Is there a free software which will allow you to make a book out of your family treeso you can show your family?
There are free software packages that you can download to create
family trees, but they aren't very pretty--nor are they very good.
Then you must find a way to convert them into a format that a
photobook publisher will accept. Most of them are kind of
cheesy.
Sites like Ancestry.com offer free trials--although you have to
provide payment information so that they can automatically bill you
just in case you forget to cancel your free 30-day membership
before the automatic renewal and billing cycle comes around. There,
they have a photobook feature that is part of your membership.
Although the pages are beautiful and the program does all the
creation for you, it won't print more than five generations of your
family tree.
You could probably take advantage of the free trial period to
check out a number of genealogy websites to see if they have
similar options. You may really like the photobook feature--which
is somewhat flexible, but not very; or you may not like it at all.
What I had in mind for my family tree was not available with my
genealogical website's photobook offerings.
There are simple ways to design a family tree on your own and
then upload that to a photobook website. It depends how much effort
and time you want to put into design and preparation of information
you want to put into it and how innovative and detailed you want to
get with it.
To my last knowledge, Shutterfly and similar photobook
publishers provide you with inflexible page templates for
photobooks and you don't have the capacity to create your own
styles, page backgrounds, and other personal touches. That may have
changed, though.
I did a lot of research on photobooks and photobook programs
several years ago. I came to the conclusion that MyPublisher was
the very best in terms of quality, flexibility, and utterly
gorgeous books. No photobook publisher compares.
MyPublisher downloads a free module to your computer for
creating photobook pages. You have to create an account, but you
don't have to provide personal or payment information. You can
create your own pages or you can let MyPublisher do it. The module
costs absolutely nothing and works very well with standard .jpg
files.