Creating a book at Inkubook

I thought I would share my InkuBook ordering process of my digital layouts. Here’s how simple it is:

Name your book and choose your size to get started!

and then I get into their editor. First off, you need some pictures. On the bottom left you can choose Get Photos/Text. The pictures start uploading. And get this, I don’t have to wait for all the pictures to upload. Once my first image is uploaded, I can start working with that image in the editor. How cool is that???

The process is pretty simple. Choose your layout and drag and drop it onto the page. To find the full-bleed layout, I had to click on Layouts tab & choose More and find the big gray box.

Then I drop the big gray box on each page. Once you tell it the layout of the page, then you drop your photo on the page. And don’t worry, if you drop your photo first, then your layout you end up with same result.

(Wishlist: I wish I could tell the Layout tool that I want ALL my pages to be full bleed. Having to change the layout on each got a little tiresome. It’s not hard but tiresome.)

Once the image is on the page, you can click on it and do some adjustments. I could zoom in, move the image to the left & right or even flip. I didn’t have to do much here since my layouts were square layouts on a square book. I did need the delete though when I changed my mind.

A really nice feature was click on Photos tab and checking the Unused box. As I put my images in order in my book, they start disappearing from my list and I didn’t have to figure out which ones I had used or not. In the All mode there are green checks if you had used it, but I really liked checking the Unused button.

Adding more pages was simple with these icons. Just remember to be on the page where you want to insert more pages before or after. And I could also move pages around here.

I didn’t play with the Text or Background features because there was no need since all my images/layouts were full-bleed. Nor did I share or discuss it with anyone.

There is a preview book icon so you can browse through your book. With full-bleeds you have to be careful about edges. They say When you look at a page of your book with a full-bleed photo (one that extends all the way to the edges), it is shown with the edges trimmed off. I am pretty careful with my layout edges so it was hard to tell but I could tell that a little bit was cut-off. So a quick browse through the preview book, I could see if anything important was being cut-off. When I get the printed book, I’ll compare to the preview of it to see if was a good guide. Some other companies show a highlighted red border of what is being cut off. I kind of like that better but this is okay. Its better to show what is being cut-off in some way than have a surprised user at the end.

Once done, click on Buy and checkout! That part was super simple. No explaining necessary.

Or if you aren’t done, its easy to come back and start where you left off on your book. I don’t have to worry about saving either. Each time I did something it autosaved. So if my browser crashed, I wasn’t out the work. Nice feature.

I have to say of all the software to upload my layouts to be printed, this has been the easiest tool to work with and most intuitive. I have gotten mad at some, needed tutorials for others, some are painfully slow, etc. Inkubook’s tool had none of those frustrations.

So I checked out and am now waiting for my book. This book I printed has a lot of my digital layouts over the past few years. These layouts are printed in other books by Shutterfly, Heritage Makers, Winkflash & Viovio. So I’ll see how the printing quality compares. And paper quality & binding too!’ But I can’t tell you that until my book arrives so you’ll have to wait as I wait.

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