My sisters and I made each of our parents a photo cookbook for their 60th birthday. I took the lead on assembling the project, since Dan had just bought me a scanner and we had decided to fill the cookbook with old family photos. Unfortunately, we did this project before I started the blog and understood how to write a recipe. When I went back to look at the books, I found dozens of typos, over-abbreviations, or places where I had left out a crucial step. I’ve been thinking about updating them with new favorite recipes and some pictures of our family’s newest addition for a while now.
When I got an email from the foodbuzz tastemaker program and Kodak Gallery about an opportunity to test out a Kodak Quickstart Photo Book, I immediately thought of my cookbook plans. I didn’t have much time to spend on putting a book together, but I thought I could pull it off. The first indications were positive, since adding and arranging photos in the Kodak book was very easy. I particularly liked the option to do a full page or almost full page photo.
Unfortunately, as soon as I tried to add text blocks, I discovered that the book was not all rainbows and daisies. There were not many font options, and all of the font had to be the formatted in the same way (for example, I couldn’t center the title and left justify the rest). In addition, whenever I tried to move the pages around and change the location of the text box, the text all disappeared. I wound up having to reenter it all. It was frustrating, but when I finally finished, the preview image looked beautiful. I was getting ready to go on a family vacation, and I looked forward to getting it just in time to take it with me and show it off to my family.
Then, a few days before I left, I got this message.
We apologize for the inconvenience; however, a portion or all of your KODAK Gallery order has been placed on hold due to copyright restrictions. Your order appears to contain professional images, and we need to verify ownership of those images.
If you own the copyright of the images contained in your order, or if you are able to obtain permission from the owner, please print, complete, sign and return the below Print Consent Form to us. Once we receive the completed Print Consent Form, we will resubmit your order for printing.
At first, I was flattered. Then I read through the rest of the email and saw that I had to fax or mail the consent form back to them. I couldn’t scan and email it. Since we don’t have a fax machine, I dropped it in the mail. We’ll see when it gets there.
Anyway, all of that means that I don’t have any final images of the book for you today. Instead, I have a few of the pictures that held up the processing of the book. For people who just want photos in their book and don’t have professional-quality images, this could be a very easy site to use, but if you want anything more than that, I’d have to recommend trying one of the other services.
For a limited time you can receive 40% off a medium hardcover or large Photobook. Just go to www.kodakgallery.com/creativity to redeem. The offer is only
available through this URL from 8/1/11 - 8/31/11.
