Photo Book Hardcover A4 portrait

Hardback photo book A4: our best selling photo books

How to find the best photo books

Choosing the best photo book is usually a matter of selecting top quality materials and combining them with the features that best fit the purpose of a photographic project. Thus, to produce the best photo books not only will you need to find a good and solid cover, but also a book format that allows you to view your favourite and most special pics whenever it suits you - be it at home, in the car or when visiting your relatives. Therefore, the more flexible, the better.  In this sense, popular A4 size hardback photo books offer one of the most practical and recommendable formats in the photobook industry: a generous printing surface for displaying your own photographs plus a sturdy outter case prepare them to face all possible challenges in everyday life.

As a result, A4 hardback photo books with portrait or landscape orientation can be carried in your handbag, be lent to younger children or have a place of their own in your coffee table for everybody to see them. For all these reasons, A4 photo books are an unbeatable choice to make a personalised photo album, with prices starting from £23.99. It is no coincidence that A4 photo books with a hardcover have become our best selling photobook format in the UK!

Personalised photo books online

Compared to more traditional techniques, creating personalised photo books online from your computer or iPad makes the designing process a lot simpler, faster and also more enjoyable. By using the variety of cliparts, backgrounds, filters, pieces of text and predesigned patterns available on our online shop, a unique memory book will come to life. Add some old photos to create the impression of travelling back in time or place them beside new ones to show how things have changed.

Moreover, the advantage of making A4 personalised photo books online is that one can always go a step back, undo any changes or start over again from scratch. For this, you may find the preview function quite useful, as it lets you check the final appearance of the photo books online and at any stage. Whereas in a standard album the size of the pictures would be already set, photos in online generated photo books can be presented in practically any shape you like. Finally, a DIY photo book can be printed out as many times as necessary, so as to create different versions of the same A4 hardback book. If this is case, make sure you create a personal session on our website: in this way, your customised photobook projects will be stored on myphotobook UK's cloud.

Photo book ideas for clever minds

Surprising effects can be obtained by just following a few tips & visual tricks. In myphotobook UK, we like to try out new photo book ideas and solutions to be able to  help out our customers whenever they ask us. In this section, we offer you some original suggestions to make personalised photo books online:

• imitating the appearance of a real paper sheet: with the help of your camera, take a picture of a normal paper sheet. Then upload it to our online platform and use it as a background for your album or to fill in empty spaces. This will help you obtain the appearance of a real paper sheet for your pages. Photobook specialists and bloggers usually recommend to experiment with digital and natural elements to produce a sense of depth and volume in personalised photo albums. Try out this effect on your next order of an A4 photo book with a hardcover!
• organising the sections of your picture book in different chapters: if you divide the book pages into sections, you will enjoy a tidier layout and a more polished appearance. Similar elements can be added at the beggining of each A4 photobook section to provide visual rythm and enable storytelling. Fonts, colours, geometrical shapes, cliparts or symbols can be inserted to highlight the beggining or conclusion of a section.
• travel journals: it has recently become the fashion to present a photobook as a colourful and appealing travel journal. For instance, a visit to the zoo will leave a variety of stunning captions that show even better when presented in a certain order. A popular practice in travel photo books is to add descriptions, phrases, dates and even the exact time when a picture was taken.
• presenting your pictures with a black & white filter increases the level of contrast, it looks elegant and enhaces smaller but meaningful details.

Create a photo book with photographic sheets

Indeed, "personalised" means that you can influence the photobook layout, but also select the printing materials. A key aspect to consider before creating a photo book is the production technique - that is, if the pictures will be printed with the standard procedure (digital printing) or with classical photo processing. For example, if you create a photo book and get it printed digitally, the images will be composed by a huge number of pixels (this technique actually works out cheaper and lets you add a glossy film to enhance the final result).

In contrast, personalised albums produced with photographic sheets are the greatest example of  high-quality photo books. Thanks to photo developing - a chemical process - the images will gain a natural and nostalgic flair. Even with lower resolution pictures, photo processing can deliver top results for high-quality photo books.

The main differences between standard and developed photo books

Photo albums manufactured with photographic paper sheets

• are produced using photo processing,
• offer top picture quality and colour depth,
• are bound with a lay-flat bookbinding,
• are printed on Kodak photographic sheets,
• the printing sheets are available with matte or glossy finish.

Standard photobook

• produced with digital printing,
• lower price,
• sturdy structure (especially if provided with a hardback),
• great choice of bindings.

Other available elements to create a photo book by yourself and customise it to your needs are the binding and the cover. By picking a lay-flat binding, the gap between both pages of a same spread will be hidden, which means the printing area will be doubled. Regarding the cover, consider the purpose of the collection and who will enjoy the pictures most: for a wedding photobook or personalised children's books you will probably want a soft cover, whereas a hardback is more recommendable if you are planning to lend it to someone or to provide a more authoritative look. For special occasions, we suggest our premium line of articles, including canvas and leather bound photo books.

Due to their popularity, A4 hardback photo books are used to cover a wide range of purposes. Some practical examples of this photobook format are:

• an A4 travel photo book with a hardcover,
• hardback wedding photo books,
• A4 birthday photo books with portrait or landscape orientation,
• coffee table photo books,
• family photo books in A4 size,
• A4 graduation photo books with photographic sheets,
• A4 photo books for Mother's Day,
• memory photo books in A4 size,
• hardcover photo books for Valentine's Day.

Up to 200 pages inside a hardcover photobook

A4 hardcover photo books are also flexible in terms of the number of pages they can hold: a minimum of 22 and a maximum 200 customisable pages with a grammage of 170 gsm is offered and the prices will vary accordingly. With a hardback photobook you are  always playing on the safe side: it is the ideal choice for anyone who fancies a classical format.

Hard cover books come by default with a glossy surface, unless you specifically order them matte. With the inner pages it works the other way around: they are normally delivered matte, so that no reflections distract the attention from the actual pictures, but can be also ordered with an additional high-gloss finish. And of course, you have the option of ordering a fancy scrapbook!

Depending on the selected theme, you can choose between landscape and portrait orientation: inspiring captions of natural phenomenona and panoramic city views are clearly destined to become a landscape photobook. In turn, pictures that depict people in a more intimate atmosphere turn out best in a portrait photobook. Of course, you can create a square photo book or switch to a different size other than A4. myphotobook UK's online boutique offers the following sizes:

• A3 landscape hardcover photo books,
• A4 hardback photo books with portrait orientation (best selling photobook),
• A4 hardback photo books with landscape orientation,
• A5 landscape hardcover photo books,
• A5 portrait hard cover photo books,
• 20x20 cm (8x8") hardback photo books,
• 30x30 cm (12x12") hardback photo books.

Photobook offers & discounts: keep informed!

And since we all like to save money on our purchases, there are times when myphotobook UK issues interesting photobook offers in the form of promotional vouchers . If you look hard enough, you may  discover a new promotion which applies to the order you had in mind. In addition, you can subscribe to myphotobook's newsletter, which offers design tips for each season and type of proyect. Please note that any offers will be valid only for a limited period. Sometimes the promotion may even include free shipping!

Use your discount to create a present of a photobook for your parent's anniversary or to save on your wedding photo album. Immortalise the highlights, such as the exchange of rings, a passionate kiss, a look of complicity or the magic atmosphere during the celebration. Make your own photo book with myphotobook UK and give your unique moments the place they really deserve among your memories.