<p>When Flickr launched in 2004, digitizing photos was still new. Now, nine years later, the Yahoo-owned service has created a product aimed at showcasing photos on old-fashioned paper.</p><p>The product, called Flickr Photo Books, allows users to print albums based on sets of photos they've already loaded to the service.</p><p>Launching on Tuesday, just as consumers start making their Christmas lists, Photo Books will compete with album-printing services from giants like Walmart and Walgreens as well as specialized online photo printers like Shutterfly. Flickr Vice President Tom Hughes says he hopes people will choose Photo Books because it is easy to use. "The pain point in the market is really that it's a time-consuming process," he says. "There's a really high drop-off rate once users begin the creation process of being a photo book."</p><p>Flickr users' photos are already organized in albums or "sets" on the site, and a new tool automatically formats one of those sets into a book, choosing the set cover image as the book cover image and laying the photos out in the same order. The software avoids placing faces on the edge of a page and will automatically zoom and crop photos so subjects appear in the right place. "There's a lot of photo science behind it," says Markus Spiering, Flickr's head of product. A third-party partner, who Yahoo declined to name, will print the albums after they're designed.</p><p><a href="http://www.fastcompany.com/3021934/with-photo-books-flickr-gets-into-the-print-business">Keep reading...</a></p>