Shutterfly and MyPublisher
Thanks for the tips for Shutterfly. I was thinking about trying them out since Shutterfly now also offers 12x12 books.
I've used MyPublisher several times now and have never had a problem. When you use the "2 page" view it shows you which page is on which side. I only use their full bleed layout because I create my pages/layouts in power point (you can also use another program like photoshop) and then save each slide as a .jpeg file which I then load up as a full bleed page.
I can't speak for Picaboo, etc.; however, I did do a ton of research so I could offer my wedding clients less expensive photo books.
I've been ordering from Shutterfly for ages and I love the leather/leatherish covers versus the cheap feeling canvas/cloth books I've seen from some of the other books. Shutterfly has full bleed pages and, if you click off "vivid" in the "effects" under each photo, you can ensure the photo prints EXACTLY as you want it to (if you calibrated your monitor to sRGB). Using their vivid photo (which is automatic, hence you have to turn it off) turns faces orange and will blow out your highlights in B&W (lesson learned from printing a book). These books are only $40 (for their best ones) and have impressed a lot of my friends and potential clients. I have a few who have ordered these books from me righ tnow.
I tried out MyPublisher and found their user interface and software next to impossible to follow. They gave me two different explanations in their help files about how to print a book (I wanted the left side to have words, the right side to have photos).... Instead, the book printed the opposite. Instructions are hard to follow. The print quality waas good but the cloth cover really looked cheap. I was able to print a really large book though 12x16, which was cool. However, I won't be using them for my business.
I am about to try SharedINk since they have a pro photographer package. You do have to pay $129 for the year (although they will give youa 45-day trial account) and their software seems okay to follow. You basically do the page in Photoshop according to their instructions. They have beautiful covers and will allow you to engrave writing on the front cover (perfect for weddings, or a gift to my mother). The 12x12 books are quite large and you can get ICC profiles, etc. You can also get a swatch book to share with clients showing paper, covers, etc. It all sounds great. I'll be building my first book shortly. The 12x12 books are around $80 or so (I think). Oh... and if you pay for a pro account your books DO NOT have SharedINk's logo at the back. In fact, you can put your own logo and website address instead. Has anyone had a book printed from them? I'd love to hear a review.
Looking forward to seeing this thread grow. I think it's hard to work your way thorugh all the options out there.
I've been playing with the Blurb layouts & have looked around for other sites who allow you to do your own. Well, they all seem to have a full-page-bleed page layout. Do your layout & save to full-page size, poof your own custom layout. Why didn't I think of that before? Thanks for helping me see the light.
I just ordered from picaboo this past thursday, its only pc software though so I had to go to my dads and use his PC (since I am a mac person). So i went to picaboo.com and downloaded their software, I love like the page layouts and the software alot. Also they have full page bleed, and along with my big photo ablum I also got a medium free. So I cant wait to see how it turned out. The pictures and album was from my first wedding I shot last week.
Well when I recieve I'll let you all know how the book/album turned out.
Ok, I just got my book order from picaboo... and I am very happy with it, I got the 11 x 8.5 inch sized book. Printing is great and quality of book is awesome the full page bleeds look great. The only problem I have and am not happy with is the very last picture of my book is a 2-page spread family photo and the person right in the middle...... half of his is face is not showing due to the binding and in the smaller free book that came with the large book the person in the middle is not showing at all, again due to the binding. And also on that same picture, the quality does not looks as good as the others, the edges of people are jagged.
I can deal with it just not happy about it.... other than that the quality is very good.
So now what I am going to do is also order a 12x12 book from shutterfly its a new size they have, they started it right after I ordered this one. Then I am going to compare the two
I ordered a book from blrub last week, it shipped today. of course, I'm about 500 miles away from home right now, so I won't get it until I bet back on Saturday, but I'll make sure to post about how it looks and the quality and all!!! also, I thought I'd share that a magazine I picked up barnes and noble had a whole article on Blurb.com and how the quality was great and how it was similiar to what you'd get with iLife if you ordered a photo book off of there. they also mentioned picaboo, but those were the only two- I'd go with one of them! the really amazing thing about blurb.com is that they're SO cheap!!!! you can get SO many pages for SO little!!!
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I tried Blurb a few days ago - spent a couple of hours setting up a hardcover book, then another couple of hours uploading the files (115MB! - lots of hi-qual images). The price looked really good - about US$40, but when I got to the final stage of purchase, I found the delivery cost to Australia for 1 book was US$55 - that's about $75 in real money just for postage!! I was very disappointed as the book looked like a real beauty. I emailed Blurb, and they apologised for the very high international postage, but at this stage they have to use UPS for tracking reasons.
So international (ie non Nth American) buyers beware - check out the postage before spending a lot of time on your project. It's a shame because I think my book would have been great.
Hi, I’m pretty new here and am still learning the guidelines and getting a feel for how the forum works. But after noticing this thread, I thought I’d jump in with some information. Just so you know, I come from the printing business, where I’ve been doing color correction for years at the big web printers who run catalogs, so what I will accept as good quality may differ from the average photo print buyer.
the facts:
First, the reproduction methods for all of these services like Shutterfly etc is very different from traditional printing. The component that makes the biggest difference, arguably, is the inks. Many of these services use HP Indigo digital presses. These presses print a dot just like a traditional press. However the inks are much flatter (less reflective) than traditional press inks. So you’ll notice, for instance, the blacks do not compare well versus traditional inks or even an inkjet print.
Second, since most of their customers are casual shooters, they have auto color routines that are applied to all the photos submitted to try and “correct” the color to middle grey, so that “most of their clients” will be happy. However, if you use photoshop for critical color moves, or even if you just want to submit a low key (dark) image or high key (light) image, their system will automatically correct those to middle grey, unless you turn OFF the auto correction in their software. Also, often you should tell their software if you’re submitting b&w or sepia, so that their auto correction will NOT apply algorythyms to “fix” them (which ruins them).
I recently received a free gift of a book from Shutterfly, so I thought I’d test their service. The binding was excellent, the paper was good, the delivery was super fast, and the quality was horrendous. The b&w’s and the sepia toned ones and the low key ones and the high key ones were all ruined. I called and eventually got to the head of their quality dept, who was extremely helpful and answered my questions openly and honestly. He also confirmed that their conversion process from Adobe RGB color space (which I had used) to the sRGB color space, necessary for them to print, was problematic. He suggested that in the future I should prepare the files in sRGB myself. I should also mention that he said they are outgrowing their Indigo presses and are now in the process of switching to a Xerox system that uses, he claims, more reflective inks. By the way, even though I ordered a white background, they printed highlight dots in cyan and magenta throughout every non image area of every page in the book.
Now for my opinions:
If we printed a photo book on “traditional” presses, the first book would cost thousands. But these services are amazingly affordable, well under $100 for one twenty page book. You know that saying, if something looks to good to be true, it probably is. Well, if Shutterfly gave away these books, I still wouldn’t want one because the basic print quality is so bad. The helpful guy at Shutterfly offered me a free book including shipping, because they messed up so badly. I thanked him, but won’t be ordering any more, until the basic print quality improves, a lot.
If you turn off their auto correction routines, prepare you files in sRGB, and don’t mind flat inks, then I think they’re fine. But I need all the help I can get with my photos, and am just not interested in dropping the print quality that far. Just thought this info might be helpful. Hope I haven’t turned anyone off to these books, as they do serve a purpose.
Respectfully,
Jim
I don't want the cheese, I just want to get out of the trap.
Hi, I’m pretty new here and am still learning the guidelines and getting a feel for how the forum works. But after noticing this thread, I thought I’d jump in with some information. Just so you know, I come from the printing business, where I’ve been doing color correction for years at the big web printers who run catalogs, so what I will accept as good quality may differ from the average photo print buyer.
Hi, I’m pretty new here and am still learning the guidelines and getting a feel for how the forum works.
Jim
G'day Jim...the forum only exists because of experienced people such as yourself passing on information as you have. That was a great read & i certainly hope you hang around.
well, I got my book from blurb.com and I'm really impressed! for such a cheap book, it looks GREAT! I can't wait to give it to the person I got it prited for, I know she'll LOVE it! I love the full bleed pages, I love the binding, the dust jacket, and it's just great. I'd really recommend this service!
and Jim,
when you're spending only $40 as I did for that book, you're not looking lithography here, just an easy system to get your book printed, and that's the service they provide and do well!!!! no, of course you could your book printed VERY preofessionally and spend upwards of a thousand or more dollars - sure I could afford it...but why when I can spend $40 and get my point across?
I understand your points too, and they were goot ones at that, but I'm thinking this service still stands at commendable and anyone looking for a book printing service - this is it.
My Equipment: Canon EOS 5D w/ battery grip Backup Canon EOS 30D | Canon 28 f/1.8 | Canon 24 f/1.4L Canon 50mm f/1.4 | Sigma 50mm f/2.8 EX DI Macro | Canon 70-200 F/2.8 L | Canon 580 EX II Flash and Canon 550 EX Flash Apple MacBook Pro with dual 24" monitors
Domke F-802 bag and a Shootsac by Jessica Claire
Infiniti QX4
Thanks for this list, it will definately help in my book making descision. One question though, why doesn't SmugMug offer this service? I can get t-shirts, mugs, keychains etc... It would be nice as all my pics I would want made into a book are already uploaded and ready to go. Andy are you watching?
I'm in the process of creating a photo book through apollo... after I get it done I'll tell my impressions. so far the only thing I have to say is that their customer service is impeccable. when I applied for an account, someone from there call me to check the details. I started asking the guy about color profiles, what printing process they use and etc., and for my surprise the guy was very knowledgeable.
it's a bit pricey compared to other popular sites, but they promisse higher quality. remains to be seen.
ughhhh
ouch for Picaboo. I ordered one of their wedding albums to look at the quality of their prints....I must say it was horrendous...the pics were grainy as hell. The binding was excellent but the faux leather cover looks cheap....I mean really cheap. Looks like plastic. Other than the binding, for porfolio purposes I would not go this route. If you want your portfolio to look presentable I think shelling out more $$$ now will help in the long run.
I'm going to try Asuka next and see what the print quality is like. (I'm going to try for test samples....)
I'm in the process of creating a photo book through apollo... after I get it done I'll tell my impressions. so far the only thing I have to say is that their customer service is impeccable. when I applied for an account, someone from there call me to check the details. I started asking the guy about color profiles, what printing process they use and etc., and for my surprise the guy was very knowledgeable.
it's a bit pricey compared to other popular sites, but they promisse higher quality. remains to be seen.
Need Really Good Advice Fast
Ok, so I've never posted on a forum before, but I could really use some good advice on photobooks and specifically wedding albums....my sister's wedding was like 4 moths ago, and I still havent got her album done yet, and if I don't get it done by Christmas, it would be pretty pathetic on my part. I started off wanting a professional wedding album that is pretty cheap, something like the Renassaince, Topflight, or Pioneer brands that start around $300 for matted albums....then I found nonbranded album with 40 mats for around $150 on ebay and I was going to put the main pics in that one, and do a secondary album that is "peel and stick" for the rest of the pics, and then I looked into photobooks as a faster and cheaper solution (Shutterfly or Picaboo so far)....what I could use your help on is:
1)where I could get professional wedding albums any cheaper
2)are peel and stick albums just as professional looking as the matted ones
3)are photobooks for wedding album purposes a good idea since the pages themselves will be either full bleed or have 4 pics per page and can get fingerprints and stuff, and are the pages usually pretty thick material
4)the photo on ebay for the self mount peel and stick album makes it look like I can just stick the 3 or 4 pics on each page as I want, but I came to find out that I need to get 10x10 or 11x14 prints, and that print itself can be a collage of the 4 pics, and for that I need to get a software that would make it easy to layout the pics in different templates and then I can just send that collaged .jpg file to be printed as one 10x10 or 11x14
5)So according to the most recent post, Picaboo would not be a good option, and I was really leaning on using them, so far Shutterfly would be a good choice for like a parent album of the wedding pics, any ideas on the best website for the photobooks quality wise since the pics are high quality
6)I'm gonna use mpix.com to print the pics, but I can't move forward with that because I have to decide if I can do the peel and stick album (for which I will have to print ie. 10x10 size consisting of pics within that print) versus the more expensive matted ablum (for which I can print the pics in different sizes without printing them within one ie. 10x10 print), so an easy software with various layout options that can save the resulting file with high quality as one .jpg file would be of great help, something that photographers use before sending their pictures to be printed.
1)where I could get professional wedding albums any cheaper
3)are photobooks for wedding album purposes a good idea since the pages themselves will be either full bleed or have 4 pics per page and can get fingerprints and stuff, and are the pages usually pretty thick material
5)So according to the most recent post, Picaboo would not be a good option, and I was really leaning on using them, so far Shutterfly would be a good choice for like a parent album of the wedding pics, any ideas on the best website for the photobooks quality wise since the pics are high quality
I'm way back on the start of this thread somewhere, but haven't had time to post my results. Short version, I've ordered several books from Blurb so far and they've all turned out great! Good printing & color quality (but I'm not a professional), nice heavy pages, dustjacket is totally cool - one very minor niggle is to make sure you leave a little space on the inside edge of any full bleed pages, since the binding cuts them off just a bit. Very quick and I've always gotten prompt responses from support when I had a question (they actually read their feedback!).
1) this was a quite a few years ago, but my sister made her own album by putting the proof shots together in an album by herself. she just went to a professional photog store and got the same supplies that the pros use
3) I love having the Blurb book as our album, but I actually ordered a "real" album too. In retrospect, I'm not sure it was worth ordering the "good" one given the huge price difference (something like $250 more for the enhanced package with the album. vs. $35 plus shipping for the Blurb book)
Re: quality: I think the page thickness is pretty good, ours got passed around 20+ visitors and still looked nice enough to leave with the in-laws, you can get up to 9 pix per page or even more if you photoshop the pages yourself. The pricing is MUCH better than the books on any of the other photo sites - they all price per page, Blurb prices in 40 page increments (anywhere between 20-40 pages is $30, 41-80 is $35 - you do the math if all the others are $30 to start and anywhere from $1-2 per every additional page).
We got a lot of comments from the friend & family we went to visit (in 3 different states) along the lines of "gee, I wish I had something like this for my album. Mine's huge/heavy so we never pull it out - it's packed away in a box somewhere". (Our "good" album has already gone up on the top shelf in the closet - the blurb one makes a fabulous addition to your regular coffeetable books)
5) we've also gotten great results using the blurb book for our in-laws and family. At $35 each, you can give to more people w/o breaking the bank. You could also do a completely different book for each one if you wanted to (or copy the main book over and then customize a bit for each one, which is what we did)
Also, just FYI - if you're looking to share the photos online with folks, smugmug is really great (and not just b/c it's affiliated with Digital Grin). I did a pretty extensive comparison of online albums and smugmug had the best features by far for a relatively low price. Flickr's great, but seems more suited to sharing with the public, I thought smugmug had much better privacy controls if you don't want your wedding pix floating around the internet. And a great value - once you've got a smugmug account, you can make a new gallery for every event - birthdays, holidays, etc - do a different design for each, different passwords for each, etc.
Just my .02 (okay, maybe .08). Hope it helps!
- Seattle_Li
I tried Blurb a few days ago - spent a couple of hours setting up a hardcover book, then another couple of hours uploading the files (115MB! - lots of hi-qual images). The price looked really good - about US$40, but when I got to the final stage of purchase, I found the delivery cost to Australia for 1 book was US$55 - that's about $75 in real money just for postage!! I was very disappointed as the book looked like a real beauty. I emailed Blurb, and they apologised for the very high international postage, but at this stage they have to use UPS for tracking reasons.
So international (ie non Nth American) buyers beware - check out the postage before spending a lot of time on your project. It's a shame because I think my book would have been great.
They actually ONLY ship to Australian addresses...
I just got a book I had made (I live in Canada, but a friends sister lives in Australia, and came back here for Xmas). LOVE the quality (A little pricey I thought) but a few issues I had that might have been more my fault: a few text boxes got shifted a little bit after uploading the book to them. I noticed one, didn't think anything of it but then after receiving the book I found a few other problems (a couple lines of text cut off for example).
... and yet, I'm still looking for a book printer who can do a full-color photo book in Q500 for a price more reasonable than the one-off POD printers.
Am I resigned to outsourcing to China?
Anyone?
Have you checked with any of the local print shops? In other words, brick and mortar places instead of online? One of my professors in college went that route for his print book, he did a run of a couple thousand iirc, at about maybe 120 pages... it sat well over an inch thick without the covers. His prints were almost all b/w, but he had two sections of color images that were 8 color process I think, or maybe 7.... certainly more than 4 color CMYK. I think the b/w images were done in the 150 to 160 lpi range, while the color plates were done lower. The results, while not as high quality as his darkroom prints, were certainly nothing to sneeze at. We actually joked with him that they were almost good enough to eat into his print sales... because you could take a page out of the book, put it in a store bought frame and have something 'good enough' at a couple feet away that very very few would even notice it wasn't a real print.
SmugMug Sorcerer - Engineering Team Champion for Commerce, Finance, Security, and Data Support http://wall-art.smugmug.com/
Have you checked with any of the local print shops?
Good point/idea. I never thought of that. I do live in a smallish city/town (7700 people) and I only really have one option if the place I'm thinking about even does this sort of thing...I'll have to look into that.
Good point/idea. I never thought of that. I do live in a smallish city/town (7700 people) and I only really have one option if the place I'm thinking about even does this sort of thing...I'll have to look into that.
Derek
Heh, that was actually aimed at Cambler... who being in the Seattle area should have LOTs and LOTs of choices.
SmugMug Sorcerer - Engineering Team Champion for Commerce, Finance, Security, and Data Support http://wall-art.smugmug.com/
Heh, that was actually aimed at Cambler... who being in the Seattle area should have LOTs and LOTs of choices.
Yeah, I figured that - but as luck would have it, I was just messing around with Blurb.com software. *IF* that one place in my town does this (and I kinda doubt it) - they will be expensive but you still had a great idea. Here I was looking all over the world, but forgot about my own backyard.
So, I know somone mentioned it, but I didn't see any answer...
Is there any way to order a photo book from SmugMug, or using the photos I have up here? Or do I need to reupload to some other company that offers photo books?
If we can't order them directly from here... could someone enter that as a serious feature request? I'd love to be able to order generally-inexpensive photo books for family gifts from photos I've put on SM.
So, I know somone mentioned it, but I didn't see any answer...
Is there any way to order a photo book from SmugMug, or using the photos I have up here? Or do I need to reupload to some other company that offers photo books?
If we can't order them directly from here... could someone enter that as a serious feature request? I'd love to be able to order generally-inexpensive photo books for family gifts from photos I've put on SM.
OK... I won't be compiling my book for another few months, but I'm trying to get the research done upfront. I'll need full-bleed pages, and I DON'T want any auto correction applied to my images. I want excellent quality color, sharpness, pages, images, and binding.
I've read through this thread, and it seems to me that the frontrunner is Picaboo. I'm willing to pay a few extra bucks if the quality and accuaracy are noticably better than Blurb. Am I right about Picaboo?
I'm reversing myself... Looks like Blurb might be the way to go. I'm going to end up making ~10 books with a fair bit of pages for gifts, and I think Picaboo would break my bank. I didn't fully appreciate the pricing difference. I also hadn't given Seattle_Li's posts a thorough enough read.
Anyway, I think the lesson is read more before posting next time. Sorry, folks.
I can't speak for Picaboo, etc.; however, I did do a ton of research so I could offer my wedding clients less expensive photo books.
I've been ordering from Shutterfly for ages and I love the leather/leatherish covers versus the cheap feeling canvas/cloth books I've seen from some of the other books. Shutterfly has full bleed pages and, if you click off "vivid" in the "effects" under each photo, you can ensure the photo prints EXACTLY as you want it to (if you calibrated your monitor to sRGB). Using their vivid photo (which is automatic, hence you have to turn it off) turns faces orange and will blow out your highlights in B&W (lesson learned from printing a book). These books are only $40 (for their best ones) and have impressed a lot of my friends and potential clients. I have a few who have ordered these books from me righ tnow.
I tried out MyPublisher and found their user interface and software next to impossible to follow. They gave me two different explanations in their help files about how to print a book (I wanted the left side to have words, the right side to have photos).... Instead, the book printed the opposite. Instructions are hard to follow. The print quality waas good but the cloth cover really looked cheap. I was able to print a really large book though 12x16, which was cool. However, I won't be using them for my business.
I am about to try SharedINk since they have a pro photographer package. You do have to pay $129 for the year (although they will give youa 45-day trial account) and their software seems okay to follow. You basically do the page in Photoshop according to their instructions. They have beautiful covers and will allow you to engrave writing on the front cover (perfect for weddings, or a gift to my mother). The 12x12 books are quite large and you can get ICC profiles, etc. You can also get a swatch book to share with clients showing paper, covers, etc. It all sounds great. I'll be building my first book shortly. The 12x12 books are around $80 or so (I think). Oh... and if you pay for a pro account your books DO NOT have SharedINk's logo at the back. In fact, you can put your own logo and website address instead. Has anyone had a book printed from them? I'd love to hear a review.
Looking forward to seeing this thread grow. I think it's hard to work your way thorugh all the options out there.
I'm reversing myself... Looks like Blurb might be the way to go. I'm going to end up making ~10 books with a fair bit of pages for gifts, and I think Picaboo would break my bank. I didn't fully appreciate the pricing difference. I also hadn't given Seattle_Li's posts a thorough enough read.
Anyway, I think the lesson is read more before posting next time. Sorry, folks.
I ordered a book from Blurb - 200 pages. $60.90 for the book and shipping. I haven't received it yet though so I can't comment on quality. You CAN do full bleed pages - I have a few in my own book. As far as I know - they don't do any corrections (colour or whatever).
Comments
Thanks for the tips for Shutterfly. I was thinking about trying them out since Shutterfly now also offers 12x12 books.
I've used MyPublisher several times now and have never had a problem. When you use the "2 page" view it shows you which page is on which side. I only use their full bleed layout because I create my pages/layouts in power point (you can also use another program like photoshop) and then save each slide as a .jpeg file which I then load up as a full bleed page.
They seem to offer volume pricing. I downloaded a copy of it and can email it to you if you PM me your email address.
Glass: >Sigma 17-35mm,f2.8-4 DG >Tamron 28-75mm,f2.8 >Canon 100mm 2.8 Macro >Canon 70-200mm,f2.8L IS >Canon 200mm,f2.8L
Flash: >550EX >Sigma EF-500 DG Super >studio strobes
Sites: Jim Mitte Photography - Livingston Sports Photos - Brighton Football Photos
I've been playing with the Blurb layouts & have looked around for other sites who allow you to do your own. Well, they all seem to have a full-page-bleed page layout. Do your layout & save to full-page size, poof your own custom layout. Why didn't I think of that before? Thanks for helping me see the light.
http://www.chrislaudermilkphoto.com/
Well when I recieve I'll let you all know how the book/album turned out.
Canon 60D
Canon Rebel XTi (400)
Canon 10-22mm, Canon 50mm f/1.8 II
MacBook, MacPro
My blurb book was borderline acceptable. The color images looked OK. The BW images had a wierd posterization effect. Looked horrible.
I will not be ordering from them again.
jbstrick
http://stricklandphoto.com
I can deal with it just not happy about it.... other than that the quality is very good.
So now what I am going to do is also order a 12x12 book from shutterfly its a new size they have, they started it right after I ordered this one. Then I am going to compare the two
Canon 60D
Canon Rebel XTi (400)
Canon 10-22mm, Canon 50mm f/1.8 II
MacBook, MacPro
- RE
www.rossfrazier.com/blog
My Equipment:
Canon EOS 5D w/ battery grip
Backup Canon EOS 30D | Canon 28 f/1.8 | Canon 24 f/1.4L Canon 50mm f/1.4 | Sigma 50mm f/2.8 EX DI Macro | Canon 70-200 F/2.8 L | Canon 580 EX II Flash and Canon 550 EX Flash
Apple MacBook Pro with dual 24" monitors
Domke F-802 bag and a Shootsac by Jessica Claire
Infiniti QX4
So international (ie non Nth American) buyers beware - check out the postage before spending a lot of time on your project. It's a shame because I think my book would have been great.
Frank
the facts:
First, the reproduction methods for all of these services like Shutterfly etc is very different from traditional printing. The component that makes the biggest difference, arguably, is the inks. Many of these services use HP Indigo digital presses. These presses print a dot just like a traditional press. However the inks are much flatter (less reflective) than traditional press inks. So you’ll notice, for instance, the blacks do not compare well versus traditional inks or even an inkjet print.
Second, since most of their customers are casual shooters, they have auto color routines that are applied to all the photos submitted to try and “correct” the color to middle grey, so that “most of their clients” will be happy. However, if you use photoshop for critical color moves, or even if you just want to submit a low key (dark) image or high key (light) image, their system will automatically correct those to middle grey, unless you turn OFF the auto correction in their software. Also, often you should tell their software if you’re submitting b&w or sepia, so that their auto correction will NOT apply algorythyms to “fix” them (which ruins them).
I recently received a free gift of a book from Shutterfly, so I thought I’d test their service. The binding was excellent, the paper was good, the delivery was super fast, and the quality was horrendous. The b&w’s and the sepia toned ones and the low key ones and the high key ones were all ruined. I called and eventually got to the head of their quality dept, who was extremely helpful and answered my questions openly and honestly. He also confirmed that their conversion process from Adobe RGB color space (which I had used) to the sRGB color space, necessary for them to print, was problematic. He suggested that in the future I should prepare the files in sRGB myself. I should also mention that he said they are outgrowing their Indigo presses and are now in the process of switching to a Xerox system that uses, he claims, more reflective inks. By the way, even though I ordered a white background, they printed highlight dots in cyan and magenta throughout every non image area of every page in the book.
Now for my opinions:
If we printed a photo book on “traditional” presses, the first book would cost thousands. But these services are amazingly affordable, well under $100 for one twenty page book. You know that saying, if something looks to good to be true, it probably is. Well, if Shutterfly gave away these books, I still wouldn’t want one because the basic print quality is so bad. The helpful guy at Shutterfly offered me a free book including shipping, because they messed up so badly. I thanked him, but won’t be ordering any more, until the basic print quality improves, a lot.
If you turn off their auto correction routines, prepare you files in sRGB, and don’t mind flat inks, then I think they’re fine. But I need all the help I can get with my photos, and am just not interested in dropping the print quality that far. Just thought this info might be helpful. Hope I haven’t turned anyone off to these books, as they do serve a purpose.
Respectfully,
Jim
I don't want the cheese, I just want to get out of the trap.
http://www.jimwhitakerphotography.com/
Frank
G'day Jim...the forum only exists because of experienced people such as yourself passing on information as you have. That was a great read & i certainly hope you hang around.
and Jim,
when you're spending only $40 as I did for that book, you're not looking lithography here, just an easy system to get your book printed, and that's the service they provide and do well!!!! no, of course you could your book printed VERY preofessionally and spend upwards of a thousand or more dollars - sure I could afford it...but why when I can spend $40 and get my point across?
I understand your points too, and they were goot ones at that, but I'm thinking this service still stands at commendable and anyone looking for a book printing service - this is it.
Thanks!
-RE
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it's a bit pricey compared to other popular sites, but they promisse higher quality. remains to be seen.
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ouch for Picaboo. I ordered one of their wedding albums to look at the quality of their prints....I must say it was horrendous...the pics were grainy as hell. The binding was excellent but the faux leather cover looks cheap....I mean really cheap. Looks like plastic. Other than the binding, for porfolio purposes I would not go this route. If you want your portfolio to look presentable I think shelling out more $$$ now will help in the long run.
I'm going to try Asuka next and see what the print quality is like. (I'm going to try for test samples....)
Ok, so I've never posted on a forum before, but I could really use some good advice on photobooks and specifically wedding albums....my sister's wedding was like 4 moths ago, and I still havent got her album done yet, and if I don't get it done by Christmas, it would be pretty pathetic on my part. I started off wanting a professional wedding album that is pretty cheap, something like the Renassaince, Topflight, or Pioneer brands that start around $300 for matted albums....then I found nonbranded album with 40 mats for around $150 on ebay and I was going to put the main pics in that one, and do a secondary album that is "peel and stick" for the rest of the pics, and then I looked into photobooks as a faster and cheaper solution (Shutterfly or Picaboo so far)....what I could use your help on is:
1)where I could get professional wedding albums any cheaper
2)are peel and stick albums just as professional looking as the matted ones
3)are photobooks for wedding album purposes a good idea since the pages themselves will be either full bleed or have 4 pics per page and can get fingerprints and stuff, and are the pages usually pretty thick material
4)the photo on ebay for the self mount peel and stick album makes it look like I can just stick the 3 or 4 pics on each page as I want, but I came to find out that I need to get 10x10 or 11x14 prints, and that print itself can be a collage of the 4 pics, and for that I need to get a software that would make it easy to layout the pics in different templates and then I can just send that collaged .jpg file to be printed as one 10x10 or 11x14
5)So according to the most recent post, Picaboo would not be a good option, and I was really leaning on using them, so far Shutterfly would be a good choice for like a parent album of the wedding pics, any ideas on the best website for the photobooks quality wise since the pics are high quality
6)I'm gonna use mpix.com to print the pics, but I can't move forward with that because I have to decide if I can do the peel and stick album (for which I will have to print ie. 10x10 size consisting of pics within that print) versus the more expensive matted ablum (for which I can print the pics in different sizes without printing them within one ie. 10x10 print), so an easy software with various layout options that can save the resulting file with high quality as one .jpg file would be of great help, something that photographers use before sending their pictures to be printed.
Thank you all so much, happy holidays!!!
I'm way back on the start of this thread somewhere, but haven't had time to post my results. Short version, I've ordered several books from Blurb so far and they've all turned out great! Good printing & color quality (but I'm not a professional), nice heavy pages, dustjacket is totally cool - one very minor niggle is to make sure you leave a little space on the inside edge of any full bleed pages, since the binding cuts them off just a bit. Very quick and I've always gotten prompt responses from support when I had a question (they actually read their feedback!).
1) this was a quite a few years ago, but my sister made her own album by putting the proof shots together in an album by herself. she just went to a professional photog store and got the same supplies that the pros use
3) I love having the Blurb book as our album, but I actually ordered a "real" album too. In retrospect, I'm not sure it was worth ordering the "good" one given the huge price difference (something like $250 more for the enhanced package with the album. vs. $35 plus shipping for the Blurb book)
Re: quality: I think the page thickness is pretty good, ours got passed around 20+ visitors and still looked nice enough to leave with the in-laws, you can get up to 9 pix per page or even more if you photoshop the pages yourself. The pricing is MUCH better than the books on any of the other photo sites - they all price per page, Blurb prices in 40 page increments (anywhere between 20-40 pages is $30, 41-80 is $35 - you do the math if all the others are $30 to start and anywhere from $1-2 per every additional page).
We got a lot of comments from the friend & family we went to visit (in 3 different states) along the lines of "gee, I wish I had something like this for my album. Mine's huge/heavy so we never pull it out - it's packed away in a box somewhere". (Our "good" album has already gone up on the top shelf in the closet - the blurb one makes a fabulous addition to your regular coffeetable books)
5) we've also gotten great results using the blurb book for our in-laws and family. At $35 each, you can give to more people w/o breaking the bank. You could also do a completely different book for each one if you wanted to (or copy the main book over and then customize a bit for each one, which is what we did)
Also, just FYI - if you're looking to share the photos online with folks, smugmug is really great (and not just b/c it's affiliated with Digital Grin). I did a pretty extensive comparison of online albums and smugmug had the best features by far for a relatively low price. Flickr's great, but seems more suited to sharing with the public, I thought smugmug had much better privacy controls if you don't want your wedding pix floating around the internet. And a great value - once you've got a smugmug account, you can make a new gallery for every event - birthdays, holidays, etc - do a different design for each, different passwords for each, etc.
Just my .02 (okay, maybe .08). Hope it helps!
- Seattle_Li
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Frank:
Have you checked out a company in Australia: http://www.momento.com.au/
They actually ONLY ship to Australian addresses...
I just got a book I had made (I live in Canada, but a friends sister lives in Australia, and came back here for Xmas). LOVE the quality (A little pricey I thought) but a few issues I had that might have been more my fault: a few text boxes got shifted a little bit after uploading the book to them. I noticed one, didn't think anything of it but then after receiving the book I found a few other problems (a couple lines of text cut off for example).
Derek
What did Cinderella say when she left the photo shop? "One day my prints will come."
Have you checked with any of the local print shops? In other words, brick and mortar places instead of online? One of my professors in college went that route for his print book, he did a run of a couple thousand iirc, at about maybe 120 pages... it sat well over an inch thick without the covers. His prints were almost all b/w, but he had two sections of color images that were 8 color process I think, or maybe 7.... certainly more than 4 color CMYK. I think the b/w images were done in the 150 to 160 lpi range, while the color plates were done lower. The results, while not as high quality as his darkroom prints, were certainly nothing to sneeze at. We actually joked with him that they were almost good enough to eat into his print sales... because you could take a page out of the book, put it in a store bought frame and have something 'good enough' at a couple feet away that very very few would even notice it wasn't a real print.
http://wall-art.smugmug.com/
Good point/idea. I never thought of that. I do live in a smallish city/town (7700 people) and I only really have one option if the place I'm thinking about even does this sort of thing...I'll have to look into that.
Derek
What did Cinderella say when she left the photo shop? "One day my prints will come."
Heh, that was actually aimed at Cambler... who being in the Seattle area should have LOTs and LOTs of choices.
http://wall-art.smugmug.com/
Yeah, I figured that - but as luck would have it, I was just messing around with Blurb.com software. *IF* that one place in my town does this (and I kinda doubt it) - they will be expensive but you still had a great idea. Here I was looking all over the world, but forgot about my own backyard.
What did Cinderella say when she left the photo shop? "One day my prints will come."
Is there any way to order a photo book from SmugMug, or using the photos I have up here? Or do I need to reupload to some other company that offers photo books?
If we can't order them directly from here... could someone enter that as a serious feature request? I'd love to be able to order generally-inexpensive photo books for family gifts from photos I've put on SM.
thanks,
jeff
I'm in the process of trying out www.blurb.com but I haven't actually ordered the book yet - gotta check my spelling..
Derek
What did Cinderella say when she left the photo shop? "One day my prints will come."
I've read through this thread, and it seems to me that the frontrunner is Picaboo. I'm willing to pay a few extra bucks if the quality and accuaracy are noticably better than Blurb. Am I right about Picaboo?
Thx...
Swim for Them | WellmanHouse.net | AlbumFetcher | SmugShowBuilder
Anyway, I think the lesson is read more before posting next time. Sorry, folks.
Swim for Them | WellmanHouse.net | AlbumFetcher | SmugShowBuilder
Do the books from shutterfly have their logo on them?
Thanks
Scott
I ordered a book from Blurb - 200 pages. $60.90 for the book and shipping. I haven't received it yet though so I can't comment on quality. You CAN do full bleed pages - I have a few in my own book. As far as I know - they don't do any corrections (colour or whatever).
What did Cinderella say when she left the photo shop? "One day my prints will come."