This week, I decided to focus on creating a photo book of our Florida Hiatus. Considering that two years have gone by since we got home from that trip, it is high time that I get to printing our photos. I’ve been wanting to experiment with Lightroom 4’s book module, so rather than use InDesign, I went with Lightroom’s page layout templates. There is actually a fair amount of flexibility, but I still found myself wishing for the total design control that InDesign allows.
I’m still finishing up the book, and will likely do more in the future. However my first impressions of Lightroom 4’s book module are:
Pros:
– relatively easy to use, especially if you lack design training
– saves the step of having to export your photos — just drag and drop from your Lightroom catalog
– lots of template options to choose from (although so many, that you could go overboard and end up with a very disjointed design)
Cons:
– lacks full control/flexibility of InDesign
– totally freaks me out that I can’t save every few minutes (the book is just saved as part of your Lightroom catalog)
– considering all of the template options available, I still found myself wishing for more (for example, would have liked an option where I could have a short caption underneath each photo within the layout) — that’s when I started to wish for InDesign
Creating this book has been fun… has me daydreaming about another two month hiatus (highly unlikely that this will ever happen, but hey, a girl can dream right?).