Having taken my first SLR to New York in March, I thought I'd treat myself to a nice big book with my favourite shots (for the coffee-table, you know...)
You can make the book in iPhoto, but Aperture allows a little more freedom to customise the layout. I had a great time filling in the pages, switching photos, adding pages and generally personalising it to my taste. I ended up using ~50 photos over 28 pages. (One nice touch was the option to put a single panorama across the front and back of the book).
Delivery was fairly quick (eleven days including two weekends). Of course, being from Apple, the packaging was almost as beautiful as the book itself.
My first impressions weren't great, I must say. The dust-jacket is made of a very flimsy paper and will undoubtedly tear unless treated with ridiculous care - it's very thin paper and has curled up and the top and bottom of the book.
Not only that, but the night-time New York skyline on the cover has lines across it (like you get on the draft-setting of a cheap inkjet printer).
This results in a not-very-professional-looking book.
On the inside, however, it's much better. The paper is of higher quality (slightly glossy, but not overly so). The printing lines are still visible on photos with plain skies for example, but nowhere near as bad as on the front cover.
It's a good-sized book (8.5x11 inches/ 21.5x28 cm) and a full-paged photo is quite striking. The black border that separates some of the images looks very smart.
There are options to place text alongside or on top of images, though I kept this to a minimum. Another nice touch is the option to place photos/text on the front and back flaps of the dust-jacket.
Pricing?
Around £32 delivered. This varies according to the number of pages but I feel if you're going to get a photo-book, you may as well put more than 10 pages of photos into it. (Max. is 100 pages, but then you're paying around £100!)
The bottom line
It's super easy to create your own book and the quality of print is passable. It's a cool way to share memories (and a great conversation piece), but at that price, I'd like to have something with a more professional look and feel.
You can make the book in iPhoto, but Aperture allows a little more freedom to customise the layout. I had a great time filling in the pages, switching photos, adding pages and generally personalising it to my taste. I ended up using ~50 photos over 28 pages. (One nice touch was the option to put a single panorama across the front and back of the book).
Delivery was fairly quick (eleven days including two weekends). Of course, being from Apple, the packaging was almost as beautiful as the book itself.
My first impressions weren't great, I must say. The dust-jacket is made of a very flimsy paper and will undoubtedly tear unless treated with ridiculous care - it's very thin paper and has curled up and the top and bottom of the book.
Not only that, but the night-time New York skyline on the cover has lines across it (like you get on the draft-setting of a cheap inkjet printer).
This results in a not-very-professional-looking book.
On the inside, however, it's much better. The paper is of higher quality (slightly glossy, but not overly so). The printing lines are still visible on photos with plain skies for example, but nowhere near as bad as on the front cover.
It's a good-sized book (8.5x11 inches/ 21.5x28 cm) and a full-paged photo is quite striking. The black border that separates some of the images looks very smart.
There are options to place text alongside or on top of images, though I kept this to a minimum. Another nice touch is the option to place photos/text on the front and back flaps of the dust-jacket.
Pricing?
Around £32 delivered. This varies according to the number of pages but I feel if you're going to get a photo-book, you may as well put more than 10 pages of photos into it. (Max. is 100 pages, but then you're paying around £100!)
The bottom line
It's super easy to create your own book and the quality of print is passable. It's a cool way to share memories (and a great conversation piece), but at that price, I'd like to have something with a more professional look and feel.
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