About a year or so ago I made some photo books from my Cambodia images. I used Apple iPhoto’s books creation process to organize and layout my books. I opted for the 8.5×11 hardcover books with about 10 extra pages. The entire process ran me around $40 a book, which I found a little pricey but the quality seemed well worth it. So last week I decided to print a couple of photo books from my Arizona vacation but I thought perhaps there might be a better, cheaper solution. I recalled that Mpix had some nice books being displayed during Photoshop World so my first thought was to give them a try. After all, everyone I know that has used them has really raved about their quality.
I downloaded the book creation software called My Photo Book (clicking the preceding link will begin the software download), which is available in both Mac and PC, and began working my way through the interface. I tried using the Fast Track method which let’s you select they type of album you are creating, the images, and then goes about the job of auto-filling everything in for you. This seemed like the best option to begin with because I didn’t have a lot of time to dedicate to creating the book.
I have to say that there were some features that I really liked in My Photo Book but there were also some things that drove me batty. The Auto-Fill is pretty vanilla in its layout selection. It just figures out how many images you have and what orientation they are and starts filling in the blanks. Also, the rendering of images into frames seemed to take an excessively large amount of time (see image below after 5 minutes).
Once the images had rendered into their proper frames, the software was pretty flexible when it came to resizing, rotating, moving, and enhancing the images. This was probably the best feature I found for this particular book software.
When it came down to it though, I felt that if I really wanted a great looking book, I would have to hand layout my images for each page, taking the time to size and position each and every one. While this software certainly offered that option, the whole process just felt slow and very manual in nature. In fact, it was so slow that I was still waiting for my images to render into the frames after 20 minutes. These weren’t huge images, just slightly large so that they would print well.
After using the iPhoto book creation software, I find that I have been spoiled by how easy and fast the iPhoto software really is. In my world, where I have way too many things to do, waiting for images to fill frames for a book just isn’t one of them. So I am putting the question out to you, my readers.
What book printing service/software do you use for your photo books?
I know there are many to choose from but do you think any are better than the iPhoto service? Please write me a comment and let me know.
As for the price, both Mpix and Apple charge about $30 for a hardcover, 8.5×11, 20-page album (that’s 10 double-sided pages). Mpix has what they call a custom cover which will run you about $50 for the same size and page count. I’m not sure what the custom cover is but I guess it’s pretty nice. Apple offers the same size book in a softcover for around $20 while Mpix only prints up to 7.5×10 in softcover at a price of $25 for 24 pages (12 pages, front and back). To do your comparison shopping, click here for Mpix and here for the Apple iPhoto pages.
For the record, I went with the iPhoto Book, copies are available in the lobby.
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PhotoWalkPro » In Search of…Easy Photo Books that Look Great http://tinyurl.com/y9g8mqq