A Gift for my 13 Year Old Daughter's Birthday

[laurieslegends]

My daughter will be 13 in June. I searched a bunch of websites looking for and comparing various places to create a photo book.

I started keeping a journal for her when I got pregnant. My book will have as much or more text as pictures. This software and options to create this book is the only one that gives me enough flexibility to do what I plan with the journal entries I have.

I won't know until I get started exacly which output I decide on, it may depend on size and cost once I have all the entries in my book file.

I love the way, you can choose how many pictures, and where to put the text on each page.

I would like to see an option where you can add a full page of text, (like on the title page) in the middle parts of the book as well.

I will probably be a regular poster here, as I keep you posted on my progress. My biggest challenge is working on it and keeping her from finding my work on the computer. Maybe a password option would help in that regard.

Kindest regards,
Laurie

[shadesofgray1]

One thing to consider doing (until the password option becomes available), place all your mypublisher links into a hidden folder. You can accomplish this by placing all photos and mypublisher "stuff" into a folder. Heck, name it something random like Taxes-1985. "Right-click" this folder (on a PC, I know nothing about Macs) and select "Properties". You can then click the "Hidden" box under the Attributes section and it will place all Folders and Sub-Folders into a "disappearing act." When you want to work on something, open the Drive from "My Computer" that contains the folder, select "Tools" from the menu bar at the top of the Window and select Folder Options. You will see a window pop up. Click the "View" tab and under Advanced Settings, you can select: Hidden Files and Folders: Show hidden files and folders.

Work on your project and when you are finished, repeat the above process only select "Do not show hidden files and folders". Unless she is a computer genius (unlikely at 13) she'll never know it's there to begin snooping

Otherwise create different User Accounts for logging into Windows. You can Password protect your log-in and she won't have access to any of you files (unless you allow her to or install the software for all users.)

I hope that helps.

[mypublisher]

You can select a Text-only page for any page of your book by clicking on Page Type drop down menu and choosing Text Only. The Text Only template option will appear in a pop-up. Click on the template and then choose what background color you would like for that page. Black text is printed on the white background and white text is used for both the gray and black background options.
Hope this helps and good luck with your project! It's a great idea!!

[mgilvey]

I just posted a comment in the help section of this site. I don't know if you have tried it yet but you cannot paste text into your pages (at least not on a Mac, maybe I'll try it on my Windows machine). I was very dissapointed about that. I don't want to have to key in a tone of copy because one of the basic functions of a text editor is missing or doesn't work properly.

[emah]

I'm not thrilled with the text posting options available on mypublisher either. Tried to put our thank you speeches as part of our wedding book but seems to do wierd things to the text. Display options for text are really limited. Tried to fill up the whole page but it only filled in 50% leaving the bottom half blank.. yet the software insists i cannot add more. Frustrating to say the least. BLURB.com gives good text options but lousy photo layouts.

[mypublisher]

Hi Everyone - cut & pasting text will work in a PC, however, we do not recommend doing that. What happens is that depending on the font and application, other information gets pasted in, and then the type can be skewed or print incorrectly. Please, please retype your captions in. Your results will be much better.

Sincerely,
MyPublisher

[kcwebbah]

I personally haven't had any problems using my PC to paste text in. I use MS Word and I type what I want in the font I plan on using in My Publisher (i.e. Tahoma, Arial, etc). My question (since I haven't ordered the book yet) if everything looks good in My Publisher, will it look good when it's printed? Thanks!

[biged]

I've created several books and the final result is pretty much EXACTLY the way it appears in the preview. A few years ago (and a few version of Bookmaker ago) in some of the fonts the special characters didn't show up correctly (specifically & came out as an _ ) but in my recent books I haven't had that problem.