Photo book service allowing non-English text

May 30, 2017 1:00 PM

I'd like to make a photo book for our family with text in both English and Japanese. Is there a photo book service that will allow me to do this?

In theory I could do this all by hand - I have access to InDesign and can use it at an advanced-beginner level. But I like the reduced barrier to entry and semi-automation that many of the photo book sites offer. Do you know of one that will allow me to drag and drop in a bunch of vacation photos and add a mix of English and Japanese captions?

If you're certain that this is a bad idea and I should just do it in InDesign, can you recommend a specific template, package of templates, or anything else that will help me ACTUALLY do this and not just sit around thinking it would be a good idea if...?

posted by telepanda to Media & Arts (8 answers total)

Do the book services you've tried care what language(s) the text is written in? What happens when you try to add a mixture of English and Japanese?
posted by Winnie the Proust at 1:06 PM on May 30, 2017

I have Blurb's BookWright installed and was able to cut-and-paste the Japanese text from this Lorem Ipsum generator with it remaining in Japanese looking text. (Disclaimer: I cannot read Japanese.) I could also add English text inline - as long as the text is Unicode and you choose a Unicode font, I think it should work. I was quite happy with my previous Blurb photo book.
posted by Homeboy Trouble at 1:12 PM on May 30, 2017

Maybe make the Japanese text into a image and just insert it as you would the other images?
posted by orrnyereg at 1:38 PM on May 30, 2017

Response by poster: As an example, I just tested on Shutterfly's service. I was able to type Japanese text into the box, but as soon as I pressed "OK", it gave me an error message of "invalid characters removed". I think part of the issue is that they use a limited list of fonts?

I do not want to insert the Japanese text as an image, as a caption of "we went to the beach" should not occupy the same amount of space as a photo of us going to the beach.

Homeboy Trouble, that looks promising. Thank you.

Based on that, a useful rephrase of this question might be "What photo book services accept all Unicode fonts?"
posted by telepanda at 2:11 PM on May 30, 2017

a caption ... should not occupy the same amount of space as a photo
On Shutterfly, all of the pictures don't need to be the same size and you can customize the layouts to include one large photo and one or more smaller photos. Another alternative would be to edit the picture to include the English and Japanese captions before you load them.
posted by soelo at 2:34 PM on May 30, 2017

Is there a Japanese photobook service you could use, and get it posted internationally to you?
posted by dowcrag at 4:35 AM on May 31, 2017

Best answer: The Costco photo book creator seems to allow Japanese text.
posted by bradf at 7:21 AM on May 31, 2017

Response by poster: We got our lovely bilingual Costco photo book a few weeks ago and it was exactly what we wanted. Thanks so much!
posted by telepanda at 3:34 PM on November 3, 2017 [1 favorite]