I recently made my first two photo books at Adoramapix and I am here to tell you that it is the most advanced photo book making program I have ever used. I’m not saying that it’s advanced as in hard to use — but rather that it is advanced in that it offers so many options and so much versatility in customizing your book. And the book quality is superior to any other photo book I’ve made anywhere else.

Adoramapix photo books are printed on actual photo paper (Fujifilm Crystal Archive Album) so they have unbelievable color and detail, and the hard cover is thicker and the binding sturdier than any of my other photo books. Their unique binding system allows every page spread to lay flat without any gutter or unsightly seam to separate the pages. And you have complete control of what goes on the cover of the book — your photo can go edge to edge, front to back or spine.

When I made my first photobook at Adoramapix, I used one of the custom themes because I thought that would be the easiest way to learn the process. I made my second book “from scratch”  in that I designed it without a pre-designed theme , and I have to say I think I like that option better. But even if you choose a pre-designed theme, you can manipulate everything within that theme, so it’s still very customizable. Either way, here’s the basic process for making a book on Adoramapix and the things I like about the process:

Create a free account.

Choose Photo book and then Create a Book.

Choose the size (portrait, landscape or square, with sizes ranging from 6×4 to 12×12, 14 pages to 76 pages, prices ranging from $12.95 to 189.95)

Choose a theme or “build your own” from a blank book. (There are 39 different themes, including Baby Boy, Baby Girl, Wedding, Autumn, Gallery, Love, Portfolio, Guest Book, Recipe, Seniors, etc.)

Upload your pictures. I love that you can upload your pictures directly from Flickr, Picasa or your computer.

If you chose a blank book, you can now begin choosing backgrounds, stickers and banners. Or you can place your photos on pages and then go back and choose those things. If you chose a theme, you can simply begin putting your pictures into the pre-designated places for photos, or you can manipulate some of the layouts and designs to better suit your needs.  There is nothing you cannot change in the pre-designed themes.

Here are some other features to love about the Adoramapix process:

• You can easily crop your photos and pan your photos so that just the part you like shows up on the page.

• It’s super easy to add borders and frames around your photos, and you simply drag a slider to increase or decrease the point size of those borders and frames, or click on a color box to change the color.

• You can easily rearrange photos on pages, and rearrange the pages within the book.

• With just the click of a button, you can change the page background colors, and you can add stickers over the top of photos or click the “send backward” button to have them print behind a photo.

• You can copy and paste page layouts that you like, so that you don’t have keep “re-creating” a page style throughout the book.

• If  you discover as you are making your book that you need to add more photos, it is very easy to add pictures to the gallery with the click of a button.

• Adding text boxes is easy (click a button) and manipulating the text size, color, text box background and text orientation is even easier (click buttons on a text toolbar).

I was a little reluctant to share pictures of my photo book here for two reasons — 1) the photos I used to make the book were taken from very far away, without a flash, inside a natatorium, so the photo quality is less than perfect, and 2) Taking pictures of “less than perfect” pictures inside a book should be left for professional photographers.  Still, I wanted to share the book with you to give my excitement about the final product more validity. The book, which I made for my teenager whose high school swim team won state, is one of her prized possessions!

Downsides?:  The only downside I found to this program is that your book must have one of the pre-established number of pages (14, 26, 38, 50 or 76). You can’t have 21 pages, or 16 page, etc. In some other programs I’ve used, you can start with a “pre-determined” number of pages, but you can add pages one at a time. So, this is where the feature of being able to add photos to your gallery easily comes in handy.

Now, if you’d like to make a fantastic photo book (size of your choosing) at Adoramapix, enter the contest below:

Giveaway Guidelines

To win, visit Adoramapix then come back here and tell me  in the comment section below what on that landing page makes you want to try their photo book product.

Receive additional entries by doing any/all of the following, but be sure to leave a separate comment for each thing you do:

1. Blog about this contest
2. Subscribe to my mailing list/RSS feed
3. Tweet this giveaway on Twitter
4. Favorite Lipstick to Crayons on Technorati
5. Stumble this post
6. Add Lipstick to Crayons to your blogroll or my button to your sidebar
7. Become a fan of Lipstick to Crayons on Facebook.

This giveaway closes at 11:59 p.m. Central time May 28, 2010.  Be sure to include a valid email address with each of your entries. Winner will be randomly chosen via random.org and will be notified via email and announced on this post.

If winner does not claim prize by June 1, 2010, he/she will forfeit the prize to alternate winner who will be drawn at random.

U.S. &  Canada residents only, please.

THIS CONTEST IS CLOSED. CONGRATS TO KELLIE C., COMMENT #16.

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