Give a personalized photo book for Christmas
Stumped about finding the holiday gift for the person who has everything? Why not use your library of digital photos to make them a custom book that looks as good as those fancy coffee table books but is something so uniquely personal it just might be their favorite gift ever.
We all have hundreds of photos. Why not assemble them into a book? A super slick book that takes just minutes. There are lots of services that will do this for you.
Users of Apple’s iPhoto can easily do it right from the program. Write some descriptive words, drag and drop your pictures into a layout guide and, from start to finish, you can do this project in about 10 minutes. This year, I did one for my father-in-law’s 90th birthday. A 20-page hardcover book cost just $29.
Another great service is from the Shutterfly site. You need to be a member, but that’s free. Load up your pictures and, again, drop them on a template and you’re good to go. Shutterfly has several sizes and varieties available, starting at $12.99.
And Picaboo is another great site for PC users. They start at $10 for a small paperback book and offer lots of other choices, as well as detailed instructions on how to complete the project in a snap.
Besides personalized photo books, these same sites also let you print up lots of other things like photo calendars. One caution: You need to place your order by Dec. 18 to get them back by standard shipping.
