Want your photos to look their best in your Travel Book? The shape of your photos makes a big difference. In this article, we explain how to make the most out of your Travel Book pages.
What is an aspect ratio?
An aspect ratio describes the shape of a photo: the relationship between its width and its height. It is written as two numbers, like 4:3 (width:height). It does not tell you how big a photo is, only whether it is square, boxy, tall or wide.
The best aspect ratios for your Travel Book
Our Travel Book is 29.7 cm wide and 21 cm high. For this format, the following photo ratios work best:
- To fill a page completely: use an aspect ratio of 4:3
- Next to the step text: a photo with an aspect ratio of 6:7 fits perfectly (width:height)
- For portrait photos: an aspect ratio of 3:4 looks great
- Placing multiple photos on a page: combining photos with an aspect ratio of 4:3 and 3:4 will fit best
Why 9:16 is not ideal for our Travel Book
On the cover
Our Travel Book is landscape shaped, and so is the cover. The cover photo is 4:3, which is much wider than a 9:16 photo. To fill the cover, only part of your photo fits and the rest will be cut off.
On a page
When you place several 9:16 photos on one page, they have to be shown small to fit the height of the page. This leaves a lot of white space around them. Photos in 3:4 fill the page much better.
Changing your camera setting
Sometimes the camera on your phone is set to an aspect ratio of 9:16. This makes all your photos very tall and narrow, like your phone screen when you hold it upright.
Our Travel Book is landscape shaped, so tall and narrow photos are not an ideal match, when you'd like to make most of the photo pages.
The good news is that this is a setting on your phone's camera, and you can change it. In your camera settings, you can choose a standard aspect ratio of 4:3 (or 3:4 for portrait photos). Please note that this only applies to photos you take from then on. Photos you have already taken keep their original shape, but you can crop them with the steps below.
How to crop a photo you have already added to a step
At the moment, our app does not have a feature to crop photos directly. You can solve this by editing the photo outside the app (for example, in your phone's gallery). Then you can re-upload it to your trip or directly in the Travel Book Editor, and then regenerating your Travel Book to see the updated version.
Follow these steps:
- If you are in the Travel Book Editor make sure to first, tap "Save & Preview" to save your current progress.
- Now open your phones gallery and crop the photo on your device.
- Open your trip and go to the step. Tap 'Edit step'.
- Delete the original photo.
- Upload the edited photo.
- Publish the step.
- Generate your Travel Book. The updated photo will then appear in the preview, at the end of the step.
- Tap 'Edit Travel Book' and move the photo to the desired place on the page.
We hope these tips will help you make the most of your Travel Book layout!