I have made books with four different companies and the quality of the book and ease of use of the software has some variation. My favorite is Smilebooks. Most companies print their books on digital print paper. Smilebooks.com is the only company I have found to offer printing on actual silver-halide photo paper. Both options make great books, but I think the printing on the photo paper is a little better. That said, I only splurged on it for my wedding album.

In terms of design, there two options: you can either download a program, design the book using photos from your computer and upload the final product to order, or you can upload your photos to the company’s website and design it online. Either way, all companies have a variety of backgrounds, borders, text options and premade layouts you can use to arrange your photos. Smilebooks is the first company I found that allowed me to move, rotate, resize, add and remove photos with complete freedom as well as use premade templates.

For my wedding, I made a photo book guestbook using my engagement photos. This required very little effort as the goal was to have plenty of white space for people to sign in. There was enough blank space that, instead of signatures, everyone was able to leave little notes to us. I also made my final wedding album and both parents’ albums using Smilebooks. I just couldn’t justify the expense of a traditional wedding album so I got a photo package that was simply the digital negatives and designed the album myself. Every one is amazed at my album and can’t tell I did it myself.