Sharing photos can be one of the main thing a person does online, right up there with doing email, playing games and even working. Online tools have made it easy and fast to share pictures with friends and family around the globe, without having to get prints made or paying for postage.
If you are looking for a way to share photos gathered together in a more organized way, instead of just emailing them off to people in little bunches. Now you can put photos together in a book using “flipping epaper”, also known as a flipbook, and share them collected in a meaningful way.
Whether you want to highlight photos from the past 15 Halloweens to show off your kid’s costumes over the years, or bundle all the pictures you have from a recent family reunion, a flipbook can be your way to share photos the way you want to. Here’s how you do it.
Gather up Your Pictures
Before you dive into your tools, you really should have your photos ready to go. Use a standard photo editing tool to crop or adjust them so you don’t have to pause or get distracted as you put your book together. Once your collection is good to go, you are ready to format your book.
Find a Tool
Nobody expects you to learn how to manually code a flipbook. There are several online services and tools that do all the work for you, you just need to decide on what’s right for you. Since you are not producing a professional business-quality presentation here, you won’t need any high-priced features. Most tools offer a free account level, and that should work fine. Check out Yumpu.com to start with, they will work very well for a photo book.
Sign up with an email, and once that’s confirmed, you can begin.
Build a Photo Book
The tools are clearly marked, and you can begin a new book with just a click. Just select the type of media (photos) and place on the page. Adjust the sizing and add captions as you want. Have several photos on a single page to create a montage, or stick to the classic one photo per page layout. Your final book will neatly flip from page to page as people read through it, but all that is done automatically.
More Media
You can go beyond just a collection of photos and text though, if you want to really produce something more media-rich. Do you have any related videos (either on your computer or already hosted on Youtube), or audio clips that could be used to narrate each page? These kinds of things can be added just as easily as the photos were.
Share It
When all your pictures are nicely placed and organized, you can just save and publish your book. You’ll get a little piece of code, and you can paste that onto a website page or blog post to have your photo flipbook on display right away. Share the URL to your page around to anyone you want, and they can all see your photo collection without having to download any files.