New Update: Your Text Now Stays Safe When Changing Page Layouts or Designs

Designing a photobook or calendar is a labour of love. You choose the perfect photos, arrange them just so, and add the words that make the project truly yours — the captions, the birthday messages, the family names, the little stories that turn a collection of pictures into a keepsake.

So there has always been one small frustration that gets in the way of that creativity: the fear of losing all that carefully typed text the moment you decide to try a different look.
We’re delighted to say that, as of our big software update, this frustration is a thing of the past.

If you’ve designed a book before, you’ll know the feeling. You’ve spent a good ten minutes writing the perfect birthday message beside a favourite photo. It reads beautifully. Then you spot a different layout that might frame the page even better — a fresh arrangement of image boxes, a bit more breathing room, a design that just feels right. But you hesitate. If you switch layouts now, will your message survive the change? Or will you have to type the whole thing out again from scratch?

For a lot of designers, that hesitation was enough to stop them experimenting altogether. People would settle for a layout that was merely “fine” rather than risk losing words they’d worked hard to get right. And that’s a shame, because the whole joy of designing your own book is the freedom to play, rearrange, and keep improving until it’s exactly what you pictured.
We wanted to remove that hesitation completely.

With our latest update, the software now automatically keeps your text with you when you change a page’s layout or style. In plain terms: when you apply a new layout to a page that already contains text, your existing words are retained and carried across to the new design wherever possible.

You no longer have to choose between a better-looking page and the words you’ve already written. You get both.
That means you can finally treat layouts the way they were always meant to be treated — as options to explore rather than commitments to be nervous about. Swap one design for another, see how your page feels, change your mind, and change it again. Your captions, stories, names, and messages come along for the ride each time.

The feature is refreshingly simple, which is exactly how a good feature should be. There’s nothing new to switch on and no extra steps to remember. It just works quietly in the background as you design.

Here’s the short version. If your current page contains a text box, and the new layout or page style you apply also includes a text box, the text you’ve already entered is automatically mapped across into the new layout. Your words move into the corresponding text area of the new design, ready for you to keep going. No copying, no pasting, no retyping.
Because it happens automatically, you can move quickly through several different designs in a row, comparing how each one sits with your photos and your words, without ever stopping to rescue your text along the way.

The real value of this update isn’t just a technical one — it’s about how it makes the whole design process feel. Here’s what you can look forward to:

• Try different page designs with confidence. Experiment freely, knowing your words are safe no matter how many layouts you cycle through.
• Save time by avoiding repetitive typing. The minutes you used to spend re-entering the same captions can now go into actually enjoying the creative process.
• Reduce the risk of accidentally losing important content. The messages and memories you add are protected as you make changes.
• Focus on creating your perfect project. Spend your energy on the design itself, not on protecting your progress.

Put simply, this update gives you the freedom to be more adventurous. When there’s no penalty for experimenting, you’re far more likely to discover a layout you love — one you might never have tried before because the risk felt too high.

We’ve rolled this feature out across both of our platforms so that as many of you as possible can benefit from it straight away.

On PHOTO2PRINT Desktop, the feature is now available for Photobooks and Calendars.
On PHOTO2PRINT Online, it’s available for Photobooks, Calendars, and Retro Prints.

Whichever way you prefer to design — from the comfort of the desktop software or directly in your browser — your text will stay with you as you refine your pages.

We’ve always believed that the words in your project matter just as much as the pictures. A photo captures a moment, but a caption tells you why that moment mattered — who was there, what was said, how it felt. Those little pieces of writing are what your family will read again and again for years to come, and they deserve to be treated with the same care as your best photographs.

This update is our way of honouring that. It gives you greater flexibility to explore different design options while keeping your valuable text exactly where it belongs — with you.
So go ahead and experiment. Try that bolder layout. Rearrange the page. Chase the version you’ve been picturing in your head. However many times you change your mind along the way, your words will be right there waiting for you.
Happy designing!