The Importance of Themes in iPhoto Books
Never underestimate the impact themes in iPhoto have on your finished product!
There are so many themes in iPhoto books that you could spend hours just exploring them. Fortunately, it's not difficult to change a theme once you've set your book up, so if you don't like the overall appearance once you've finished, it's very easy to get a whole new look with the click of a button!
Types of Themes
You can divide the themes in iPhoto into three main categories.
1. Formal Themes
These are themes that give a polished, professional look to your finished product. They include Formal, Contemporary, and Folio.
2. Casual Themes
There are plenty of these themes in iPhoto. They're the ones you'd use creating a book for friends and family -- polished, but informal. They include Picture Book, Family Album, and Snapshots (or Photo Corners in older versions of iPhoto).
3. Fun Themes
A lot of these are specific to a certain event (for example, Baby Girl and Baby Boy), but these are some of the most interesting themes in iPhoto. Depending on the look you're going for, you're sure to have fun browsing them! They include Travel, Watercolor, and Crayon.
Choosing Themes
The type of theme you choose depends on two things: the type of photos you're displaying and your purpose in displaying them. On one extreme, if you're putting together a professional portfolio of high-gloss black-and-white photographs, you'll probably want to choose something like Folio. As you can see below, it makes a significant difference what theme you pick!
Although on the surface a travel theme might seem appropriate to photographs of Las Vegas, as you can see from the two above examples, its brightly colored, playful style doesn't lend itself to black and white photography. Fortunately, the majority of themes in iPhoto let you switch back and forth at will.
Having Fun With Themes
Of course, just because certain themes in iPhoto lend themselves more readily to certain types of pictures doesn't mean you should limit yourself. True, the black and white photographs didn't work well with the Travel theme, which probably means I should abandon it. However, they work quite well in one of my favorite themes: the Collage theme from the theme menu (this theme isn't available in iPhoto '08, but lots of other great themes are).
Remember, the whole point of making picture books is to have fun arranging and sharing your photos! Enjoy yourself, and make the themes in iPhoto work for you!
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