[72deluxe]

I am starting to do this with actual physical books. I have thousands of photos going back over my life, and I am putting them together in Scribus to then go and print a physical book for each year or event or holiday along with some relevant text.

Ideally square books that can go on a coffee table. At least when I am dead there will be some part of my existence in physical form, unlike all the digital things we spend decades creating.

I might put a SD card taped in the front of each one with a video too, so someone can watch it in the future.

As a separate aside, I also found old Canon photo printers (Selphy models) on ebay for about £5! Some need the little white gear inside glueing back on (there's a video on YouTube about it), and they DO NOT work with Windows anymore, but gutenprint supports them fine on Linux, so I have been printing photos (postcard size) at home. The colour isn't going to win awards and the saturation needs boosting slightly in the printer options compared to default, but it's a wonderful way to finally get some photos from trips on the walls.

[fuzzy_biscuit]

Won't the SD card data decay in a relatively short time? Maybe convert some part of that video into a flipbook for another piece of physical media?

[Nzen]

You could add an appendix with printed, scannable, binary data. You could create a page with a bunch of QR codes. Martin Monperrus vouched [0] for Twibright Optar [1].

[0] https://www.monperrus.net/martin/store-data-paper

[1] https://ronja.twibright.com/optar/

[bloomingeek]

Yes, I would definitely make backups on two or three different disc types.

[72deluxe]

Good idea, thank you. A DVD and SD card it is then!

[codazoda]

I love making Zines, but I don’t make enough of them. That might be a nice medium for something like this.

I’ve also done some light-fast testing. Laser prints (both B&W and color) survive a long while in direct harsh sunlight left in the window of my Utah home. All types of pen I tried were faded within a couple years but Pencil survives.

A 360 degree stapler is a fantastic tool for quickly binding them.

[72deluxe]

I am hoping that Canon's promise of 100 years for the Selphy prints holds true. The printer applies a final clear protective layer. I will monitor!

[solstice]

I've also started thinking about this. Can you share some templates or other tips on how to do this?

[72deluxe]

I did spend some time getting some LLM to write a generator (in C++) of a scribus XML file for automatic layout, but it wasn't effective. I need to get back to looking at that, as it would be very useful. As my photos range in aspect ratios and formats (4:3 and 3:2) and I have thousands and thousands of RAW photos to process and "finish", it's an ongoing work! So for now I am just doing it manually, with the help of some layout scripts.

As I store everything in a local Vikunja instance for notes and WIP, here's the list of links I assembled relative to this (hopefully useful; it includes calendar templates so that I can make them for my mother-in-law):

https://github.com/berteh/ScribusGenerator

https://wiki.scribus.net/canvas/Useful_Free_Resources

https://www.opendesktop.org/p/1106678

https://www.opendesktop.org/browse?cat=196&page=1&ord=latest

https://www.pling.com/s/Artwork/browse?cat=196&ord=latest

https://wiki.scribus.net/canvas/CalendarWizard

https://github.com/RaffertyR/Year-Calendar-Script-for-Scribu...

https://wiki.scribus.net/canvas/Category:Scripts

https://wiki.scribus.net/canvas/Making_a_photobook_from_a_di...

https://wiki.rjcalow.co.uk/photography/make/designaphotobook...

https://github.com/PPSchL/scribus-photobook-scripts

https://github.com/RaffertyR/PhotoBookTools-for-Scribus

https://forums.scribus.net/index.php?topic=4081.0

https://wiki.scribus.net/canvas/Automatic_import_of_images_f...

https://wiki.scribus.net/canvas/Photo_Albums

https://github.com/hawbox/scribus-book-templates

https://forums.scribus.net/index.php?topic=3735.0

http://johnosterhout.com/basic-book-template-for-scribus/

When you find a print shop, they'll talk about margins and bleeds, so it might be worth finding a print shop first to know what bleed zones you want on the pages and whether they expect left page first, or right page first.

Once you know that, you can set up Scribus appropriately.

[solstice]

wow, thank you!

[geek_at]

physical books are a greate idea.

I do something similar but with email and more pro-active [1]. I have created my son an email address when he was born and I'm sending him things from our lives and ask family members to to the same. Just to write them about themselves and send photos of their current homes and gardens and partners.

I imagining him looking through his email when he's 18 and reading personalize messages sent by family members who might no longer be with us then.

[1] https://blog.haschek.at/2024/leaving-a-digital-legacy.html

[modo_mario]

How's the cost for the books? I'd be tempted to DIY those to save cost but Ive been a bit short on time in recent months.

[72deluxe]

Not very cost effective really, unless you go for those online sellers that offer books from phone JPEGs at awful quality. I am doing it slowly and within a budget, that's for sure.

[eleveriven]

Feels like a nice middle ground between what the article describes and something more tangible