Not sure if this is the right forum for this question, but can anyone recommend a good service for creating photobooks for family snapshots etc? I searched the forums but most threads are in the wedding photography forum and they seem geared to professional photographers.
I have experience with shutterfly and winkflash. Of those I really liked the shutterfly one (good quality). It was quite expensive though (I believe ~$1 per page). Winkflash was a lot cheaper but looked horrible (grainy, low contrast pictures).
I heard mixed things about blurb. They seem to offer a nice variety of products and the price seems right. I am just wondering how their quality will be? Will it be as good as shutterfly, or as bad as winkflash? I wonder if the complaints about their quality are from professionals with much higher expectations than what one would need in a family photo album.
I have high expectations. I had an excellent experience with Blurb. I have seen dozens of their books and all offer superb image quality (slightly higher on their hardbound books). There are many pros using their books for publicity purposes.
Thanks for the reply. I'll give them a try and order a hard cover 8x10.
I also heard that different format books are printed on different machines, with possibe quality differences. Reading your review, you seem pretty happy with 8x10, which is what I would use for most my books. For some small projects, I might be interested in 7x7 provided that the quality is the same. Is there a difference in quality between the standard (8x10) book vs the large (11x13) or square (7x7) books?
I have used Blurbs 10x8 and 13x11 landscape format hardcovers numerous times and have been happy with every one, about 20 books total now. Great quality for the price.
And prior to that I have used VioVio but only for their 14x11 landscape wire-o which is pretty nice too.
I spoke with the Blurb people recently, and they said that yes, the 7x7 book was made with a different machine, and the larger books were very slightly higher in quality. But I saw a number of 7x7 books which looked very nice.
They will soon introduce a service where they will print the book cover on the book itself, instead of just on a paper cover. Their sample copies looked quite impressive.
I think that sizing the photos exactly to the template may improve results, though it does take more time that way.
For family snapshots you shouldn't be disappointed!
Sounds good! I'll try a 10x8 for my annual family album and a 7x7 for our new baby (due in 2 more weeks....). I might even throw in some soft covers to hand out to the family. Now if I resize some pictures to their exact dimensions and let Blurb resize some others, I will even be able to determine if that indeed improves the quality noticeably.
Only problem to solve now: finding some time to make these albums between diaper changes...
I've never used Blurb, heard good things.
I've done three books (so far) with MyPublisher and friends and family (and I) have been happy with each. If you do use them, make sure you search for the frequent discount codes/coupons and apply it BEFORE you complete your order request. They automate ordering, etc, and will not apply a code even 10 minutes later. Pricing is excellent, paper quality excellent, reasonable amount of page layouts possible.
Scott
blake wrote:
They will soon introduce a service where they will print the book cover on the book itself, instead of just on a paper cover. Their sample copies looked quite impressive.
I think that sizing the photos exactly to the template may improve results, though it does take more time that way.
I really want to like Blurb but there are a couple of niggles that just make me bonkers:
1) Their bleed seems to vary making it hard to tell where/how big to position your photo to avoid lopping stuff off.
2) Their software doesn't show any guides that relate to the final printed output (see complaint #1).
3) When things go wrong you have to run a gauntlet to get things made right.
4) I've had weird stuff with improper printing - these may have been software glitches as I haven't seen the problem after my last update.
5) Very basic uninspired templates. I'd love to have the ability to create my own templates and use them. Yes I realize I can (and do) just create a full page layout in Photoshop, export as a JPG and use that - it really puts a cramp in the flow tho...
The plus side is they are reasonably priced for sure.
regards,
Jon
Just be careful, if you do a full page layout in Photoshop, be careful with text, it may not reproduce well (it was explained to me that text only reproduces well in vector format, which Photoshop is not).
There are several options. The iphoto books printed from a mac are contracted out to Mypublisher. Here is a link that discusses the differences between Blurb/Lulu/MyPublisher.
Thanks for that heads up about Blurb implementing ICC profiles - as I was just searching through the forum for a supplier who did support profiles with their Photobooks. I've tried using Photobox in the UK, but after some discussion with them, three sets of re-prints and two months later they said that they don't support ProPhoto RGB.
Can anyone recommend a book producer that supports ICC profiles that an amateur could use - I've seen some excellent companies who only seem to produce for the pro market?
