Shutterfly Free Photobook

Shutterfly's New “Custom Path” Photo Book — Turning Those Old Prints and JPGs ...

When Shutterfly asked GeekDad to review its All New Custom Path photo book service, I figured I was the perfect guinea pig. I have never been good about having nice prints made of my photos and putting them neatly and creatively into albums. All my pre-digital shots are languishing in dusty old albums,  slowly falling to pieces. And everything taken after 2003 is sitting trapped on my hard drive, never to see the light of day. With my parents getting older and my first kid ready to head off to college, it seemed like a good time to move all my photos online and gather the best into dead-tree form that the rest of the family could enjoy.

Although I had never used an online photo storage service before, I am pretty experienced with Photoshop and laying pages out for publication. So for me, the All New Custom Path was ideal.  This is, I am told, the first application that lets users design and rearrange pages to their heart’s content. Previously, you had to let Shutterfly’s software use its mysterious but effective algorithms to determine how best to group and arrange images. Users still have a choice of using Autofill — which groups and lays out photos for you in the order in which you’ve uploaded them — and Storyboard, which lets you group photos to some extent before they are laid in. Even with Custom Path, where you can choose a layout and drag each photo into the photo opening you pick, there’s still a lot of behind-the-scenes adjustment going on to make the photo fit into the size and shape of the hole it’s filling. If you decide to switch to a different layout mid-stream, it will automatically move the photos around into new holes. You can then go in using the “Customize Page” option and adjust size, shape, and orientation. I was impressed by the software’s “instincts;” most of the time, when I went in to tweak Shutterfly’s cropping of a photo, I decided that the software had indeed chosen the most effective view.

On the off-chance that I’m not the only one who’s brand-new to using an online photo service and making a photo book, here’s the process:

Sign up for a free membership and Shutterfly allows you to create online albums, without restrictions. So you can store an unlimited number of pictures , even high-resolution images, indefinitely, without buying anything.  Uploading multiple images at once is easy and quick, too. You can sort your photos into folders and do some basic editing (cropping, red-eye removal, special effects like black-and-white) in the online albums too.

[Shutterfly] Photo book offer [at Best Buy] - PassPorter Community ...

About This Page: This is a discussion on [Shutterfly] Photo book offer [at Best Buy] within the Making More Magic: Everything Else at Walt Disney World!, part of the PassPorter Community - Boards & Forums on Walt Disney World, Disneyland, Disney Cruise Line, and General Travel; Just wanted to let fellow ppers know in case you are interested for your Disney photos that I went to ... Welcome! We're happy you've found the PassPorter Community -- the friendliest place to plan your vacation to Walt Disney World, Disney Cruise Line, Disneyland, and the world in general! You are now viewing the PassPorter Message Board Community as a guest , which gives you limited access. As our guest, feel free to browse our messages by selecting the forum you want to visit from the list below.

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