Anyone created a book? Happy ?

[proenca]

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Hi want to create a photo book of my trips with someone special, that I offered so many gifts that I'm completly out of ideas : shoes, jewlery of all sort, this and that, all checked and offered in the past.

 

So I came up with the idea of putting together a nice book of all our trips together ( the initial plan was a few volumes on each one would be one trip but I might forget something so I prefer to do one big one ).

 

Anyone did that already ? I've seen a few sites :

 

Blurb

Lulu

Sharedink

Mypublisher

 

But I'm not sure about the quality, I want the best possible and flexibility on the layout design as well.

 

Ideas ? Please post your impressions on your own experience ! thank you !

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[hdrmd]

I have successfully used Aperture for Book production . In the last two years I have produced more than fifty different books using Aperture and I have never had a problem. Their turn around time is less than a week and their quality is excellent. I transmit photos at 300dpi at about 9 x6 inches. The only problem I can see is that their is not much flexibility in size. Their largest size is a fixed 8.5 x 11, and the page limit is 100 pages.. They offer hardback and paperback versions. It's worth a look. DR

[bill]

I used Photobox

 

PhotoBox - Digital photo prints and gifts, free online photo albums & digital photo sharing

 

£19.99 for a 26 page hardback book.

 

I only wanted one copy. Delivered within 3 days. 3 copies, all wrong. The problem was the text. I wanted times new roman - that's what it showed on the screen. Everything came through as aerial bold italic. Worse, some words were concatenated together on the page, but not on screen.

 

To cut a very long story short, it took them a month, seven attempts and a refund to get it right. They were hard to get hold of, their internal processes were poor, and they even managed to change my name and delivery address on their system. This resulted two (incorrect) copies going missing in the post for days on end.

 

Ease of use - 6/10

WYSIWYG - 2/10

Quality of finished product - 9/10

Packaging - 9/10

Customer service - 4/10

 

Not desperately impressed.

 

Regards,

 

Bill

[Riccis]

Since I am a wedding photographer, I have my personal books made by (IMHO) the best bookbinders out there (Queensberry - Home)... If you have any friends of yours that are professional photographers, you may want to talk to them about buying the better books not available to the general public through them.

 

Otherwise the Apple books (made through iPhoto) are pretty nice, I just don't know how long they will hold up since they seem very fragile to me.

 

Hope this helps,

 

Riccis

[cam2000]

Apple just printed a hardcover book of 56 pages from my latest Caribbean trip....... The quality is excellent and quick turnaround...... one week and I live in Canada...... they ship Fedex (regular service) I may add that if you do not have Aperture software you can use Apple's IPhoto program.

[stunsworth]

The LUG produced a book using Blurb last year - Self publish with free BookSmart software for Windows or Mac | Blurb - and will be producing another this year. Quality is fine, but not up to high quality photobook standard. The process is template driven and very straigtforward using the free sortware provided.

[benkelley]

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I've used lulu for non-photographic books, and they've all been excellent. I just create everything EXACTLY as I want it and save it as a pdf. I always design my own cover, of course, and upload that as well; they have a little utility for figuring out the width of the binding from the number of pages, and you just create a one piece pdf. The only trick I learned the hard way is that you have to have a decent margin on the inside of each page, next to the seam–usually a bit bigger than the one on the outside. The books are very easy to create in InDesign.

 

I can't speak to their color pages, but the color printing on the covers has been good. I also can't speak to their templates, as I like to control the whole process and send a completed pdf. If that's what you want, lulu is very good, and printing is very quick.

 

Ben

[morffin]

I've used Shutterfly and I Photo books in the past.

 

Shutterfly was very easy to use and the quality was surprisingly good.

[kidigital]

I created a book using Blurb several weeks ago and was very satisfied with the results. I chose Blurb because I wanted to go to their 11" x 13" size and utilize more than a hundred pages. Very nice quality for the price.

 

Kurt

[JimP]

One link:

Pikto Books

[stevme]

I've used blurb (blurb.com) to create 2 books, one hard cover. I am satisfied with both results. The software is pretty easy to use. However, you should softproof (as you should all prints). The profile blurb uses for its printer is available on the web (don't have it handy, sorry). Turn around time is about a week.

 

As for quality, I would say it is equivalent to color reproduction in good magazines. It's not the highest quality, but in general the product looks professional. The hard cover version came shrink wrapped in plastic, and really looked nice.

 

I suggest making a trial version of your book before committing to several copies. Effects that may look good on screen may not be up to your standards when you see it printed out.

 

Steve

[allan dew]

I have created all my personal books ( 8 ) using moab and epson papers on my

3800 printer. The books are all perfect bound by hand (by me ). I enjoy shooting the photos, printing the images and ultimatly creating the books. What you end up with is a "one of a kind" piece of photo art -- not a digitally-printed book with which you have minimal input.I choose the size of the book and the papers used based on the subject matter. It is time consuming and at times frustrating but in the end very rewarding. I generally don't put a book together till months after photos have been taken, so it's also a nice way to revisit your work. So if you have a little time and a little patience give it a try.

 

allan

[markjames]

I see that no one has mentioned using Asuka Book's service. I've tried all of the others and was disappointed with the quality (although for quick gifts, Apple - through iPhoto - isn't bad. Asuka has a longer wait time to complete the order but you can create your own page design in soft or hard cover. I just sent a first book order out and should be seeing something in early January. I read somewhere that the quality is better than others so I'll see and report back. You need to be verified by them (as a photography or design related business) before you can send orders, as they cater to professionals only. The software is very simple - you layout your work in predefined Pshop files and then the software assembles a final PDF for uploading. No typeface conflicts because it embeds the type you choose in PShop. Works great.

 

Mark

[POKO]

Hi,

 

I have started using the iPhoto books as my portfolios. Having used 11X14 leather bound albums for years, I thought it was time for a change.

 

I have four different books that make up my portfolio. There are five sets of these books. That make 20 leather bound albums. There are approx. 30 images in each. 600 images to produce the entire set. 10 Min. per page means 6000 minutes of printing time. Forget about trimming and assembly!

 

Switched to the iPhoto books recently. They are MUCH faster to produce. Look great. The printing quality is very consistent. They are delivered in four to five days and are cheap to have done.

 

If you are working on a calibrated monitor, what you see in iPhoto is what you get.

 

You should maybe look into which services provide which design options as they are preset and not very adjustable.

 

For the $ 30.00/book that it costs me to produce these, they are a really cost effective way to deal with sending out my books. Plus, the client gets to keep them and hopefully they keep circulating for a while.

 

Per

[hawkblaster]

I've tried a few and find the US version of MyPublisher to be the best. They're one of the few that let print your shots uncropped. The quality is high and (for me in London) the prices are good because of the exchange rate. They're also very fast - I uploaded one on Sunday and it arrived today (3 days to make and ship from the US to the UK).

 

Hope this helps.

 

PS This ends six months of lurking

[MJLogan]

I've done several books of travel photos, as client holiday gifts for my graphic design business. I've printed the insides of the books myself, on my inkjet printers, and sent the pages to a local bookbinder to be Smythe-sewn into embossed hard covers.

 

I've not yet tried the online book creation sites. I'm sure they'd be much less work!

[telyt]

I've used blurb.com and I'm very satisfied with the result. As other have mentioned, the printing quality is equivalent to a good magazine and those who've seen/bought it are happy with it too. My book is here: wild light 1971 to 2007 | By Douglas Herr | Blurb

[spylaw4]

Just had the first hardcover book back from iPhoto and was favourably impressed with the quality of printing and binding. Colour reproduction good and on nice quality paper.

 

A number of templates available and a fair degree of flexibility but mostly when putting more than one shot on a page they are crammed up together with no space adjustment possible between them. I can live with that for some purposes (gift books) but not for others.

 

Good service - quick despatch (from Germany?) - then one is in the hands of the snail mail service!

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[cam2000]

Just had the first hardcover book back from iPhoto and was favourably impressed with the quality of printing and binding. Colour reproduction good and on nice quality paper.

 

A number of templates available and a fair degree of flexibility but mostly when putting more than one shot on a page they are crammed up together with no space adjustment possible between them. I can live with that for some purposes (gift books) but not for others.

 

Good service - quick despatch (from Germany?) - then one is in the hands of the snail mail service!

 

In Aperture there are different templates (more professional presentations)

[ckthual]

I just made a book about the first year of my daughter. I made it on blurb.com, using the Booksmart app, and I'm quite happy with the result. I found the quality much better than the previous iPhoto Book I made a year ago. I must admit the photographer feels very proud when holding the object in hand for the first time ! ;o)

 

A few pictures here :

My first book ! on Flickr - Photo Sharing!