Organizing Your Memories
During our book club meeting this week, my friends and I had a discussion about how we all have tons of pictures laying around that we have yet to put into scrapbooks. Well, technically, my pictures aren’t laying around, they are stuck on my computer (well organized, but not archived).
It got me thinking about how there are so many great tools out there for working with your pictures and I thought I’d share some with you today.
First, as far as organizing your pictures is concerned - I highly reccomend Google’s Picasa Software. You download it to your computer, and you can create folders/albums that hold your pictures. You can upload your pictures to the web and into albums that your family and friends can view and you can transfer them to your local stores to get prints made. They’ve recently added new functionality so that you can do more alterations and touchups to pictures and some other fancy tricks.
I’ve also used Snapfish and Kodak and they both offer great tools, but for me - Picasa is just the best option!
But, let’s assume you have a way of organizing your photos before you make albums. If you’re looking to make an album, there are a lot of different options available.
1) If you want a traditional scrapbook album and you don’t have time to do it yourself, you can always visit Etsy and use their Alchemy function which allows you to put out your request and have others bid on what they will charge you to complete it. There are so many creative people on Etsy, you can’t go wrong with that option!
2) If you want the look of an traditional looking scrapbook, but want to use technology to get it, you can try How Fast They Grow. It’s a digital scrapbooking site - they have really amazing albums, but they also have a hefty price tag. Definitely worth checking out!
3) Then, there are a bunch of sites where you can create photo albums and then they print and mail them to you. The great thing about these are that there are so many templates and cover options to choose from you can truly personalize them. Here are two - Blurb and My Publisher. Slate magazine did a review of a slew of other sites that also offer photo books that is worth taking a look at.
The only site I have used is My Publisher. The books turned out really great. I was impressed. My good friend has created an album for each year of her daughter’s life and they turned out beautiful. Again, a little pricey, but gorgeous. I am working on my first Blurb album, but haven’t finished it yet, I’ll let you know when I do!
So, there are a few options for you. Of course you can just leave them on your computer too, but then I would recommend backing them up so you don’t lose them all! A thumb drive or CD can do it quickly and you won’t run the risk of losing the precious moments you’ve been saving!
How do you organize your families photos? What services have you used? What do you recommend?
