At Inkubook, we’ve created background schemes to complement many different calendar and life events (such as weddings, babys’ births, and different seasons), and Halloween is no exception. While none of our backgrounds is so terrifying that your hair will turn white with fright, all of them are awfully cute and seasonable.

The Kughens get busy decorating pumpkins.

As you can see, I’ve used the Candy Corn and Happy Jack o’ Lantern backgrounds with photos from this year’s pumpkin decorating. I think they make the perfect backdrop for our pumpkin construction process. Here’s a peek at the full collection of Halloween backgrounds:

One of my favorite things about the Inkubook background collections is that you don’t have to use only the backgrounds that are in the theme you pick when you first start your book. For example, my husband and I will be making a book to give to our mothers for Christmas. It’ll cover the past 12 months, starting with Christmas of last year, so of course we’ll want to use a variety of backgrounds that coordinate with each type of photo we have. Seashells and flip-flops for our trip to Florida, Meow and Woof for our cat and dog, and, of course, the aforementioned backgrounds for Halloween.

If it comes as a surprise to you that you can add more backgrounds to your Backgrounds gallery, here’s a brief tutorial. (This also gives me an opportunity to mention that we gave our editor a little makeover at the end of last week. Things are better organized and easier to find than before, so make sure to check it out.)

The tabs at the top of the updated editor,
with the Backgrounds tab highlighted. Notice
the blue Get More Backgrounds button.

When you’re ready to browse for backgrounds that aren’t in the collection that goes with the theme you chose when you started your book, make sure you’re on the Backgrounds tab (now located at the top of your editor screen) and click the blue Get More Backgrounds button. A screen with the full array of backgrounds will open. You can browse them all and decide which you want to include in your book. Click the one you want then click Apply. The background will be applied to the active page in your book and it’ll be added to your Backgrounds gallery. (Before long it’ll be possible to choose and add several backgrounds at once.)

Use our feedback form or leave a comment on this post to let us know what kind of backgrounds you’d like to see us add, and we’ll send you a t-shirt to thank you for your suggestion.

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Due to the incredible response we’ve had to our various free photo book promotions, we’ve decided to extend the deadline until October 31, 2008! Not sure what I’m talking about? Well, let me tell you.

To celebrate the Inkubook launch, we’ve been running a series of promotions. If you join Inkubook by the deadline and complete your book within 30 days of joining Inkubook, you get your book for free! (You’ll pay for shipping and any applicable taxes.) Not too bad a deal considering you can get any size or style of book you want. If you decide to make the largest hardcover book you can make (120 pages in either 11″ x 8.5″ or 8.5″ x 11″), you’ll be getting a book worth $44.

Here’s a link to a Halloween book ideas page that has a coupon code you can use for this offer: http://inkubook.com/halloweenbookideas/.

And just in case you missed our post on Friday, we’re thanking people who fill out our feedback form or leave a comment to a post by sending them a free t-shirt, so let us hear from you!

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NOTE: We’ve had an overwhelming response to our request for feedback about Inkubook.com. We’ve gotten some really great suggestions, and we’re looking forward to implementing some of them. Due to the tremendous response, we’ve run out of t-shirts. We still welcome comments, and we’ll still give you a hearty “Thank you!”, but we won’t be able to send you a t-shirt at this time.

(To those of you who have already left a comment but have not heard from us yet, we’re still working our way through all the feedback. You’ll hear something sometime in the next few business days.)

You know when you were a kid and you used to see the boxes of cereal on the shelf that said you could get some sort of super cool toy if you managed to convince your parents to buy the cereal for you? But then you got it home and discovered that your battle was only half over because you also needed to talk your parents into writing a check or getting a money order for $4.95 to cover shipping and handling? And then you were crushed to learn that basically all the persuasive arguing you did to convince your mom or dad that the sugar-laden cereal was a good idea instead of your normally nutritious breakfast fare was for naught? Well, this isn’t like that.

The Inkubook t-shirt. The front view is shown on top;
the back view is on bottom.

Here at Inkubook, we have t-shirts to give away. While we do ask you to do one little thing for us in order to get one, we hope you’ll find it a lot less troublesome than those long-ago battles over cereal.

While supplies last, you can get an Inkubook t-shirt simply by giving us some feedback. If you’re typically the type who gets stage fright and doesn’t like to leave voice mail messages or comments on blogs, here are a few ideas on things we’d like to hear about:

1. Tell us what you think about the particular post you’re commenting on.
2. Tell us what other topics you’d like us to cover on the blog.
3. Let us know what you’ve liked about using Inkubook or what you’d like to see us update.
4. Give us some ideas for backgrounds and themes you’d like to have us add to Inkubook.
5. Tell us your sob story about how your mom never would let you get General Mills’ Boo Berry cereal because you wouldn’t actually eat it; you just liked the blue ghost on the box. (Or is that just me?)

To leave a your feedback, go here to fill out the feedback form, or you can leave a comment on one of our posts. Once we’ve heard from you, we’ll contact you to get your mailing address. No checks or money orders required, and we definitely won’t surprise you with a C.O.D. charge when the package arrives on your doorstep.

Not too bad of a deal for a really nice, thick, fashionable t-shirt, right? We’re standing by to hear your comments and take your order!

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Inspired by Charlotte’s autofill post a few weeks ago, I have become an autofilling fiend. Give me a picture and I’ll have it in a book lickity-split. The nice thing about autofill is that it frees you up to do a lot more with your time all while building drop-dead gorgeous photo books. To commemorate my enthusiasm for Autofill, I created a comic that walks you through how to use Autofill. Check it out Here.

Autofill, Baby.

Or, in the same time that it takes you to read a short comic, you could have your own autofill book.

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The following are links to articles found around the Web for October 23rd from 14:53 to 18:50 that may help teach and inspire you in the process of making your drop-dead gorgeous Inkubook:

• Photojojo » Better Lenses for Less Money: How To Use Vintage Lenses with Your DSLR – Photojojo explains how to use older lenses. In most cases, an older film based lens from the same manufacturer as your camera will work on your DSLR although the autofocus likely will not work.
• Soy and Pepper: Food-o-graphie event: My cameras for food photography – The Soy and Pepper food blog discusses the various cameras used for shooting the food on the site and the reasons for selecting the cameras in questions. An interesting read with sample photos from each camera. The differences are surprisingly apparent between the point and shoot and the DSLR.
• Using Your Monitor as a Light Source – Part 1 | Yanik’s Photo School – A clever trick for using your computer monitor as a light source when photographing smaller objects. Allows you to change the color of the light to set tone and add an ambient glow to your objects. Very cool indeed.

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I am frequently awed by the magnificent works of art that people are able to turn out through digital or traditional scrapbooking. I mean, I can barely draw a rectangle using a software application or put a stamp on an envelope without it being crooked or upside down. So I can pretty much forget about creating a beautiful scrapbook page. I am, of course, envious of the people who are artistic and use Inkubook to collect their LOs.

This is a gorgeous layout, but some of the text on the
right page gets a little lost in the gutter.

Making a photo book of scrapbook layouts is one of the most popular uses of Inkubook, so even though I’m jealous I can put my envy aside in the interest of helping to bring more beauty into the world.

It’s not uncommon for someone who’s working on a layout book to ask our support department the following question: “How do I need to size my layout so that it fills the full page?” Consequently, we’ve prepared a PDF that will hopefully fill in some of the blanks. This PDF addresses such things as

• What is the size of the page before it’s trimmed?
• How much of the page is trimmed off?
• If I have text on my page, how do I avoid having it run into the gutter?

I could go into all of those details here, but the PDF describes it much more concisely than I ever would, and it includes four very nice diagrams that show all the trim lines. It’ll be better if you just check it out.

If you’re still having difficulty knowing how to size your image after looking at the PDF, our support team is standing by to answer additional questions. You can access our live chat support service through our Support page, or you can email support@inkubook.com.

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Preview: a feature of Inkubook that’s so helpful and yet so often overlooked. Poor Preview. Let’s make him happy by giving him some love.

The Preview button as it looks today and as it will look later this week.

In case you’ve never noticed our friend Preview, I’ve placed a picture of him to the right. Why are there two? Well, the little blue guy is what Preview looks like today. Later this week he’s going to get a makeover along with the rest of his family, and he’s going to be a bigger, bolder, more yellow version of himself. Perhaps he won’t be so overlooked then.

Anyway, the reason Preview is so helpful is because when you use it, you get to see your book in a format that more closely resembles an actual printed book. It’s still not quite like holding a book in your hands because Preview is a two-dimensional picture rather than a three-dimensional thing, but it’s pretty close. All the picture and text container boxes are stripped out. We’ve added a little shading that simulates what the roll of the pages will look like when you have the book open in front of you. The gallery panels are moved out of the way so all your focus can be on the book.

Let’s look at an example of how Preview helped me decide I needed to make a change in one of my books. Below is a spread from a book about my dog Pete (aka Pistol Pete) and my cat Milo (aka The Catnip Kid). I’ve used backgrounds from the Pets collection, and I chose a nice beige color for the text because it seemed like it would complement the backgrounds nicely. Looks pretty decent in the Editor view, don’t you think?

In the Editor, I can easily read all my captions…

If I were to buy this book without checking it out in Preview, I’d be a little disappointed when it arrived at my house. While the beige text does coordinate nicely with the colors in the backgrounds, it doesn’t show up so well in the caption under the picture of Milo in the basket because it’s basically the same color as the beige stripe. I hadn’t noticed this when I was editing the book because of the gray background of the text boxes. Now using Preview I can see that the caption looks like it says “And he’s an exp    h     .” Look at the shot of the spread in Preview to see what I mean.

…but in Preview part of one caption fades into the background.

Now that I know what my text actually looks like, I can go back to the Editor to play with different colors of my captions to find something that works a little better on my backgrounds.

Eager though you might be to order your book and have it in your hot little hands, make sure to use Preview to give it a double-check before clicking Buy. You might find that you’re able to make your book even better than it already is.

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Some time ago I confessed that I have a secret desire to learn to take really impressive pictures that would look wonderful in a photo book. So when I saw Bob Ross’s Inkubook Serene Moments: The Photography of Bob Ross, I was more than a little jealous.

Bob has been a serious amateur photographer for about 40 years, and now that he’s retired and doesn’t have the demands of raising a young family he has more time available to devote to photography. Before he retired he spent a lot of time traveling by car on business trips, and he found that his love of photography gave him a greater appreciation for his surroundings than he otherwise would have had. Now he takes pictures on a monthly basis, and he sees it as some people see fishing: It’s great when he comes home with something nice, but it’s just as great when he doesn’t.

Bob was kind enough to share some tips that he feels contribute to his ability to take fantastic photos, so we’re sharing them with you today. This weekend, get out in the fresh air to try your hand with some of these suggestions. The change of seasons is a perfect opportunity to take photos of your surroundings. After all, practice makes perfect!

Photography Tips
1. Use a tripod whenever possible.
2. If your camera accepts filters, use a polarizing filter. It reduces glare and increases the color saturation, as well as darkens blue skies. Caution: Look through the viewfinder and rotate the polarizer to see the effect you want or it could have the opposite effect from what you’re seeking.
3. The first hour after dawn and the last hour before sunset are the best times for shooting. The low light models objects better and increases color saturation. Sun directly overhead is the poorest light, but if you like the scene and it’s midday, shoot it anyway. An overcast day is also great for fall photography.
4. Backlighting of fall leaves is wonderful. Backlighting is where the sun is coming from behind the object you’re shooting and lighting up translucent objects such as leaves. Be careful, however, to avoid the sun shining directly on the front of the camera lens.
5. When composing the scene, try to place objects of the greatest interest (such as a lone tree in a field or a church steeple set against a hillside) anywhere other than dead center in the picture. Moving objects of interest to the upper right, lower right, upper left, or lower left is more attractive placement than having them in the center. Try it. You’ll see the difference.
6. If there is a horizon in your picture, it is best to NOT place it right in the center. Move it up if you’re emphasizing the foreground or down if you want to emphasize the sky. Having the horizon in the center is static unless you’re shooting something with a reflection of itself in a pond or lake.
7. Close-ups are always a good idea. A few leaves on the ground or berries are appealing subjects for close-ups if your camera allows.

Tips for Digital Processing
Most digital cameras default to a setting that yields softer and less colorful pictures. That’s because so many shots are taken of people. When working with nature photography, you overcome this by using the software that came with your camera to process the photos on your PC. Experiment with increasing color saturation, contrast, and sharpness. Always sharpen a photo LAST, after having made all other changes. You’ll find that you can double the impact of a digital photo by careful use of the adjustment options that come with the software. After you’ve made your adjustments, you’ll want to click on File then Save As. Rename the picture, and when you finally save it you’ll be making a clone of the original with all your changes while saving the original so that you can go back to it if you don’t like the results or want to experiment more.

General Suggestions
Consider these scenes for your fall photography: waterfalls, decrepit old barns with colorful trees beside them, lovely old homes, or any kind of water such as a stream, a pond, or a lake. You can photograph property without permission from a public position, but always ask permission before going onto private property.

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A stunning photo from Ryan Brenizer’s Amazon Blog

Every once in a while, you find a great resource in an unexpected place. That is exactly what happened when I stumbled upon the Amazon Digital Photography Blog.

First, a bit of back story.

When we first started Inkubook, the first book I wanted to do was a cookbook, but this presented me with all kinds of dilemmas. Not least among my concerns was how on earth do you make the food you cook at home look as delicious as and beautiful as those in cookbooks written by top chefs. I made a note to do some research and went about the work of building the site with which to build the cookbook.

Having been in publishing for some time, I try my best to keep up with the comings and goings at Amazon and check their Amazon Daily blog regularly for inspiration and the latest news. Imagine my surprise when I come across a post called Play With Your Food! on their site that was all about photographing food. Rather than focusing on the voodoo that is “food styling” that all to often includes very little food, the post provided a few dead on tips that would make any food look beautiful and scrumptious.

Being altogether pleased, I continued to follow the blog and have found it consistently useful. Of particular interest to readers of this blog will be the post on Photography tip: Shooting for Photobooks. The blog is authored by Ryan Brenizer who is a professional wedding photographer, and not an Amazon employee. The content is a mix of product reviews, photography techniques, and tips and tricks, all of which should be valuable to the amateur photographer. I have already found myself employing a number of the techniques relayed in the blog and have been very pleased with the results.

If you are looking to expand your repertoire of photography techniques and your knowledge of the latest gear, the Amazon Digital Photography blog is a great place to start.

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Have you ever looked at someone’s vacation photos and thought, “Wow, I never would have thought of taking a trip like that, but now I want to!”? Well, that’s exactly what I thought when Michael Rogers’s Road Trip 2008 book first caught our attention. I’m all about road trips because if I’m going to spend as much time getting to the airport, waiting there, flying, and getting out of the airport as I could spend just driving somewhere, I’m better off going by car and seeing what I want to see. But I’ve never taken a trip with the specific purpose of seeing many sites along the way, and that’s why I like Michael’s photo book. I now see that perhaps I’ve been missing out. So I decided to ask Michael a few questions.

A spread of Yellowstone National Park from Road Trip 2008.

Tell me a little about your 2008 trip.

I traveled for almost two weeks. I started in Northern Kentucky and traveled to Roosevelt National Park, Glacier National Park, Museum of the Rockies, Yellowstone National Park, Grand Tetons National Park, Devils Tower National Monument, Jewel Cave National Park, Crazy Horse Monument, Mount Rushmore National Monument, and The Badlands. I made this trip by myself after being laid off from work. Before I started I decided [this time] would be a great opportunity to go to all of these places that I may not have a chance to take enough time off to visit…after starting a new job. I hadn’t planned on making this a yearly trip but after going this year I’m hoping to be able to make a similar trip next year.

How long have you been a photographer?

I have been playing around with photography for a couple of years. Last year I decided to get a little more serious and purchased a dSLR camera and have purchased some additional lenses when I have some extra money. I’ve had a lot of fun learning how to use the camera and finding things to take pictures of. I consider myself fairly knowledgeable at this point but I’m not an expert.

Was there a particular stop on your trip that was your favorite?

Glacier National Park was my favorite place on the entire trip. You could get up in the morning, hike all day, and not end up with a bad picture. You didn’t have to wait until the “Magic Hours” of dusk and dawn to get spectacular photos. The beauty of the park was just unreal.

One of Michael’s favorite stops was at Glacier National Park, shown here.

Did you make your Inkubook for yourself or as a gift for someone else?

I made the book mostly to be able to show my friends the pictures from my trip. I had taken almost 1500 pictures on my trip and had them in an online album, but they weren’t organized very well. It was hard to tell people about them since they often looked at them on their own computer when I wasn’t around.

Have you made other photo books or was this your first?

This is my first. I’m sure I’ll make more. It was a great way to keep a record of the places I went and organize my photos in a permanent way.

Swatches from the Road Trip collection.

I’d like to give Michael a heartfelt thanks for sharing his book with us. It’s certainly given me a hankering for the open road. If you’re getting ready to set out on America’s highways and byways, consider making a photo book at the end of your journey. You can even use our new collection of Road Trip backgrounds.

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