Create your own coffee table book

Libby believes that, "it's important for us to print the hundreds of digital photos hiding on our computers, so we can preserve our photo memories for future generations. Technology and digitisation is great but there's nothing better than holding a photo in your hand, and no better way to ensure that your photos can be seen in the coming decades, than printing it as a six by four or a photobook."

The Momento concept grew from there and has been operating in beta for more than a year, with the launch of Momento in October 2004 and launching fully to the public last month with a significantly enhanced version of the Momento’s free, DIY photobook software plus a broader range of book sizes.

Designing your Book

Momento's free composition software is windows based (Windows 98, SE and later) and designed “to offer something more than a template-based syste,” according to Hunt. The idea is that you design the photobook using the company’s free downloadable software and then upload the design you require and they print, bind and deliver the books to your door.

“For the average person we’ve tried to make it an easy, quick and creative solution for making a personalised contemporary photobook,” said Hunt.

The photo and page editing tools allow anyone to size, caption, crop, scale or frame their digital photos to produce great page layouts and a unique cover design, and Momento's powerful ACE technology (Aesthetic Composition Engine) can create brilliant page designs for you in an instant.

With more than twelve months of testing and refinement, the latest newly-released version of the software is now very advanced, with automated layout and pixelation-warning features if the size of your photos exceeds the resolution needed for optimum quality. There are graphics, text and framing tools in the software, as well as more frames, auto-alignment tools and the ability to control layers of images.

“There are a number of services on the internet that offer web-based book production but they nearly all offer low quality, low-cost spiral bound booklets and we decided very early to differentiate our product with very high quality,” said Hunt.

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