One really fun and easy family history project is to combine a set of photos with a story and turn them into a PDF you can share with family members. Let me show you some examples.

For this PDF I simply uploaded a group of JPEG photos to a website that turned them into a PDF, but that’s my least favorite option. All you see are the photos one after the other. Besides being a little boring a string of photos like this doesn’t tell the viewer anything about the people or the event.

At the very least I would create an intro page that has a title and tells what the photos are about. I also like to identify the people in the photos and give the date, or, in this case, the approximate date. The word circa tells viewers that I don’t know the exact date for sure but it’s somewhere around this time. I created the text page with Adobe Spark—you can see the logo right here.

Then you can add the photos—same thing, one after the other— and the viewer has context for what they’re seeing. So this is better than just a string of photos, but it’s still not as engaging!

A better solution is to use Adobe Spark Post to combine photos and type into jpeg graphics like these that you can then turn into a more polished PDF. The PDF will be viewed on a computer or mobile device so I recommend that you keep it simple to save time and to focus the viewer’s attention on the photos and the story. A grid format is perfect for this, and don’t put too many photos on one page.

As you can see, each image has the Adobe Spark logo on it. If you have a subscription to one of Adobe’s products you can delete the logo but you can’t do that with the free version. They’ll let you delete the logo once and that’s it.

Here’s the PDF I created using my four jpeg graphics. Much nicer! The viewer will understand the story and pause on each page to enjoy the photos.

If you don’t have an Adobe subscription and you don’t want the Adobe Spark logo on every page of your PDF, you can use another online design program called Canva at canva.com. This program doesn’t add their logo—even in the free version. You can create multiple pages and download them as a PDF right from within the program and click to add a new page. Just click the Download button and choose the PDF option.

Canva has more robust features than Adobe Spark Post, especially when it comes to type. You have the option to choose a font size and also you can choose the spacing. You can adjust the leading, or space between lines, and the tracking, the space between letters, but overall it’s a little less intuitive to use than Adobe Spark in my opinion.

Here’s the PDF I created at Canva using the free version. I really like how this turned out!

The final option is to use a photo editing program like Photoshop or Photoshop Elements to create each page of your PDF. I’ve provided a set of simple grid templates to get the same kind of look you would get using Adobe Spark or Canva.

Here’s the template for this design—very simple, just a grid with two rectangles. The resolution for these templates is set to presentation mode, not full resolution printing mode because you’ll be viewing them on a computer or mobile device.

Now, just so you know, these are only for people who already know how to use Photoshop or Photoshop Elements and understand how to work with layers. If that’s not you, pay no attention to the templates! You can just ignore them because I’m not going to teach how to use them in this class. I only included the templates as a courtesy to those who are totally comfortable using photo editing programs.

With the options I am going to teach anyone can create a PDF filled with photos and stories that you can share with your family and pass down to your descendants.