Calendars of your photos--do you make them? Thoughts?

Lounge
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I made an Ireland wall calendar for 2018 through Shutterfly. I was pretty happy with the result. However, partly because I tired of their endless spam, and partly because I was curious about Bay Photo, I did a France wall calendar through Bay Photo for 2020. The result was quite impressive, although their Bay Roes app for calendars is very irritating to me and far less straightforward than Shutterfly IMO. I did a Trees wall calendar for 2022 through Bay Photo, and they ignored my white borders around each photo and printed my captions on top of the photos themselves. In that respect, the calendar they sent bore no resemblance to the previews rendered by their app. To their credit, they reprinted the calendars at no cost, but it was still an extra hassle, and I was not able to give some of them as gifts when I had hoped to do so. And, like Shutterfly, they send me lots and lots of spam.

Recently, I have assembled candidate photos for a S.F. Bay Area 2023 calendar, and am just trying to figure out who I am going to use! Some of the months are composite plates, with four, six, or nine smaller photos. I am very careful about even spacing of these!

Can anyone suggest a good service with an easy to use website or app for this purpose?

Selecting photos for a wall calendar is an interesting exercise! I give a few of them away as gifts and also display one in my office at work. I want the photos to be engaging to my audience/recipients, but this tends to eliminate some photos which I think have the greatest artistic merit. I also want my calendar to give a nice overview of a certain country (or theme), while at the same time giving my own personal spin on the place (or subject). I do not feel the need to include photos of all the major touristy attractions, but I do want to include a few of them–even if my photos of them differ from the usual ones (so much the better!). (Hey, I LIKE the Eiffel Tower!) Anyway, that’s the compromise I’ve settled upon. To a certain extent, I am tempted to say “screw it” and just make a calendar including all the photos I feel have the greatest artistic merit.

Do you make calendars of your photos? Do you give them to friends/family? Do you have a hard time selecting photos? What are your thoughts?

Thanks

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I have my annual calendars printed from saal digital since ~10 years. In October and November they have special offers up to 60 % off their usual price, which I always try to manage. The quality is very good, and the value for money is excellent IMO.

I prepare the calendars in darktable and scribus with a calendar strip generated with LaTeX. Part of my process is documented here: PlayRaw Calendar 2018 (A Calendar Making Tutorial using FLOSS Software) – Part 1 & 2 - #3 by paperdigits.

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Be careful, the Eiffel tower at night with its light installation is copyrighted and it’s not allowed to sell photographs of or without license.

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Thanks for the suggestion! Saal looks very good, and I will look forward to learning about this process. I use Raw Therapee 5.8 (still have to upgrade to 5.9!) and just send high-res jpgs as the final output for printing.

I am well aware of the copyright issue with the Eiffel Tower lights–unfortunately, we never made it over there at night, but I would be very careful about any images or videos thereof!