Review Klick XL Photobook

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Dylan
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I haven’t seen a review on these, so I thought I would at least do one.

For those of you who don’t know, a photo book is like an album but in my eyes looks a lot more professional. Klick like many other photo printing retailers offer a variety of sizes and styles for you to print out on. I wanted to print holiday photos, so I decided to go for the biggest one available. To create the photo book, you must download the Klick software, which means all the photos are stored locally on the hard disk and you can pick and choose.

The software itself is easy to use and strait forward to follow, however every time you start the software up, it asks if you would like to update. On the few times I have clicked update it has said no update available only a price update.... slightly worrying.

You can either choose the wizard to sort the photos. You can specify how many pages you want and how many photos per page and leave the wizard to do the rest. I did this first, but later choose to do it all manual as the wizard does do funny things with the photos, however some people may like what the wizard does.

A nice touch is to choose a background for the pages. I choose black because I thought it looked the nicest and having seen it printed, most of the photos go well!

In terms of print quality, it’s OK. Not really that good. All the photos were taken with the 400d and a 17-85 mm lens. From photos I have printed out in the house, they are very sharp and come out nice. Smaller photos in the book have come out nice, however bigger photos have come out slightly pixelated; maybe I’m being a bit funny about it.

The software does allow you to use a photo as your front cover, so I tried this. On the screen the photo looks good. It’s a dark photo which I decided to use, however when I received the photobook Klick have printed the photo very very dark, and lost quite a lot of the features.

The photo book cost around £55 for 58 pages, which is a bit expensive, there are cheaper around. Would I buy another one? Yes I think I would, however I think I will try another printers first. One thing that attracted me to Klick was the price and the software they use. I looked at Jessop’s Snap fish, but they insisted on first uploading every photo you wanted to use, likewise with photobook. This would not normally be a problem but as Jessop’s only offer you 700 mb of storage, when you have 1000mb of photos, this isn’t ideal.
As a side note, service was speedy and quick, I uploaded the photos on Monday bank holiday, got the confirmation about uploading on the Tuesday, and got the dispatch note on the Wednesday and Delivered on the Thursday. It does state that the process can take 10 days to complete.

All in all, I would recommend them, as long as you don’t expect glossy photos, or pin sharp results, then you will be ok. I really like my photobook and have gown to it, however I still don’t know if I should voice my concern over the Front page being a bit too dark.
If any of you want to see pictures, say here and ill upload them sometime tomorrow.
 
I would mention it they may offer a deal on another one
 
I know, but i am in love with this photobook now. Everyone who sees one wants it!
 
Dylan - some photos of the book would certainly help.

I've used blurb.com with good results. And photobox too. I've been happy with both, but they have their limits. It helps to get to know your printer - for example photobox can print a bit dark, but if you know that, then you can compensate before you upload. Similarly, I thought some of the pics from blurb looked a tad soft. Had I sharpened them before uploading, then I could have avoided that issue. Once you know the limitations of your chosen supplier then you can work around them.

Good review - thanks for posting.
 
I got a selection of my Africa shots in a Photobox one, and I was a little disappointed with the quality of the printing. It seemd to sufffer worst where there is a lot of sky or sea in the shot looking a little dotty for want of a better word. Also on one of the pages there was also a head alignment problem (thing it was the magenta head) so it looked a bit fuzzy (some of the giraffes neck pattern was fractionally out side the Giraffes neck line!!). However I phoned up Photobox and after a long wait on hold I spoke to a knowledgable member of staff (banks please pay attention!) who confirmed that the print quality is what it is! But also credited my account with the cost of the book.

So in short don't expect the world with print quality, but good customer service if your prepared to wait on hold for 20ish minutes.
 
hey sorry i havent posted pics here, been doing uni work and completley forgot about it!

Anyways, the photo in the link below shows what the photo should have been like. I will admit that it is a bit dark, but as you can see from the other photo, its very dark when printed.

This is how it should have been printed
Click me

This is what was printed like


Click me

Now remember, the scanned image does look a bit worse as obviously you have the ability of the scanner comming in to play here, so its a bit better than whats on, but the whole point is, its vairly dark.

When i did phone them up and complain about it, Klick washed their hands and said oh it wasnt us who printed it, we use someone else, take it up with them. I could bareley understand the woman on the other end of the phone, as it was very quiet, however i couldnt really be bothered with packing it up and sending it back... i like it too much
 
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