There has always been something missing in our Kolo family. We have the super best selling Noci that holds 24 photos. We have the Catalina that holds 200. And of course, we have the super popular Hudson 2 and Hudson 3 that hold 200 and 300 4 x 6 photos, respectively. But there was that gap between 24 and 200. That’s a big gap and tons of people told us that. Thanks for all the feedback! We listened.

Introducing Hudson 1!

Yeah, it’s a super nice photo album. It works nicely with the other Hudsons. But like the Noci, it has also has removable sleeves so it makes it really versatile. Some of our staff are using it for portfolios, some are using it as a nice journal since you can write in it and add photos. It’s a perfect Instagram book too.

Meet the Hudson family. Click here.

Kathleen Jacobs, a professional painter from Northampton, MA used it as her portfolio of light sketches and washes while painting in Truro, MA last summer. “I love the size” she said. “It’s cute and stubby and allows me to paint light wash sketches right on the page, snap a few study photos when I am in the field. It’s a great new tool for me.” The new Hudson 1 has been test driven by painters, professional photographers, designers and all sorts of folks. Verdict? They love it…for different reasons.

Don’t forget, if you really don’t want to do all the work of getting your photos printed and loaded, you can go to mykolo.com, create an account, upload 100 photos and have Kolo print them and load them into your new Hudson 1 for you. Pretty easy huh? And it only costs $5 more. Crazy good value! You can have the Noci and Hudson’s loaded too. Check it out here.

-Kate

Kolo will be hosting a free "Save the Photos" Photography and Photo Book Workshop at The Mall at Chestnut Hill, 199 Boylston St, Chestnut Hill, MA on Saturday, October 29th from 2 - 6 pm.

Save the photos stuck on your phone. Save the photos sitting on your hard drive. Save the photos lost in the cloud. KoloPros will help you get your photos off your hard drives, off photo-hosting websites or out of old, harmful albums and into personalized Kolo photo books and archival albums.

Professional photographer Roger Pelissier will provide photography tips on lighting, composition and posing subjects. Photographic consultant Bob Williams will show you how to organize your digital files. KoloPros will give interactive demonstrations on how to turn your photos into beautiful Kolo photo books and archival albums.

Event participants are encouraged to bring 25 of their favorite photos on a USB, CD or camera card. At the workshop, 25 of each participant’s photos will be high-quality printed in 4”x6” format, and loaded into a free archival Kolo Noci album. Limit one per person.

Bring your digital cameras and files to get started on the spot.

If you live near Boston or are in the area, be sure to stop by.

Trust us. Saving photos is fun!

Learn more, here.

-Kate

Blogger Elise Blaha on her experience creating a myKOLO Digital Photo Book.

It's two months later, but I finally have my Week in the Life album to share. I took a pretty minimalist approach to the documentation process and just focused on taking a lot of photos and writing a blurb about what I did Monday - Friday. (You can see all the posts here : M, T, W, Th, F.) The plan all along was to get the text and images off the computer and into something but I didn't have a plan of attack.



Which is why I was pretty excited to make my second Kolo project a digital album. (You can see the first project I took on with Kolo here.) I uploaded my images to their photo book online program, selected templates, dropped in my photos and copied in my text. I spread the upload/design process out over a couple days (the program saves your progress) and the album shipped in about a week. I was very pleased with the quality of the printing. At the end of this post, there is a 5 minute video which shows how I used the program.





For my title page, I combined a self-portrait from the week and some of the text from this post about my thoughts on the project.







For me, this was definitely a project where the photos were the most important. I chose simple layouts and repeated them throughout the album. Not every photo that was taken each day made it in, but a lot did. I especially liked the template for a row of photos because I thought they told the best chronological story.





As mentioned, the only text in the book was what I jotted down here on the blog. I chose to keep it all in a block and paired it with photos from the appropriate day. Each day ended up with 3-4 two pages spreads depending on how many photos I had.







Overall, I am so pleased with the result. It was nice to upload, arrange and send to print. Because I didn't save any scraps of paper or handwritten thoughts, the digital format worked really well for me and this project. I will definitely be participating in Week in the Life again (hopefully capturing a week Paul is home next time) and may use the same format or experiment with something new. Because the program was so easy to use and the quality was good, I am going to be making another album (topic to be determined!) soon. I am also hoping to work with Kolo to develop more templates for the program. I will be sure to share when they are available.

And as promised, here's the short video that shows how to use the backend of myKolo.com. I am happy to answer any questions in the comments!

using mykolo.com from elise blaha on Vimeo.

Check out Elise's blog - enJOY it. Thank you, Elise!

-Kate

Load your photos into a Kolo Noci album in just seconds. Watch this video of one of Kolo's graphic designers loading photos from India into a Kolo Noci Album. Photos were submitted from contestants of the Kolo Photo Contest.

-Kate

Elise Blaha, writer of popular blog, enJOY it, recently took on the project of taking her family’s old photos and transferring them into new, archival Kolo albums. Elise chose to use Lake Hudson 3-Ups, each holding 300 4 in. x 6 in. photos.

I ended up working with Kolo to take the old photos that belonged to my parents – four decades of photos – and put them into new albums. It included everything from their life before my brother and I were born till now. These pictures were stored in disintegrating albums or boxes or bags, tucked into a cabinet on the upstairs floor – dusty, dirty, disorganized and falling apart.

Here is an easy four-step tutorial from Elise. Watch the video for extra tips on making your albums.

Check back for other videos from Elise. Look at her blog, here.

-Kate