Physical Book from Facebook Statuses
October 4, 2018 8:36 AM Subscribe
I have been terrible at keeping memory books of my kids' first years, but I have been fairly good at keeping up their Facebook pages which I use to share videos, photos, and quips with extended family and friends. I'd like to export all of this into a site to print a physical book. There are tons of services that do this - which should I choose?
- I'd like to do the editing on a PC.
- Some statuses are just text, others have pictures.
- Some are videos which it would be amazing to grab a still photo from, but I know this is a big ask.
- I'm tech savvy, but editing and formatting should be fairly easy. It would be really frustrating to work on this big project with buggy software.
- The physical book needs to be fairly good quality, but not high-end, museum quality - I'm okay with soft cover, etc.
- I have no idea how much this is going to cost me but hopefully <= $150.
- I might want to add in additional pictures or text, but I assume all of these services will allow me to do this.
Thanks in advance!
- I'd like to do the editing on a PC.
- Some statuses are just text, others have pictures.
- Some are videos which it would be amazing to grab a still photo from, but I know this is a big ask.
- I'm tech savvy, but editing and formatting should be fairly easy. It would be really frustrating to work on this big project with buggy software.
- The physical book needs to be fairly good quality, but not high-end, museum quality - I'm okay with soft cover, etc.
- I have no idea how much this is going to cost me but hopefully <= $150.
- I might want to add in additional pictures or text, but I assume all of these services will allow me to do this.
Thanks in advance!
Response by poster: Yes, I meant website on a PC. I think compiling this sort of book on a phone would be complicated and I don't have access to a tablet.
Thank you for your advice!
posted by valeries at 12:56 PM on October 4, 2018
Thank you for your advice!
posted by valeries at 12:56 PM on October 4, 2018
More notes, in reply to your initial requests:
- Some are videos which it would be amazing to grab a still photo from, but I know this is a big ask.
-- I don't know of any platform that would do this natively, but if you want do image selection from videos yourself, VideoLAN VLC player has a screenshot feature that will capture a lossless (PNG) or lossy (JPG) version of the still image from a video you have. You can either access the videos from your phone, or download Facebook videos, and then play them back in VLC and capture moments you like. (I'm sure other programs also do this, but VLC is the first one that came to mind, and it's free).
- I'm tech savvy, but editing and formatting should be fairly easy. It would be really frustrating to work on this big project with buggy software.
-- Both Snapfish and Shutterfly are pretty stable, though things can get twitchy in Advanced Editor mode, which gives you more control over image and element placement, but I wouldn't call it "buggy." It's more an issue of patience when the interface is a bit slow at times. Both sites, and I'll assume most others, too, give you a range of options for how much control you want over the book, from "pay someone else to make my book for me" to "autofill book with these photos," to advanced editor where you could modify and tweak every single element on the printable pages (there are some pages that are blank by default, which cannot be modified or removed, and there are some company branding elements that you can't modify or move).
- The physical book needs to be fairly good quality, but not high-end, museum quality - I'm okay with soft cover, etc.
-- They're pretty decent. If you look closely, you can see the images aren't printed with mass-production quality printing, but that means you have your nose up against the book ;) I'd suggest you get hardcover, as I recently gave into a whim and got a free book (shipping costs paid only) that was soft-cover, and it's pretty flimsy. The cover already has a minor crease and the corners are a bit dinged up, but that's due in part to grabby little person hands ;)
Other suggestions: pick your preferred book size, import your photos into the platform, then spend some time thinking about how you want to arrange the photos. What's the most important thing in each photo? Do you want to see faces big and clearly? How many photos do you want grouped together? And what's the alignment of those photos?
Unless you have a number of similar photos, or funny little "extra" photos (footprints in the sand / mud, blurry pics of kids running somewhere, toys on the floor or in the yard), limit yourself to 4 photos per page for an 8x8 or 8x12 inch book. But if you get a bigger book, you could go up to 6 or 9 photos per page. Both of these platforms, and I'll assume others, allow you to pick the page layouts based on the number of photos per page, even though the layouts are pre-set to simplify the process for most users. So you can override the pre-loaded layouts with ones that better work for your photos.
posted by filthy light thief at 11:25 AM on October 5, 2018
- Some are videos which it would be amazing to grab a still photo from, but I know this is a big ask.
-- I don't know of any platform that would do this natively, but if you want do image selection from videos yourself, VideoLAN VLC player has a screenshot feature that will capture a lossless (PNG) or lossy (JPG) version of the still image from a video you have. You can either access the videos from your phone, or download Facebook videos, and then play them back in VLC and capture moments you like. (I'm sure other programs also do this, but VLC is the first one that came to mind, and it's free).
- I'm tech savvy, but editing and formatting should be fairly easy. It would be really frustrating to work on this big project with buggy software.
-- Both Snapfish and Shutterfly are pretty stable, though things can get twitchy in Advanced Editor mode, which gives you more control over image and element placement, but I wouldn't call it "buggy." It's more an issue of patience when the interface is a bit slow at times. Both sites, and I'll assume most others, too, give you a range of options for how much control you want over the book, from "pay someone else to make my book for me" to "autofill book with these photos," to advanced editor where you could modify and tweak every single element on the printable pages (there are some pages that are blank by default, which cannot be modified or removed, and there are some company branding elements that you can't modify or move).
- The physical book needs to be fairly good quality, but not high-end, museum quality - I'm okay with soft cover, etc.
-- They're pretty decent. If you look closely, you can see the images aren't printed with mass-production quality printing, but that means you have your nose up against the book ;) I'd suggest you get hardcover, as I recently gave into a whim and got a free book (shipping costs paid only) that was soft-cover, and it's pretty flimsy. The cover already has a minor crease and the corners are a bit dinged up, but that's due in part to grabby little person hands ;)
Other suggestions: pick your preferred book size, import your photos into the platform, then spend some time thinking about how you want to arrange the photos. What's the most important thing in each photo? Do you want to see faces big and clearly? How many photos do you want grouped together? And what's the alignment of those photos?
Unless you have a number of similar photos, or funny little "extra" photos (footprints in the sand / mud, blurry pics of kids running somewhere, toys on the floor or in the yard), limit yourself to 4 photos per page for an 8x8 or 8x12 inch book. But if you get a bigger book, you could go up to 6 or 9 photos per page. Both of these platforms, and I'll assume others, allow you to pick the page layouts based on the number of photos per page, even though the layouts are pre-set to simplify the process for most users. So you can override the pre-loaded layouts with ones that better work for your photos.
posted by filthy light thief at 11:25 AM on October 5, 2018
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But if you mean you'd like to do the editing on a website on a PC, then that's a different, happier story, and probably what you meant, given that you said "there are tons of services that do this," and from what I've seen, they all allow you to upload photos from a range of sources.
Unfortunately for this discussion, I haven't connected my Facebook account to any of these sites, so I can't tell you how well they pull in photo captions. Doing a quick search, Blurb offers an option to make Facebook (or Instagram) photo books, which apparently gives you options to pull in captions and comments from Facebook, too, which appears somewhat unique.
Most recently, I've used Snapfish and Shutterfly to make books, swapping between each depending on which site has the "free book" option at that time ;) They're similar, though Shutterfly offers a bit more control in Advanced Editing mode, when working on a PC. But if you're on your phone or tablet, both sites have apps, and to get people to use their apps, both offer some ridiculous deals. Snapfish offers 100 free photos per month for a year with their app, while Shutterfly is apparently offering a free photo book a month with their app.
But in both cases, it seems like the app-made books are much more simplistic, basically a photo or three per page, and less customization.
And FWIW, your budget is pretty extreme for either site. For comparison, I made and shipped 6 photobooks for under $100, thanks to discount codes at the time. They weren't longer than the default 20 pages or so, and I didn't opt for any fancy layout options or book features, which quickly increase the price per book. But within those 20 pages, plus the back and front cover, I included almost 100 photos. Mind you, some were pretty small, especially when I put 9 on a 8"x11" page, but if you're getting 3 per page, that's still 60 photos, plus the front and back cover. Additional pages are a few bucks per, depending on the size and other details, so I would guess that you could make a really nice, thick photo book, without discounts, for around $50, shipped.
posted by filthy light thief at 11:29 AM on October 4, 2018