“The best memory is not as good as pale ink.” - Chinese proverb

Most people yearn to know family stories before memories are lost forever. The photographs, albums, letters and documents that families keep and pass along represent that collective memory – if they can be easily shared.

However, sorting through years of photos, slides and other memorabilia can seem overwhelming. Whether it is a box of unsorted photos, a grandparent's photo album(s), or your creative hand made scrapbook(s), they ought to be preserved and shared.

At PhotoBook Press, we have a great new service that will ensure that you can produce beautiful books of family memories to be shared with generations.

1. Scanning - safe, convenient & local
2. Image Preparation - ImageMerging for partial page scans, Web-based digital books for review and approval, and CD ROM archival storage
3. Photo Book Creation - exact duplicates of original albums & scrapbooks, or new and unique custom books of your important photographs

Scanning & Organizing

A MemoriesShared Affiliate is available near you to scan your images at high resolution (suitable for photographic reproduction). Your images will be saved on an archival CD ROM. Printed image catalogs are available as a quick visual inventory of the images stored on your CD ROM.

Data Collection & Writing

If you scanned a scrapbook, it is ready to to be printed.

If you scanned loose photos and documents, there is one more step. After everything is scanned and safely archived, you receive a Workbook (paper or electronic) displaying thumbnails of each of your images with space to write something about each. Your workbook can be used simply to provide names, dates or to act as a trigger for longer memoirs.

Page Layout

When the Workbook is completed, the fun really begins as you begin to create your PhotoBook. Choose to do it yourself with our PhotoBook Design Tool, or let one of our book designers lay out your images in a way that honors each one and tells your story in a most respectful and attractive style. You can do as much as you want, or be as involved as you wish in this process. Get great ideas by viewing text and layout examples in our Sample Pages.

Review, Approval & Sharing

When your book's pages are designed to your satisfaction, either because you uploaded a completed Design Tool book or because our designers have finished a custom design, a web-based digital flipper book is provided for final approval, or for sharing with family, friends and social networks. Printed proof pages are available.

If you are scanning photo albums or scrapbooks to create copies or just to archive, we will create a web-based digital flipper book that is suitable for review, approval and sharing with family, friends and social networks.

Bindings & Cover

Our standard hard cover books feature sewn bindings with a rich black bonded leather cover.

Laminated photographic covers with an image(s) from your book and with the title and author(s) name printed on the cover or spine are available. Photographic covers can be designed to meet all tastes and are tough, durable and completely unique.

Covers of traditional leather or classic book binder’s cloth are also available. Choose from our selection of book cloths and color coordinated end papers. These books feature gold or silver foil stamping of the title and author(s) name on the spine. If you would like completely custom, handmade covers made with genuine leather covers and letter press titles, our skilled bookbinders will create a fully customized design for you.

View our cover samples throughout the website.

Our soft cover books provide another binding option suited to publishing multiple copies for gift giving (because of its lower cost). Soft cover books have a glued binding (called “perfect binding”) and heavy weight paper covers. The content and layout can be identical to any hard cover book, and the paper and printing quality are the same.