At the transition of one school year to the next, I usually look for some way to showcase our pictures from the previous school year. I've made slide shows, collages, photo books. So I was very excited about this review of Picaboo Yearbooks. Picaboo offers various sizes and styles of yearbooks. We received a 20 page softcover yearbook. This softcover book starts at $8.49 for 20 pages. Additional pages can be added for $.22 per page. The shipping for our books was $10.99, but right now it appears that Picaboo has lowered the rate to $8.99. This would make a complete 20 page book shipped for less than $20.
I began by uploading my pictures and planning the book. I've used quite a few digital picture programs and some are very difficult to figure out. Picaboo was very simple to use. On the opening screen, you can choose the book you want to edit or choose to create a new book.
The books are set up in categories- just like a traditional school yearbook. You can decide how many categories you would like, how many pages are going to be in each category, and how many photos you want on a page. I knew that I had 20 pages to work with. I began by selecting some of my favorite pictures from the school year and uploading them to Picaboo. Then I decided what kind of categories I wanted and based on how many of those kinds of pictures I had, I decided how many pages to put in each category.
This style of organization was perfect for me. I loved the ease of using the categories to figure out exactly how many pictures I wanted to put in each section. This was an easy way to organize and a very intuitive format.
Once your categories are set up, you can use the built in templates, backgrounds, layouts, stickers, and text fields to set up your pages. It is pretty easy to figure out how to choose the options you want. I did have to play with program a bit to figure out how to use some things. It would be helpful to have some knowledge of uploading and arranging photos when you begin to create your book.
The process went very smoothly. I was pleased with the page options and the many ways I could create and personalize the pages. There were quite a few options for page layout style, backgrounds, fonts, and stickers.
I was also impressed by how carefully the program worked to make sure that you were happy with the look before your final order was placed. Each page had to be previewed and locked, assuring that you had checked for picture quality, spellings errors and other factors and that you were pleased with the look.
I sent in my order and waited for the book. It arrived quickly, and we were all excited to see how it turned out.
The picture quality was very good. The book was printed on photo paper and bound like a softcover book. The book is about the size of an 8.5 x 11 piece of paper, so it is a good size for viewing the pictures. I've had many photo books that are smaller- a 4x6 or 5x7. This size was much better for the purpose of a yearbook.
The text looked just like it had in my editing. There were no bad surprises of wrong fonts or colors that didn't show up.
The front and back cover were also personalized. I chose the image for the front and the stickers for the back.
I was very pleased with our Picaboo Yearbook. At only $8.49 for this softcover book, I think I'll be ordering from them again. I loved this as a way to document our school year!
I also want to let our local co-op know about this option. We made yearbooks this year from our co-op classes and experiences. They were not quite as good quality and were more pricey. At this price, we could easily design the book and then it would be very affordable for parents to purchase.
You can read what other Review Crew members thought by clicking below.
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