Photobooks

Interesting.
Ive only ever used the bog standard photobox ones (not the deuxe version).
They often have 2 for £20 deals and for xmas gifts for family are ideal, but I will certainly check out some of these others for my own purposes. I've found they are normally pretty good at customer service if there are any defects or delivery problems.
 
I've just had a book done with Apple, simple to use interface within Aperture and very easy to order. Took 5 working days from submission to delivery. Very impressed with the quality.
 
The blurb logo was a small one on the back page,but if I remember correctly you can pay a little bit extra and have a custom logo put on instead.It was really small so didn't think it was a problem.
May give the Apple books a go next time as there have been some encouraging replies,not that i'm unhappy with blurb,but making a book with iphoto looks the easiest thing ever:D
Downside with Apple books I guess is they aren't as large as the blurb ones and as per usual being Apple they are more expensive!!
 
i have used blurb in the past, i noticed a new marks on the book, so i emailed them about it and they sent me a new book free of charge adn it came really quickly.
surprisingly the marks disapeared after a few days in the first book.
i had planned to raise funds for charity and auction it off :)

i am doing 2 photobooks at the moment.
one for my mums xmas with all of the pics i toook at her wedding in it and the other is for my bf and the images featured with be of our adventures on holiday, paintballing etc...

i'll have to send them away soon.
 
I'm going to be doing a photobook for christmas, so narrowing down some candidates.

  • Blurb - They seem highly rated here, and their software looks very flexible for designing the photobook... right up until I tried clicking on "Get Photos" > "My Computer...". This fundamental operation completely froze the program, and happens constantly. So I may not be using them if the issue persists. Also I emailed them a question regarding a book 2 days ago and still haven't received a reply, for their only means of contact that is pretty poor.
  • PhotoBox - Seen an example book from a friend, looks decent I have to say. However, they have the worst layouts I have seen. Plus they have new designs for the A4 sized books, but the larger ones still have the very basic options.
  • Cewe - These guys have won an award, but what is worrying me is there isn't much talk in here about them (I did read a thread about some guy (D5 I think) getting a shockingly bad book). The software looks decent for customising too.
  • Loxley/One Vision - Told their products were top notch, but very expensive, plus they only do 40 pages maximum. Not good.

Has anyone preferences or any horror stories they'd like to share from those listed (or others)? Reliability is also important since Christmas is approaching fast.
 
Welcome to the forum Neil!

You can use any editor to make Blurb books so long as it can export to PDF. You'd need to have a basic understanding of the process but they have guidelines to read through :)

Click me

They've also got a 20% discount offer on at the moment and free shipping :)
 
purpleclouds said:
Welcome to the forum Neil!

You can use any editor to make Blurb books so long as it can export to PDF. You'd need to have a basic understanding of the process but they have guidelines to read through :)

Click me

They've also got a 20% discount offer on at the moment and free shipping :)
Click to expand...

Thank you for the welcome and quick reply.

I like the idea of editing the book ourselves, without the restriction where I can place photos, and in what shape or size. Unfortunately I see they only provide templates for InDesign... would have been great to see templates for Photoshop (I have the older CS2 version) - I just couldn't trust myself to get the trim lines and safe boundaries exactly right :LOL:
 
foxymoose said:
I have used fotobook - www.fotobook.co.uk for the past 5 years and can't fault their service, usually send a book in 5 -7 days, they are based in Edinburgh.
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Their software is impressive, alot of options available to the user. What is the end product like though? Are the pages like tracing paper? Is the hardback book with a dust jacket? don't like the jackets, would like the image printed on the hard cover itself.

Just noticed it is only 27 leafs (54 pages) max... there's always a flaw somewhere :-/
 
The pages are really thick and good quality, the books I have purchased have been leather or the padded satin ones for my wedding clients. They don't offer a dust cover, I believe the image is printed direct to the book frount, but I have not purchased the photo cover option book yet they have only recently offered this option.
 
foxymoose said:
The pages are really thick and good quality, the books I have purchased have been leather or the padded satin ones for my wedding clients. They don't offer a dust cover, I believe the image is printed direct to the book frount, but I have not purchased the photo cover option book yet they have only recently offered this option.
Click to expand...

It's only 27 leafs maximum or I'd be jumping right on that - so far the lowest maximum I have came across, other low maximums are loxley and one vision holding 40 leafs. However 27 is extremely low, ideally I'd like about 40 - 70 as a guesstimate and for reassurance I don't finish before I start.

:muted:
 
neilem said:
I'm going to be doing a photobook for christmas, so narrowing down some candidates.

  • Blurb - They seem highly rated here, and their software looks very flexible for designing the photobook... right up until I tried clicking on "Get Photos" > "My Computer...". This fundamental operation completely froze the program, and happens constantly. So I may not be using them if the issue persists. Also I emailed them a question regarding a book 2 days ago and still haven't received a reply, for their only means of contact that is pretty poor.
  • PhotoBox - Seen an example book from a friend, looks decent I have to say. However, they have the worst layouts I have seen. Plus they have new designs for the A4 sized books, but the larger ones still have the very basic options.
  • Cewe - These guys have won an award, but what is worrying me is there isn't much talk in here about them (I did read a thread about some guy (D5 I think) getting a shockingly bad book). The software looks decent for customising too.
  • Loxley/One Vision - Told their products were top notch, but very expensive, plus they only do 40 pages maximum. Not good.

Has anyone preferences or any horror stories they'd like to share from those listed (or others)? Reliability is also important since Christmas is approaching fast.
Click to expand...

I found the easiest thing was to drag and drop the photos into booksmart from my photo viewing/editing software.
I found viewing the photos through booksmart cumbersome and a pain to use,but I discovered I could browse my pictures in iphoto and then drag and drop straight into booksmart.
 
Anybody know if there is a difference in quality or appearance of photobooks between iphoto or aperture?
Found a few comments while searching google admittedly dating back a few years but saying books done through iphoto were only printed at 150 dpi as opposed to 300 dpi when using aperture, Just wondered if there is still a difference between the 2?
 
RBHD1 said:
I found the easiest thing was to drag and drop the photos into booksmart from my photo viewing/editing software.
Click to expand...
Nice, that worked a charm. Might pursue the project with Blurb then... unless anyone has had any major problems with them.
 
I received my photobook from Blurb yesterday and I'm a bit so so about it. :shrug:

After the initial excitement, looking at it critically, the images seen a little dark, (which could be my fault) but after spending ages trying to line the pages up to fill the printed page, as mentioned in my earlier post, some have a very noticeable gap.

The Blurb interface needs to be improved when it comes to filling a page.

The book was thinner than I expected, when I opened the box, I thought they had only sent me one book rather than two. :eek: And that was with 40 pages. I went for the 10x8 soft cover btw.

I'll have to try and see if my screen is showing me things correctly, if it is, then I'll have to think about whether to use Blurb again. :shrug:
 
redhed17 said:
I received my photobook from Blurb yesterday and I'm a bit so so about it. :shrug:

After the initial excitement, looking at it critically, the images seen a little dark, (which could be my fault) but after spending ages trying to line the pages up to fill the printed page, as mentioned in my earlier post, some have a very noticeable gap.

The Blurb interface needs to be improved when it comes to filling a page.

The book was thinner than I expected, when I opened the box, I thought they had only sent me one book rather than two. :eek: And that was with 40 pages. I went for the 10x8 soft cover btw.

I'll have to try and see if my screen is showing me things correctly, if it is, then I'll have to think about whether to use Blurb again. :shrug:
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Don't say that haha, finally found a way to get Blurb software working and I hear this :puke:

In seriousness, I do like to hear honest opinions, gives me a chance to be realistic and that they aren't as perfect as made out.

What book type did you go for? I'm assuming soft back from reading your post and did you use premium page quality?

Lev67 said:
Just received mine from Blurb today.. Hard back with dust cover..

http://www.blurb.com/books/980601

Good quality ( I upgraded the paper quality), photos exactly as I uploaded them, no issues there..
Fairly easy software to follow, plus you can alter if you dont like their lay outs..
Supeb delivery times 10 days and arrived from Switzerland
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Were your images dark in the book? The guy posting above yours had issues with that.
 
The Blurb photobook I got was the Standard Landscape 10x8 on Premium paper.

I've just made the book public so if people would be kind enough to go and have a look and tell me if my name is easily legible on the front page it would be appreciated. I tried looking at it on a friends monitor earlier and it looked the same brightness as my monitor. I was going for subtle, but my name is hard to read on the actual book. :LOL:

My Blurb Photobook
 
redhed17 said:
The Blurb photobook I got was the Standard Landscape 10x8 on Premium paper.

I've just made the book public so if people would be kind enough to go and have a look and tell me if my name is easily legible on the front page it would be appreciated. I tried looking at it on a friends monitor earlier and it looked the same brightness as my monitor. I was going for subtle, but my name is hard to read on the actual book. :LOL:

My Blurb Photobook
Click to expand...

I have made quite a lot of holiday type photobooks and have found that the story can be told to some extent through pictures but if you can manage it, words threaded thoughout help loads. I also tend to take pictures of [some] tickets.

Venice is expensive isn't it? Good photo ops though.

Chris
 
redhed17 said:
The Blurb photobook I got was the Standard Landscape 10x8 on Premium paper.

I've just made the book public so if people would be kind enough to go and have a look and tell me if my name is easily legible on the front page it would be appreciated. I tried looking at it on a friends monitor earlier and it looked the same brightness as my monitor. I was going for subtle, but my name is hard to read on the actual book. :LOL:

My Blurb Photobook
Click to expand...

I seen the title Venice without a problem, but had to look around for your name, it didn't stand out to me at first. The dark rippling affect from the water sort of camouflages it. Very nice photos though!
 
Thanks for looking neilem. I think I'll have to get my monitor calibrated, I asked a few people to have a look on another site and the said they could see my name OK. I'm obviously not too worried about my name standing out, but if that is showing as quite dark on other monitors, then that is something wrong with the brightness of my monitor as it means a lot of the other pictures will be too dark, which they were. :(

I must say I was very happy with the colours in the Photobook. :) At least the colours don't seem to be off. :LOL:

Venice is a very expensive place Chris, but in some ways it is worth it. It is like no other place I've been to. Not that I've been to that many. ;)

I thought I was done with the place photographically, but have seen a few things that I missed since I come back, so I'm considering another trip. :thinking: :LOL:
 
It's around £30 for a blurb photobook with around 100 pages, why is it so cheap? Does it look cheap as an end product compared to the likes of photobox, or other competitors? This is for a christmas present, so is pretty important is doesn't look like a shopping catalogue.
 
Hi, saw on this thread someone said Loxley only offer 40 pages, they now offer in multiples of 10 from 10 to 80 pages, leaving 160 sides maximum
 
coldpenguin said:
Hi, saw on this thread someone said Loxley only offer 40 pages, they now offer in multiples of 10 from 10 to 80 pages, leaving 160 sides maximum
Click to expand...

That was probably me. It depends on the book, for the coffee table book they do indeed offer up to 80 pages, however their other books are much less i.e. Infinity 30 pages max, Bellissimo 40 pages max. That's what it says on their website anyway.
 
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