Quality– yes. Beautiful options – yes. Several sizes and cover types – yes. Pricing – yes. Deals … Oh, yes!

Here’s the insider’s tip on where you can find our current promotions, when we generally change them and how we announce special promos.

Current Promos – We send out promo emails twice a month usually on the first and around the 15^th. Our current promo is also available in the header (until you X it out) once you’re logged in and always in the footer of your bookshelf. Finally, we always post them on Facebook and Twitter – feel free to share with your friends.

Special Promos – We have sporadic weekend specials which we promote via Facebook and Twitter only. If you haven’t t Liked us or started Following us, you should.  

Psst: our first weekend promo of 2012 will be the last weekend of January.

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Are you thinking about making a photo book but haven’t made up your mind which company to use? The best quality photo book? The cheapest photo book? Looking for the best photo book maker?  Then you’ll be glad you took the time to read and watch (yes, there are videos as well) these photo book reviews.

If you like to do extensive research before you do business with a company online then you’re going to love the article published in 2010 and updated in April 2011 by Jason Dunn at Digital Home Thoughts before you make your first photo book. This epic review The Great Photo Book Round-Up Review: Who Makes the Best Photo Books compares online experience, print, covers, paper, overall quality and value of several top photo book publishers including Inkubook. Check it out!

Interested in more reviews? Check out The Gadgeteer or the December 2011 updated review from PhotoBookGirl.com.

Want to watch a review? Check out this one from TheMommyPR or this very recent written and video combo review from Confessions of a Scrapaholic.

After you read these reviews and decide Inkubook is the way to go, use our special review promo code BESTPHOTOBOOK2012 to get 30% off your order*.

*Maximum $100 discount, one use per member, expires 3/31/2012.

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If you like to do extensive research before you do business with a company online then you’re going to love the article published this week by Jason Dunn at Digital Home Thoughts before you make your first photo book. This epic review The Great Photo Book Round-Up Review: Who Makes the Best Photo Books compares online experience, print, covers, paper, overall quality and value of several top photo book publishers including Inkubook.

If you’re thinking about making a photo book but haven’t made up your mind which company to use, you’ll be glad you took the time to read and watch (yes, there are videos as well) this one. Check it out!

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At Inkubook, we strive to give you all the tools to build a gorgeous book with as little effort as possible and sometimes that means helping you tweak your photos a little. So we included our photo toolbar that helps you do things like nudge photos around in a photo box or rotate them. However, the Inkubook tools won’t replace desktop image-manipulation programs like Adobe Phtoshop™, and sometimes your photos need the love that only sophisticated graphic programs can give.

The downside to most advanced image-editing programs is that they can cost hundreds of dollars. In the interest of helping you get the most bang for your buck, we will from time to time bring tools to your attention that can give you a lot of results for not a lot of moolah.

When the goal is keeping money in your wallet, you can’t do much better than free, and it just so happens that we know of a program that meets fits the bill. GIMP (or the GNU Image Manipulation Program) is a free, community-built program that strives to match Photoshop feature-for-feature. You can get it for Windows, Macintosh and Linux, here.

You’ll be astounded by just how powerful this application is. It can help you execute just abut any modification to an image that you would like, such as reducing red-eye, removing unneeded details (like ol’ Cousin Rudy), and fixing perspective distortion, and those things just scratch the surface.

When you have some time to play around, give it a try. For some users, it may be a little advanced and have a steep learning curve, but if you have a little patience and an adventurous spirit, it’s worth your while to give it a shot.

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It is inevitable. You have the ideal picture for your Inkubook, but the subject is a bit off center, there is a little too much background, or maybe you’d like to cut Cousin Rudy out altogether. After all, nothing is ever really perfect. Luckily, Inkubook has a handful of tools that allow you to make basic modifications to your images right in your book. We aren’t trying to duplicate Photoshop™ here; we’re just trying to help you make drop-dead gorgeous books.

You can access the photo-editing tools simply by clicking on any image from within the editor. A set of tools will appear at the top of the screen. At any time, you can switch images with a single click.

The first set of tools on the left of the bar allow you to reposition the image within the photo box. You can move the image up, down, left, or right within the box. The fifth button with all four arrows allows you to re-center the image within the box. That comes in handy when you’ve nudged your photo too much in one direction and you think, “Dang, that’s not going to work. I’d better start over.” 

The next set of controls consists of two buttons that allow you to rotate the image within the photo box. The left button rotates 90° clockwise and the right button rotates 90° degrees counter-clockwise. Why ever would you want to rotate a photo? Well, sometimes photos come off your camera with the image lying on its side. If you make the artistic decision to leave Great-Aunt Lucille lying on her right side, we respect that. She might find it mildly offensive, though, so if you want to ensure that you continue to get that $5.00 check for your birthday, you can rotate the picture so she’s upright again.

Next are a pair of buttons with magnifying glasses on them. These allow you to resize the image. The left button will make the image smaller until the entire image appears within the photo box. For example, if you put a landscape photo in a box that’s oriented for a portrait picture, you can shrink your landscape until it spans the width of the box. (This will leave some blank space at the top and bottom of your photo box.) The right button allows you to zoom in on the image, making the visible portion larger. This can help eliminate some unwanted background and make the focal point of the photo more prominent. Take note: When enlarging a photo, it is possible to make the image so large that it will be of poor quality when printed. We warn you when you’re in danger of this happening by displaying an error icon on the image. If you see the error on one of your photos, you can scale the image back down using the left (-) resize button.

Finally, there is a trash can on the far right of the image editing toolbar. It probably won’t surprise you to find out that clicking this button will remove the current image from its photo box. By deleting the photo, you’ve returned the photo box to its original state and the background will be visible behind it in the preview screen and the printed book. (The outline of an empty photo box or text box doesn’t print in the book, so leaving one empty is like pretending it was never there at all.) At any time, you can drag another image into this box.

The image editing tools allow you to make those last-minute tweaks to make an image more perfect within your Inkubook. While we can’t get Cousin Rudy out of your life altogether, we can at least help you squeeze him out of the picture.

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I mentioned previously that we held a friends and family contest prior to opening Inkubook to the general public. We had a number of outstanding entries, but one stood out amongst the crowd as being especially creative. It was a surprise in that it was a unique use of Inkubook and a very polished work.

The book, titled Aibi and Olive and the Cheddar Cheese Moon, is a children’s story that employs original artwork by Sarah Takhashi along with an endearing text by Zoe Ragland. It tells the tale of an adventurous girl, Aibi, who shoots down a moon of delectable cheese and strives to return it to the sky with the help (or hindrance) of her voracious feline, Olive. The result is elegant yet simple. It showcases the power of Inkubook. Something as basic as a bedtime story for your children can be turned into a beautiful and professional book that can be passed amongst friends and even through generations.

Aibi and Olive and the Cheddar Cheese Moon

by Zoe Ragland and Sarah Takahashi

Start your own Little Ones Book at Inkubook.

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Ever since we kicked off the building of Inkubook, I have been looking for more and more excuses to get my camera out and start shooting. After all great looking photo books start with great looking photos. The reward has been that the desire to shoot photos has gotten me out to some events that I otherwise would not have attended. In what will be a recurring feature on the Inkublog, I will suggest some opportunities to get out and capture some great shots. To kick things off though, I would love to know what you plan on photographing. Drop a note in the comments and share what your plans are for the coming weekend and the moments you hope to capture.

As for me, I plan on attending the Indiana Microbrewers Festival, because beer and hot days always make for good pictures. If you happen to live in any of the following places, here are some suggestions for what could become your next Inkubook.

• Chicago, IL – Pitchfork Music Festival – The best Indie rock show of the year.
• New York – Siren Music Festival – Stephen Malkmus, Ted Leo, and mermaids.
• San Francisco – Tour de Fat – Bikes and Beer on parade.
• Tampa – The Rays vs. The Jays – The hottest team in baseball followed by an MC Hammer concert (MC Hammer, people!)
• Atlanta – B*ATL – Three words: Civil War Reenactment
• Dallas – Rat Snakes to Rattlers: Live Texas Snakes – Features a snake scavenger hunt. Which is terrifying.
• Columbus – Ohio Strobists Meet at the House of Nightmares – Bring your camera and photograph in a haunted warehouse.
• Toronto – The Virgin Suicides Brawl! – Good old clean Roller Derby fun.
• Col Agnel, France – The site of the only Hors Catégorie (HC) climb in Sunday’s stage 15 of the Tour de France. If you are there, I envy you tremendously.

Of course, you can use any excuse to snap some great pictures for your Inkubook. Even if it is just a quaint picnic on the back porch.

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It is with great pleasure that we announce Inkubook is officially live and open for business. Since there’s already a great description on the About Us Page, I’ll paraphrase that:

Inkubook is an easy-to-use online photo book creation service that enables people to make drop-dead gorgeous photo books in minutes. With Inkubook, it’s simple to upload photos and then drag-and-drop them onto creative layouts to make a fantastic book. Inkubook creators can invite friends to contribute text and photos, which makes collaborative book-making fast and fun.

Inkubook is the result of throwing the experience of the world’s largest print-on-demand and self publishing company together with some truly gifted technical minds and telling them, “Create a cutting-edge and compelling service to create photo books. Oh, and make it easy to use and fun.” The resulting website is a place where anyone can produce a stunning book in no time flat. It is all online and Microsoft Silverlight gives it some sizzle.

There’s plenty more to say, but I’d just as soon have you check it out yourself. Seeing is believing, after all. Go make something gorgeous: Inkubook.

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To be honest we weren’t expecting you so soon. If you scan your surroundings you might notice that things don’t look quite right. Well, that is because this site (let’s call it a “weblog”) is, for all intents and purposes, not finished. Being the hospitable types that we are, we aren’t going to tell you to come back later after we finish painting and making the beds, nor will we send you away empty handed, we just want to set your expectations appropriately.

So Where Exactly Are You?

We suppose there is the chance that you stumbled here in some kind of tawdry Internet escapade that is often referred to as “surfing.” In that case, you are probably a bit befuddled as to what exactly constitutes an “Inkublog.” The short answer is that it is the Official Weblog of Inkubook. See, isn’t that better? Still have questions? OK, maybe you should head over to our About page for the more formal explanation.

What Can You Expect Here?

This weblog is the mouthpiece of the employees of Inkubook. You’ll here from all sorts of people including marketers, developers, designers, testers, and even people who own (and even wear) suits (aka executives or “The Man”). Our goal is to help people build drop-dead gorgeous photo books. That means that you can expect the following.

• Tips and Tricks – From novice to expert, we’ll provide you with little things that you can do to produce fabulous results in your photographs.
• Recommendations on Hardware, Software, and Other Tools – These are the types of things that, in combination with a little smarts, will take you from “zero” to “hero.”
• Inspiration – We’ll give you some suggestions for weekend projects, success stories from other users, and off-the-beaten-track ideas for creating stunning keepsakes.
• Entertainment – We think we’re witty, charming, attractive and all sorts of stuff that our mothers told us we shouldn’t brag about, and we intend to share that all with you. We are sure you cannot wait.

If there is anything else that you would like to see on this site, please let us know. All you need to do is visit our Feedback page and fill in the blanks. We like to make people happy, so chances are that if thou asketh, thou shalt receive.

What Now?

Well, since you stopped by and it is Independence Day weekend, here are a few resources to get you started. Hopefully, they’ll score you some photos worthy of your first Inkubook.

Photographing Fireworks

This Week in Photography and Photojojo! both have excellent articles on explosive techniques for capturing fireworks, while the Amazon blog covers how to keep our four-legged friends happy while the fireworks are lighting up the night. More than anything on the Fourth, remember that while the fireworks are often the highlight of a good Independence Day, it’s tough to tell one photo from another. Be sure to get plenty of pictures of the rest of the festivities to personalize the event.

We’ll be back soon! In the meantime, get your cameras out and start shooting so you have plenty of material for your drop-dead gorgeous Inkubook.

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