, though, when I prefer to type something in Word and upload it. Recipes for my cookbook, for example, might be easier to type out before I put them in the book, or I might just upload recipes I already have stored on my hard drive. Or if I plan to have some pages in the book that are text and only text, typing them in advance allows me to take advantage of some of the tools that Word has that the Inkubook text editor doesn’t, such as spell check. While the Inkubook text editor is a handy tool, it doesn’t have some conveniences of more robust word processors.

There’s just one other thing I need to do, and that’s…

7. Plan to Send Invitations

My hard work is mostly done. I’ve done my brainstorming, my planning, and my organization. I’m ready to ask someone else to do some work, and one of the terrific things about Inkubook is that it’s really easy to ask other people to contribute to books without the hassle of sending them a file to read through and update. That process always ends in tragedy. (OK, maybe “tragedy” is a bit melodramatic, but it’s never simple.) Shuttling a file around from one person to another usually holds up my progress because I have to wait for person A to finish what he’s doing before I can work on the project myself; otherwise, I’ll end up with multiple versions of the files.

It’s one of my favorite photos from 1981, but you can probably
see why my family might prefer something more recent.
I’m the short one on the left.

After I’ve sent my Inkubook invitations everyone can work simultaneously in one centralized location. In the case of my cookbook, many of the recipes I plan to feature were given to me by my mother and sister, so I’ll be sending them invitations. The fact that we can all upload to one location without overriding each other means my pokey mother (I love you, Mom!) can work at her own pace while my super-efficient sister works at hers and there’s no conflict between the two. I’ll be asking them to include a picture of themselves (largely because I’m sure they’d rather have me use current pictures of their own choosing rather than some of my favorites from 1981) as well as any recipes they’d like to have added to the book. When I’m done putting the cookbook together, I can ask them to preview the book to make sure I don’t have any awful errors in the text. (I’ve learned the hard way that three tablespoons of salt used in place of three tablespoons of sugar can be very, very bad.)

So there you have it. I’ve now shared my seven steps to planning and crafting an Inkubook. I like to tweak systems to make them better as I get more practice, so I’m still really interested in how you all do things, so please feel free to email suggestions to ckughen at inkubook dot com. Maybe we’ll get enough ideas to continue the series!