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About Personalized Photo Calendars:

Photo Calendars are 12-month, wall-hanging calendars that you can create using your own digital photos and captions. As you customize your own photo calendar, you can start the calendar on whatever month and year you wish. Most photo calendars are printed on white heavy-weight glossy card stock that you can write on, and they are spiral-bound in the middle.

Creating Personalized Photo Calendars:

Most online digital photo printing services, such as Shutterfly (my favorite), Snapfish and Kodak EasyShare Gallery, offer custom photo calendars. The process of creating personalized photo calendars usually involves:

1. Picking a starting month and year for your calendar

2. Selecting a page design from a variety of templates

3. Choosing your photos from those you have uploaded to the photo service's website and selecting which photo you want for a specific month

4. Writing brief photo captions to accompany each page of your photo calendar (usually optional)

5. Adding a cover photo for your personalized photo calendar

6. Placing your photo calendar order with the web site

Templates for Personalized Photo Calendars:

Most photo printing services like Shutterfly and Snapfish offer a selection of photo calendar templates to choose from. There are also several software programs that include free photo calendar templates. FotoFinish offers several photo calendar templates with its FotoFinish Suite software version, and you can download a variety of additional free photo calendar templates from its website. Adobe Photoshop Album and Jasc Paint Shop Photo Album 5 Deluxe also feature photo calendar templates.

Printing Photo Calendars:

If you design your custom photo calendar using an online photo service, to print it simply add your photo calendar to your online shopping account and check out. You'll have your printed photo calendar in a few days. The average cost is about $20 per calendar. If you are using your own software to create your photo calendar, you can print your calendar pages using your own color printer and have your pages spiral bound into a calendar at a local copy store.

Customized Photo Calendars Make Great Gifts:

Custom photo calendars make terrific gifts, whether for birthdays, Mother's Day, etc. Got an avid golfer in the family? What about custom golf photo calendars featuring photos of your golfer teeing off? Sometimes it is hard to come up with a good gift idea for elderly parents or grandparents. A photo calendar with pictures of your children makes a great gift that grandma and grandpa will enjoy anew each time they turn over a new month. Don't have kids? What about 12 months of your favorite pet photos? The ideas are endless.

Valerie Goettsch publishes the digital photography website http://www.digitalphotos101.com featuring reviews of photo editing and album software and digital photo printing services.