I'm always a few steps behind the times. I just ordered my first ever photobook online. A scrapbooker, I am not. I hate/loate/despise scrapbooking, and in fact, I'm sure I'm using the term "scrapbooking" loosely. I don't mean making borders with decorative paper and fancy designs with little doo-dads and writing clever captions...I mean taping 6 4x6 photos on a 12x12 page, and calling it a day.
Here they are in all their glory. Well, not all of them. There's another giant tub in my closet, but I got tired of dragging them out.
This is hours and hours of work, people. I'm saying it now: I will never do this again.
I read about MyPublisher on one of my favorite blogs, so I thought I'd give it a try. It was SO easy, SUPER fast, the customer service was fantastic, and the price reasonable. The packaging was fun and cheery, and at first glance, the book looked pretty good.
The more I looked at the cover, I thought...wow, that's really got a blue cast to it.
So I pulled out the original to compare. Hmmm...not as blue.
The quality of the printing on the inside of the book was not quite what I thought it would be either. I was a little disappointed. The pictures are perfectly exposed, the color is great (on the inside, not the cover), but there are little dots all over the pictures, like you'd get from an ink-jet printer.
I hate to complain, I really do. The book was SO easy to make. I sooooo wanted it to work out. You don't have to design anything; you can just choose pre-made templates and drag and drop your pictures. MyPublisher guarantees that you'll be happy with your photobook, so I'm going to give them a call and see what can be done.
I ordered the Classic Hardcover and the paper it's printed on is very thin. There's no way I'd be able to let the kids flip through the book. The pages would rip easily. And that's the fun of scrapbooks, isn't it?...the kids looking through them. There is a Deluxe Hardcover, so I don't know if the printing quality or the paper would be upgraded.
As I was ordering my book, the price caught me a little off guard at first, but when you think about all the stuff you buy with regular scrapbooking, I think it's actually very reasonable. With original scrapbooking, you have to buy your scrapbook, the paper, rolls and rolls of double stick tape, plastic protectors and extenders, AND pay to have your pictures developed. Oh my goodness, I'm such a dinosaur. Welcome to the 21st century, Karli.
So I'm curious, where do you get your photobooks printed? Are you happy with the quality and the price? I'd love to hear your opinions!
7 comments:
I've been seriously considering photo books lately! I'm not a scrapper, either. ;) My mom totally rocks it.. I don't.
I was so excited when I started reading your post... but, then I got to the middle. :( I'm sorry they aren't as good as you expected. That sucks. I've heard good things about the hardcover photobooks from Shutterfly, but I haven't ordered one yet.
http://www.shutterfly.com/photo-books
Here's where I recently read about them: http://tinyurl.com/392h7ek
I've never had one printed because I would obsess for days over each page lay out. I have tried (to no avail) to work on books but never made it past page 3 or 4. But this past year Paul surprised me with the last 2 years of my blog in a book (it is 200 pages long!) from BLURB. It is AWESOME!!!! The quality is superb...looks just like my originals!! He used the basic templates they offered and the best part...I have it DONE without all the worry I would have wasted trying to do it myself :)
Jenn
Wow! how exciting:)
I just love the way it looks. Congratulations!
I was trying to keep the comment shorter. ;)
Try this: http://www.kellehampton.com/2010/04/it-is-finished.html
You can look through the book she did for her daughter. It looks amazing.
I know, seriously, eh? I want to hire her to do my books! :D I'm missing that creative/scrapping gene or something. ;)
Have a great Monday! :D
http://www.smugmug.com/prints/catalog/P#More
I've only done one - through Shutterfly - and was very happy with the print quality/speed of service/etc. It was a little pricey, and I DID over-obsess about the "perfect" page layouts, but it sure is a nice keepsake!
Post a Comment