In this video I’ll teach you how to create a classic and compelling photo book using Chatbooks.

Chatbooks can be accessed via a web browser on your computer or by using the Chatbooks app on your mobile devices for iPhone or Android. When using mobile devices you can access your scanned heritage photos from your online cloud storage or from a social media source such as Instagram.

I chose to create my book on my computer using a web browser. Log in to chatbooks.com if you’ve used it before or create an account if you’re new.

Once you create your account you’ll be given a personal page where all your books and projects will live after you create them. Notice there are other project options listed on the left column, but since I’m talking about creating a book I’ll click on the blue “Make A Book” button on the right.

Here’s where you choose the kind of book you want to create. On the right you have the option to start an ongoing photo book series where you post photos on Instagram and, after you post 60 photos, Chatbooks will automatically create a new book for your collection. Or, on the left, you can choose to make a regular photo book, which is what we’ll do.

Next you’ll choose a size. As of this recording Chatbooks only has two book sizes, 6 x 6 inches or 8 x 8 inches, and you have a choice of softcover or hardcover. The book price includes 30 pages but you can have up to 366 pages. That’s a lot of pages! I chose 8 x 8 softcover for my book. Once you choose the size and cover type click the button to choose a photo source.

You can add photos from social media, Google photos, or your computer. I chose Computer. This gave me the option to drag and drop photos or browse my computer. I selected all the photos of my favorite family portraits and dragged them over all at once. I had them named so they would all be in order.

But when they came in, they came in by the date they were scanned, and because I had scanned some of these quite awhile ago and others more recently, they all came in out of order. No problem, though. Just click and drag them into the correct order…

Here’s how it looks now after putting them all into the proper order. The first page of your book will be a single page and all the rest will be double spreads with two photos across from each other, except for the last page, which will also be a single page.

If you need to add more photos, click on Add Photos in the upper right corner.

To delete a photo click on the checkmark in the upper right corner of the thumbnail. The thumbnail will turn blue and a set of options will appear at the top of the web page, one of which is to delete the photo. If you decide to cancel click on the thumbnail checkmark again to remove the options.

Under Book Options you can choose your book Layout Settings. In the standard layout the photo is smaller on the page and there’s room for captions, date, and location. Since I’m using scans that don’t automatically give the date and location I’ll deselect both of these.

“Fit to Page Photos” only applies to pages without a caption. With this option photos without a caption are allowed to reach from one edge of the page to the other, whether horizontal or vertical, so the photos are a little larger on these pages. If you have a square photo it will fill the entire page.

For my book I’m going to select the Standard Layout with Show Captions and nothing else. You can add a limited amount of type as a caption under a photo—287 characters in length or 3 full lines. When you’ve chosen your preferred style, click Save.

If you need more than the three lines of type you can get with a caption, click on the Add Text Page thumbnail at the very end of your thumbnails. This kind of text page doesn’t allow for photos and text—just text. Type your text and click Add.

Now you can click and drag the thumbnail of the text page anywhere in your book the same as any other thumbnail.

Once you’ve added your photos, arranged them properly, and added any text pages you desire, you’re ready to adjust each page and add captions.

Click on the first thumbnail image to enlarge it and to access editing options on the left. Notice I can still access Fit to Page even though I didn’t select that option to be the default. I can also choose Square and Full Page, but I’ll go back to Normal.

If you have a caption, click in the Caption text box and begin typing…June 20, 1947, Homer and Kathleen Get Married.

The text will show up under your photo as well. Remember, you can only type enough text for three lines of type under your photo. And there is the full text under my photo.

Click the NEXT arrow to move to the next image so you can add a caption if you want to. Also, you can check out the editing options on the left and special effects.

The final thing you need to do is choose a cover. Click on Change Cover below the cover thumbnail and choose either Designer Covers or your own photos. The Designer Covers are very nice and are reasonably priced. Let’s go back, though, and try using “My Photos.”

Click on a thumbnail to choose one of your photos and I’m going to click on this one right here. Choose a photo where the area of interest would fit nicely into a square, otherwise part of the focus may be cut off.

Click Done and there’s my new cover. Now you can zoom and move your cover by clicking and dragging this, but I’m going to leave mine way out as much as possible. I could even move this up just a little bit. Here you can see the potential trim area and then when you’re done click Done. Now I’ll click on the X to get out of that.

So now you can see my new cover. I’ll go ahead and click on that and if I want to add a title I can click Show Cover Title. Now currently it just says My Photos so let’s change that: Growing Up With The Parry Family. So that doesn’t look all that great so I’m going to go ahead and deselect that.

I’d rather just leave it blank or add a title directly to the photo and you can do that.

Click on Edit Photo and start with Transform. Click on Square because you’re going to need a square photo. You can move this around in here a little bit. I’m going to move it down, and that looks good. And then the next thing you need to do is click Apply Effect.

Next click on Text. Resize the text box by clicking and dragging on the right upper corner handle and clicking and dragging inside the outline to move it.

Choose the Font you want…and then double click on the text and type your title.

Let’s change the size of this.

And also let’s change the color. I’m going to move the Opacity slider a little bit to the left to make it not quite so black.

And then also let’s click on Background. Choose white for the Background and then add some opacity.

You’ll want to click on Apply Effect, but sometimes the Apply Effect button disappears, and if that happens click on the squares icon at the top of your photo to the left of the trash icon and that will make the Apply Effect button show up. And now you can see more what you’re doing.

So now I can click on this again and let’s just make this a little bit smaller. Also I’ll want to go back to the Foreground and make the type a little bit darker. That looks better. And I could make the Background just a little bit darker, about like that.

So now I can click on Apply Effect, and that looks pretty good. I might want to just move it down just a hair.

When you’re satisfied, click the Done button in the upper right corner. Be careful, though. Once you click that button the effect is permanent. The only way you can undo what you’ve done is to delete the photo, upload it again, and start over.

And I just decided that I want to move this up just a tiny bit, so, see, you’ve got to check it over right at the end and make sure it’s exactly the way you want it, and THEN click the Done button.

And there is my finished cover!

Be aware that if you choose a photo from your thumbnails for the cover and add a title, the original photo thumbnail will end up with a title as well, so you might want to click on it—there’s the title—and choose Exclude to exclude it from your regular thumbnails and then click Done.

So you can either upload that one photo again as a plain photo or substitute another photo, which is what I’ll do. I’m going to drag this one over here and now we have two similar photos here and we’ve ended with our final photo here on the left side of the page with an Inside Cover as blank.

Once you’ve checked everything over and you’re satisfied that all is well, you can click Continue in the upper right corner to preview and order your book.

I ended up creating a cover in Photoshop and uploading it as a single JPEG, so if you know how to use photo editing software feel free to do that. Notice, though, that I kept the cover simple, so it would fit in well with the rest of the design.

So that’s a quick windshield tour of how to create a fast and fun book with Chatbooks!