Gift Giving Guy

So you’ve stockpiled thousands of pictures from your digital camera on your computer. Why not free your photos as a gift? Create a photo book for your loved ones.

For Christmas 2005, I gave my wive two hardcover, 100-page photo books showing our trip to Italy that summer. For each picture, I wrote captions using Google to track down Italy trivia like “What does SPQR mean?” She was delightfully stunned and asked, practically demanded, How did I do this?

I used iPhoto, a digital photo application on my Mac, to design the layout and submit both books for publication. If you’re a Windows user, you can use Picaboo’s free download to build your photo book. Or you can try Shutterfly’s online photo book design service.