Good Photo Book Software ?

[intex]

Advertisement (gone after registration)

Is anyone aware of a good Photo Book Software? One that you can use to produce your own Photobooks , on double-sided paper, and then bind it, or is it best to use a company such as kodak to handle this?

 

The problem with Kodak, is that their pictures are not high resolution, the paper is not the best, and they are severly limited by the size of the book, and the pages.

 

Any other suggestions welcomed.

[TEBnewyork]

I'm in the process of putting one together using Blurb. I heard good things and they seem to have excellent page layouts that can be customized.

 

blurb.com

[simon_hughes]

This is a really timely post! I'm looking at doing the same thing. I've been looking at doing it through iPhoto/Apple and I'd love to hear some feedback on the quality etc, that this route yields. Robert, is this what you mean about your Kodak comment... they do the printing for Apple don't they?

[wparsonsgisnet]

There were a couple of recent threads on this:

 

http://www.l-camera-forum.com/leica-forum/leica-m8-forum/35756-anyone-used-blurb-competitor.html

 

http://www.l-camera-forum.com/leica-forum/digital-forum/36941-photo-books.html

 

Suggest you wander thru them.

[etrigan63]

I too am trying out Blurb. From what I see you can use it with iPhoto as well.

[intex]

Thank you for the suggestions. I will try a Hard Cover 11x13 Photo Book by BLURB, and see how it works out. It seems to be a better alternative from what I had been using, hopefully this will be the case.

I will report back.

[Jay101]

Advertisement (gone after registration)

The page layout tools in Apple Aperture make for a very stylish book

 

Apple - Aperture - Versatile Printing and Publishing

[johnbuckley]

I can help.

 

Apple's large photobooks are very good. The smaller photobooks are printed at lower resolution and crappier paper.

 

Shutterfly's photobooks -- and the quality of the images -- are excellent. Really quite satisfying. The problem is the templates tend to be annoying, e.g. you want a page to showcase three photos with no text, and you can only find pages that show three photos with text. Still, if you try hard you get what you want.

 

I don't like the Kodak photobooks, because of the paper used.

 

I have tried to use Mpix, because their prints are the best of the online services, but could never get the book tool to work with my Mac.

 

For my money, Shutterfly has the best overall approach. One final thing: unless you pay through the nose for the overnight or fast shipping, they put it on a trawler that goes from San Francisco to Siberia before heading around the Horn and delivering it.

[c6gowin]

mypublisher.com is another source for photo books. Their large books are better than the small books becuase the paper quality is better. They often run specials and their layout software is adequate. They turn around the books very quickly - usually delivered to your door in less than a week from submittal.

[hdrmd]

I have had many ( more than a hundred) books printed by Apple/Aperture, and have had no problems. They also ship them to wherever the client is located. Very good reproduction quality and they can process relatively large tiff files. The only drawback I can find is the 100 page limit. DR

[photolandscape]

I have had pretty good luck with blurb.com on the two different books they've printed for me. I should add here that I have been in offset lithography for 22 years, and I am very demanding when it comes to ink on paper.

 

A few words of experience and caution re: blurb.com:

 

--while the software is more advanced aesthetically and somewhat flexible in terms of type faces, design templates, etc., it can be rather spastic. I've changed type faces, colors of head line type, and done other alterations only to have the change revert to the previous version without warning. So, check, check, and re-check and absolutely run spell-check, and then print out each page and review it one more time carefully. It's the only way to catch design and typeface inconsistencies, sizing errors, etc.

 

--I wouldn't bother doing a softbound book. The binding is very primitive. The hardbound version, with dustjacket, is much better. Not as good as a smythe-sewn hardbound high-end art of photography book, but decent. There have been reports on blogs about pages falling out on books with well over 100 pages, so I would beware of that.

 

--Color reproduction quality--all things considered, it's pretty good. Blurb contracts with on-demand/digital printing companies around the country, and seems to do a decent job of quality control, calibration, etc. So what you saw on your screen should be pretty close to the final product. All three books I've done came from the same partner printer, a place in Seattle. All are slightly, but consistently, over-saturated in terms of color. Not objectionable by any means, but the next time I upload a book, I will definitely run the images through CS2 and brighten all of them 4-5 points or so.

 

--as good as the design templates are, they are somewhat constricting. Sometimes it would be nice to able to take the blurb templates, and revise them slightly. There is probably some way to do it, but I haven't gotten that far into it.

 

Bottom line: three years ago I seriously considered self-publishing a book on India. On offset presses in the U.S., 1M copies (basically the minimum feasible order) would have been about $25,000. I could get 1M copies, printed offset in China, for about $10,000 delivered to the U.S. But I really only needed 50. I can do 50 on Blurb for $55 each (11x13 with dustjacket), and get a 10% or better discount, for a total of $50 each. And it would take about a week. With a few extra days, you can upload a book, get a single copy printed out, treat it first like a bound press proof, make corrections, then order final copies in whatever quantity you want.

 

While it is far from perfect, blurb.com is pretty amazing. By the way, the first two books took about 10-12 days. The second book I did, arrived at my house 4 days after I uploaded it.