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A hand lifting the cover of a cloth-bound photo book with a photograph tipped in on it

Free, in the browser

Make the photo book you keep meaning to make.

Photodummy lays out art photo books in your browser and gives you a PDF to take to any printer. You choose the pictures and the sequence. It takes care of the print side.

Start a book

Free. Nothing to install, nothing to subscribe to.

The screen is the paper

One geometry model drives the canvas and the exported PDF. Frames are stored as fractions of the page, so nothing is rounded twice. A photograph that crosses the gutter on screen crosses it on paper.

The Photodummy editor with a two-page spread open, page rail on the left and print settings on the right
The editor needs a laptop or desktop. Sign up here, open it there.

Print production, not a preview

MediaBox — trim + 2 × bleed TrimBox — where it is cut 0.125 in bleed, every outer edge

Bleed and trim, in inches

Bleed sits at 0.125 in on every outer edge. The MediaBox is the trim size plus two bleeds; the TrimBox is inset by exactly one bleed. Trim sizes are in inches, the way a printer quotes them.

An open photo book where one photograph runs across both pages through the gutter

A photo can cross the gutter

Two facing pages share one coordinate space, so an image running across both stays a single image. It is split into two pages only at export, where the paper needs it.

A photo book opened out into a gatefold, its fold-in panels extended across the table

Gatefolds that actually close

Build a fold-out and each fold-in panel comes back 0.125 in narrower, because a full-width panel cannot physically fold shut. You place the picture; the panel maths is already done.

An open photo book held in two hands, a photograph of a garage filling the page

Shako and Revisiting, photo books by Marc Falzon — who built Photodummy while making his own.

It lays out. It doesn't edit.

No filters, no presets, no exposure sliders, no auto-enhance. Photodummy places the file you exported and writes it into the PDF unchanged. Crop, scale, position, rotate, bleed and imposition are layout, and they are its job. Colour and retouching are Photoshop's, and that is where they stay.

Your edit reaches the press as your edit.

Questions

What kind of PDF does it export?
A print-ready PDF, assembled in your own browser. Every page carries a MediaBox equal to the trim size plus two bleeds, and a TrimBox inset by exactly one bleed, so a printer knows where to cut.
How much bleed does it add?
0.125 in on every outer edge by default. An 8 × 10 in page is therefore 8.25 × 10.25 in once exported, with the trim marked one bleed inside that.
Can I take the file to any printer?
Photodummy exports an ordinary PDF and does not print books itself, so the file is yours to take wherever you like. It is an RGB PDF with the trim and bleed boxes set — a shop that requires PDF/X or CMYK separations will want a conversion step first.
Can I retouch my photos in it?
No, and that is deliberate. Photodummy does layout and print production only. You upload finished files.
Do I need to install anything?
No. It runs in a browser, and the PDF is built on your own machine before it downloads.

Start a book

Upload your photos, lay out the spreads, download the PDF.

Start a book

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