Photobooks

I made a photo book made from Photobox, and have to say it was pretty simple to use, and the result was good. It certainly is worth keeping an eye on the website for offers as they seem to have them regularly, and I believe my photo book was 60% less than regular price. Thing is, for the price I paid it was worth it and decent value, but I would have been dissapointed in it for full price.
 
I have used Photoworld (Crewe photo book) for my last 4 photo books and have been extremely pleased with all of them. Some have been given as presents to family members and be assured I have high standards. I doubt they are the cheapest and to the best of my knowledge they are all printed in Germany.
Standard photo paper is fine if you wish to keep the cost down but premium photo paper is worth the extra. Please remember the old adage 'garbage in - garbage out' so supply high quality photographs to give your chosen print company a great start.

Roy
 
Try DS colour labs. They have an offer on their new range at the moment and the books are nice :)
 
Nguss said:
Don't use Tesco! Mine were dreadful, both print quality and presentation / quality control.
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badlywornroy said:
I have used Photoworld (Crewe photo book) for my last 4 photo books and have been extremely pleased with all of them. Some have been given as presents to family members and be assured I have high standards. I doubt they are the cheapest and to the best of my knowledge they are all printed in Germany.
Standard photo paper is fine if you wish to keep the cost down but premium photo paper is worth the extra. Please remember the old adage 'garbage in - garbage out' so supply high quality photographs to give your chosen print company a great start.

Roy
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Project Valentine said:
Try DS colour labs. They have an offer on their new range at the moment and the books are nice :)
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Thanks All, I'll have a look at the ones suggested.
 
The Blurb photobook templates in Adobe Lightroom are really easy to use. Much easier than any of the web based ones I've tried in the past. You get a nice 25% discount off your first order when you make a Blurb book in LR as well.
 
Photobox did a good job for me.
I used LR for the layout then printed to jpg for the pages.
I have asked Photbox for a free add in which they are looking at
 
SixToes said:
The Blurb photobook templates in Adobe Lightroom are really easy to use. Much easier than any of the web based ones I've tried in the past. You get a nice 25% discount off your first order when you make a Blurb book in LR as well.
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Peter69 said:
Photobox did a good job for me.
I used LR for the layout then printed to jpg for the pages.
I have asked Photbox for a free add in which they are looking at
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Thanks for the replies. I now have a few options to look at when I get time. I will have a look at Lightroom.
 
i just got a book back from Blurb and I have to say that while it's OK, I wasn't overly impressed. I used their top line Pro-Line paper and it was no better than what they had a number of years ago. It's equivalent to a good quality magazine, but certainly no where near as good as what AdoramaPix produces, which is more like printing using a high quality commercial inkjet photo printer on proper photo paper or prints form a wet chem process.

It also looks like Blurb may be doing some auto-correcting or hand correcting (incorrectly) since at least one image is a bit too bright. It's not an editing issue since the cover image is too bright but the exact same image on a full bleed page inside the book is spot on. The other issue using Blurb through LR is that there is no way to soft-proof because they use CMYK. So ... I have to take each image from LR into Photoshop, soft proof, save the adjusted image as a TIF or PSD or whatever, then bring it back into LR to finish the book. Pretty awful workflow IMO.

Binding quality is much better than AdoramaPix though, so I'm a bit torn as to which of the two I'd use again .... Better image quality or better book quality?
 
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I've just tried ordering a book from blurb via Lightroom.
I gave up trying to register an account. Every username I chose was rejected as already in use.

I can understand a comp,ex password, but as they already use your email address, why the need for a unique username?

I'll use DSCL instead.
 
Bob_a said:
i just got a book back from Blurb and I have to say that while it's OK, I wasn't overly impressed. I used their top line Pro-Line paper and it was no better than what they had a number of years ago. It's equivalent to a good quality magazine, but certainly no where near as good as what AdoramaPix produces, which is more like printing using a high quality commercial inkjet photo printer on proper photo paper or prints form a wet chem process.

It also looks like Blurb may be doing some auto-correcting or hand correcting (incorrectly) since at least one image is a bit too bright. It's not an editing issue since the cover image is too bright but the exact same image on a full bleed page inside the book is spot on. The other issue using Blurb through LR is that there is no way to soft-proof because they use CMYK. So ... I have to take each image from LR into Photoshop, soft proof, save the adjusted image as a TIF or PSD or whatever, then bring it back into LR to finish the book. Pretty awful workflow IMO.

Binding quality is much better than AdoramaPix though, so I'm a bit torn as to which of the two I'd use again .... Better image quality or better book quality?
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Thanks for the heads-up, Bob. I think ,when I'm ready, I will stay away from this method.
 
Masked Bandit said:
Thanks for the heads-up, Bob. I think ,when I'm ready, I will stay away from this method.
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I been doing a bit of research today and to be fair to Blurb, so far it seems like all of the photo book companies that I have access to in North America other than AdoramaPix are CMYK. The AdoramaPix pages are essentially two photographic prints glued back to back (making the pages pretty thick) then assembled in a lay flat book.
 
ecoleman said:
I'll use DSCL instead.
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Is their software any good? They have some good offers on 8x8 and 12x8 books at the moment, I'm tempted.

Really I just want to spit out a PDF from Lightroom and send it to the printer, is that possible with any of these companies?

Thanks! :)
 
I personally use artisan state exclusively now and for the money just can't be beaten, really nice quality and thick card prints not thin paper depends what your after but highly recommend them :) (also you pay in $ worth remembering)
 
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