Choose photo book by price or quality?
For each long trip to another country, I make a photo book containing most of the photos I’ve taken. I’ve tried multiple services for this purpose. Some of them are better than the other. A while back ago I used Snapfish to process my photo books. They were the best alternative for me at that point. I was working on a stationary PC and Snapfish had special client for PC-users to take advantage of. Today, more and more services are available and with even more options to chose from (paper quality, number of pages, hard vs. soft cover etc.).
One downside of Snapfish at that moment, was that the client was quite buggy (at least on my computer). The quality of the prints in the book was also not that astonishing, as I would like them to be.
The day I bought my new Macbook, the possibility to use Snapfish ended. I never got the Mac-version of the software to work out. From what I’ve heard today, they are using an online service instead of a downloadable software client (as they did before).
Two of my books (A trip to India and Thailand) have been ordered from Blurb. Since I’m a regular Mac user now and I like the idea of having a client installed to make my books, they’ve been my No.1 choice. Good price, fast delivery and a very nice client to work with when editing the books. The quality of the prints could be better though. I think the color could be more vibrant than what they are (even on premium paper).
Anyway. It’s hard to compare the quality of the paper/prints if you’re not ordering an exact copy of the book from each provider.
I have recently tried a new online service called Photobox.com. Mainly because I wanted to update my portfolio coffee-table book that I bring to the clients I meet. I thought is was a great opportunity to try a new service.
I must say that the quality of this book is the best one of all the ones I’ve done so far!
The book that I made has 96 pages, a hard cover and premium paper (option). It took me around 1 hour to make the book even though I’ve never tried their service before. To round things up I would like to point out a few thing that came to my mind while I was working with the book.
Great stuff
- Web based (works on all platforms, PC or Mac etc.)
- Simple interface and usage
- Autofill (One click and your book is filled with the images you’ve chosen)
- Many different templates
- Premium book options (Select paper quality, cover etc)
- Payment choices (I like the possibility to use Paypal)
- Multilingual
Not so great
- No software client (Some of us would like to be able to work offline)
- Price indication (You don’t see the price of your book until you’re finished to order. I would like to see what the difference, adding a page or two, would make on the price while I’m working with the book.)
- The price (Although the quality was great I think that $130 is quite much for a 96 pages book. I paid $72 for 122 pages at Blurb with shipping included)
I recommend using Photobox if you’re looking for great quality and a simple interface to work with.
There are tons of online providers out “there”.
What is your choice of provider when it comes to photo books? Please leave a comment below.
Thanks!
And the winner is…
The contest is over for this time. The lucky winner of the book “The Accidental Millionaire” By Gary Fong, is Vince!
Vince is a web designer by day, amateur photographer everywhere in between. When he’s not busy being a husband or father, you can find him modding gadgets in his basement, playing in Photoshop and Lightroom or snooping around abandoned buildings. You can check out his photos on Flickr here.
Congratulations Vince! The book will be in your hand within a week or two.
I would like to give a big “THANK YOU” to BenBella Books who was kind and sponsored this contest!
Win the book – The Accidental Millionaire!
Now you can be one lucky winner of “The Accidental Millionaire” – A book by the unconventional entrepreneur and world-famous photographer Gary Fong. Together with BenBella Books I now give you the chance to win a copy of this fantastic book. The rules of this contest are simple. Just follow the instructions below and you might be the lucky winner in the end of February! Read more
Enter to win a camera shoulder harness
MyBinocularHarness.com is giving away a camera shoulder strap harnesses. It fits ANY size camera and prevents the camera from swinging out or slipping off one’s shoulder. Read more
Share your lighting diagrams with iPhone
Recently I discovered the Strobox app for Iphone. It’s a really cool app where you can start making your own lightings set-up diagrams. It’s easy to use and you have plenty of equipment objects to play around with when you start making your diagrams.
So if you are an owner of an iPhone I suggest you download this free app and give it a go:-) You find the app in iTunes and on this page: http://app.strobox.com/. Read more
Like facebook but just about photography!
Greetings all!
I’ve just made a special social network for all of you who are interested in photography, post-processing, sharing thoughts and everything related to it. Facebook is great but it’s about just everything. The Social Photo Network I’ve started are for those who like to share thoughts, photos, videos with others who have the same interest. You can even start your own blog! Live chat with others, invite your friends, create groups and events for others to join. Check out the screenshots below and when you’re ready to get started, Join the party HERE Read more
Export to FTP with Lightroom
When you’re making webgalleries in Lightroom you are able to upload your gallery directly to an FTP-server. But if you are a photographer who just wants to upload your files to an FTP-server, without the gallery files (html, flash etc.) you’re toast… until now. Read more
Lightroom 3 public beta is here!
Today you can download the latest release of Lightroom 3 beta. The Adobe team have really made some nice adjustments on this release compared to LR 2 with lots of new and improved functions.
What’s new in Lightroom 3?
There are so many new things so you should really download a copy of the beta release yourself, to try them out.
Scott Kelby from Photoshop Insider has written a great post about some of the new features. Check it out:
(1) Importing has been redesigned with a new import window that lets you easily see where your images are coming from and where they’re going, with lots of little improvements and enhancements to make the process easier and much more visual.
(2) Drag and Drop Publishing to the Web (and more). Now you can just drag and drop an image to have it automatically published directly from Lightroom right up to Flickr, or directly to an iPhone sync folder, etc..
(3) Pro-level Noise Reduction. This is an area that Lightroom always lagged behind on, but now they have real pro-level noise reduction which competes, or beats, about anything out there (especially because it can do its noise reduction at the Raw file level, rather than on a processed 8-bit file).
(4) Built-in Film Grain feature. There’s been a lot of buzz recently about bringing back that film-grain look, and now that’s built right in.
(5) Better vignetting by a long shot. They really enhanced the post crop vignetting, and now post crop gives you a much better looking, and more natural result (and you have two choices for the type of vignetting effect as well).
(6) You can finally (finally, finally!!!!!) export a slideshow with music embedded in the slideshow (at last), and you can have your slideshow automatically sync the length of the slideshow to the length of your song. Plus, they made it so, on a Mac, you don’t need to use iTunes to host your slideshow music.
(7) Real watermarking is here! Now you can create real watermarks, at different sizes and opacities, and put them where you want them, for both web and print.
(8) Create print layouts with photos wherever you want them. Now there’s a Custom Print Package feature that lets you put as many photos, in whatever shape and size, on the page wherever you want them (you’re no longer restricted to use a grid of uniform cells), so now you can really come up with some creative print layouts without having your hands tied.
(9) You can change the background color for prints. Now you can choose any color as your background for printed pages. I know it sounds like a little thing, but it’s big.
(10) The Collections panel is now in the Develop Module, too. This one addition will dramatically increase your efficiency because now you don’t have to constantly switch back and forth between the Library Module and Develop Module, because you can get to all your collections and images from right within the Develop Module itself.
Check out these three videos to see what’s new in Lightroom 3:
Part one:
- Library and develop modules
- New streamline import function
- Improved sharpening tool and color noise reduction
- More natural vignetting and… Add Grain!
- Faster!
Part two:
- New ways to share and publish images (Direct access to your Flickr account)
- Add sound to your slideshows
- Custom package in the Print mode for better layouts
- Edit watermarks (text or image)
Part three:
- 25+ new features
- New crop presets
- Sort images based on cropped size
- New option for overlay info in loupe view
- Turn autosync (new feature) on and off in the loupe view
- Create and import new folders and images easier
- “Show photos in subfolders” easier to set on/off
- New improved Collection functions
- Lock library filters
- Filter images on flash state
- Find missing files
- Back-up on exit
- Access to Collections in the Develop mode
For more details on the new functionality in the Lightroom 3 beta:
- Read the blog post from the Lightroom team to learn about the vision behind the features included in the beta.
- Find helpful resources on the new NAPP Lightroom 3 beta Resource Center.
- Read the release notes (PDF) for detailed information.
Lightroom 3 SDK for developers will be released when Lightroom 3 is out on the market (according to the Adobe forum)
PH in Japanese or Greek? No problem
I’m not sure if you have noticed it, but in the sidebar I added a translation tool a couple of weeks ago. Everyone knows these translation tools doesn’t match a human translation, but it’s good enough if you just want to get a summary of what the content is about. Try it out to see for yourself. Read more
New release: Adobe Lightroom 2.5 released for download.
A new version of Lightroom and version 5.4 of Camera Raw are available through adobe.com. This version includes some bug fixes and new support for several camera models. Read more
