Pastbook Review

I have something that I think is pretty cool to share today! I saw an ad on Facebook and clicked on it (which I rarely do, but the comments under the ad were good, so I took a chance) and found the site, Pastbook, where you can create a book from your Facebook photos, reviewing a past year. I had it create a 2018 photo book for me so I could see how it would work and loved the idea of it and the results. After clicking on some of the options, I found that I could edit the text of the caption that was taken from Facebook and add or delete photos from the book. I ended up adding photos from my phone and deleting some of the photos that were included to better tell the story of my year.

If your book ends up being 300 pages or less, it will have a hard cover, and if it has more than 300 pages, it will have a soft cover. It was easy for me to go over 300 pages, so I made hard decisions and deleted photos to bring my book down to 300 pages since I wanted a hard cover book.

I initially ordered the big size, thinking bigger photos would be better but it ended up being too big for me. The large size is about 12" x 8.5", so when it is open, it is about 24" across. Luckily, there was a little problem in printing the book, so they refunded my payment, and I reordered the book in the small size and love it!

Here is the large book and the small book for comparison:

You can choose one of your photos for the cover and change the title to anything you want. I spent quite a bit of time arranging the order of the photos, making the sizes visually pleasing on the pages, and editing the captions. Since most of my photos on Facebook come from Instagram, they usually have hashtags in the captions. Sometimes I left them as they were and other times edited them to not be so long or silly.

Here's some samples pages: These two from the large and the small book. The quality is great, and the small book is much easier to look at but the photos are still a good size. (The small book is about 8.5" x 6".)

One of the problems that happened when they printed the large size book is that the captions stretched out so that they were only one line instead of two lines as I had designed, so there was too much space between the photo and the caption. Customer service via email was very helpful and responsive. They refunded the cost of the book immediately or would have just reprinted it if I had wanted them to. I wanted a refund so I could reorder the small book.

Here's one of the same photos with the captions spaced correctly in the small book:

Here's another example of the large book and the small book: I love the way the photos look that I have filling the page like the NYC photo I took from the airplane window. I don't like the two different size photos in the large book on the right hand page. I went back and changed the order of the photos or edited the size of the photo and re-imported it from my phone.

When I used vertical photos, I omitted the captions:

I usually didn't use captions on full page photos either:

Most of my photos are squares since they were shared from Instagram to Facebook. If I took them directly from my phone to my computer for this book, then I usually edited the size to make them a square. Most of the square photos have a caption underneath.

I often use the app Picframe to make a grid out of several photos. Using them here was a great way to include lots of photos!

This full page photo was a photo I took and edited with the Prisma app. I love the way it came out!

Another grid and a large photo.

I love the mix of people photos and fun food photos:

A spread of cat photos:

One thing that I don't like and will be careful to avoid in future books, is putting a square grid photo as a full size photo. It cuts off the top and bottom of the square, so some photos, like the one of fireworks over the building in the page below, are almost cut off. This would have been better as a regular square photo.

A rectangular grid was fine as a full page though:

Here's look at the binding of the large and small book:

I love the chunky thickness of 300 pages and the overview it gives of a whole year.

I have 7,905 photos on my phone from 2018, so for me to have my year reflected on these 300 pages is a tribute to how much I edited each trip and event down to just a few photos. For me, this doesn't take the place of a scrapbook of a trip or of big events since I included just a few photos from each trip or event - just the highlights from the year.

I've already ordered my 2017 book and am working on 2016. I start by seeing what Pastbook includes from my photos on Facebook and then go to my 2016 album of photos on my phone (there are over 4,600 there to choose from), edit those photos as needed - fixing the color, straightening, or resizing them) and then will upload them to the book. If it is over 300 pages, then I'll go back and delete some to keep it to 300 so all my books will have a hard cover.

You don't need to have Facebook to make a book. You could fill it with photos that you have on your computer. It doesn't have to be a review of a year either. It could be a travel book or any subject you want it to be. Unlike other photo books with page layouts, this just has a simple layout that I like for this purpose. I was very happy with the customer service and with the quality of the paper and the photos in the book.

I'm not receiving any compensation for this review and didn't get any special discount for recommending Pastbook. I used a 40% off coupon that was on Facebook, so the cost for the 300 page small book was $59.

Let me know what you think and if you have any questions!

Comments

[Cathy R]

Wow Debby! Love this idea! Thanks for sharing!

[Deb Jones]

These books are wonderful. I would prefer the smaller one too. The big one would be hard to find a place to put it unless you made it a coffee table book. What a great idea. I can't afford to make one but if I could I certainly would. It would be nice to have one or two of especially special subjects. You did a great job with yours.