Photo book suggestions

dflorez · 02-03-2017, 02:30 PM

Hey everyone!

It's about time I turn past trips/adventures into something tangible. Over the past year I've been to California, Tennessee, Colorado, Canada, and recently Cuba - and while biased, think I've taken a few quality photos in each place. I've been googling reviews/suggestions, but it always leads to websites that are about as valuable as snapsort...

Do you guys have first hand experience with any DIY photo book companies? Any that stand out, or have appropriate quality without breaking the bank?
Any suggestions greatly appreciated.

**jatrax** · 02-03-2017, 02:48 PM

My wife has used Shutterfly with good results. I have no experience with it myself but she seemed to have no issues and the book came out nice. You can also just use Lightroom to build your book. They use Blurb as the printing host. I've never used Blurb either but if Adobe has them integrated with Lightroom I would say they are worth a look anyway. The convenience of building the book in Lightroom would be a big draw for me. However, the Lightroom tools may not be as extensive as the on line tools provided by Blurb or Shutterfly direct.

**jacamar** · 02-03-2017, 03:14 PM

I asked a similar question a while ago:

Just a simple photobook... - PentaxForums.com

At present I have two completed photobooks waiting to be uploaded but I can't get "MyPublisher" to upload them. Latest is that they are saying their software is not working with my Microsoft Edge and I should go back to Internet Explorer. I would have thought that Edge would be fairly commonly used and that they would have compatibility with that. I found their software a bit clunky to use with occasional crashes, but otherwise it worked OK with no data lost when it crashed - you just have to reopen the software.
I prefer to assemble photobooks on my own computer rather than upload my photo library to their site (as some suppliers require) and wait for long upload times to add new pics, but that's no good if, after a lot of work, you can't upload the end product.

**Quartermaster James** · 02-03-2017, 03:27 PM - **1 Like**

Call me simple, but I like Costco.

**interested_observer** · 02-03-2017, 04:17 PM

I use LightRoom and I have come across their "photo book" capability. I have never used it, but it does look interesting. I was over at our local Costco last week picking up a large test print and another person was there picking up a printed photo book. It did look nice and they were happy with it - but have no idea at to the amount of work that went into it.

dflorez · 02-03-2017, 05:18 PM

Appreciate it so far. I've been looking into blurb, but the internet seems to think the quality varies quite a bit book to book.

I've made books in the past for other people using adoramapix, (since their individual photo print quality seems similar to what I can print at home) but unfortunately I always just had their products shipped direct to customers/families (I know, that's awful), and haven't actually seen with my own eyes the quality.

**AstroDave** · 02-03-2017, 05:46 PM

I've used Walgreens for several books. You make your book online, but you can pick it up at a local Walgreens (no shipping charges!). You can add captions for you pictures. The results have always been available in hours.

If you sign up with them, you'll get all sorts of discount offers (often half price - that makes a 10 sheet book - 20 pages of pictures - about $10) .

The results (for the books and photo calendars, too) have always looked fine to me. The biggest nuisance with a book is that is doesn't lie flat (that's a significant extra charge). If you get friendly with your local store, though, you might get them to print it as a calendar, which uses spiral binding and does lay nice and flat. The trick here (as I learned the hard way!) is that you have to invert the back of each page - otherwise when you flip the "calendar" page (the spiral bind is horizontal, not vertical) your picture(s) will be upside down. I haven't tried, but it might work, to ask them to use the spiral binding on the side, rather then the top, of each page.

**ramseybuckeye** · 02-03-2017, 06:12 PM

I recently used Shutterfly because of a free (pay shipping) offer and it turned out good. I believe I have also used Adoramapix and MPix with good results. I would guess they are all pretty good, I would see who has the best offer at the time.

SpecialK · 02-03-2017, 06:27 PM - **1 Like**

Originally posted by dflorez

Do you guys have first hand experience with any DIY photo book companies?

I've used both Shutterfly and Adoramapix. I have gotten 4 books of individual vacations, and happy with both places. They are reasonable but options can start to add up. I would sign up at each and see if any coupons come your way.

SpecialK · 02-03-2017, 06:32 PM

Just saw this:

Adoramapix - Save up to 30% on any print/book! - PentaxForums.com

**Alex645** · 02-03-2017, 07:48 PM

5 years ago, my first digital DIY book was with Costco and although the price was unbeatable, I was dissatisfied with the numbers of options in terms of layout, fonts, sizes, etc. For the last 4 years, Iʻve used Blurb and have made 5 different photo intensive books with them. They are not the cheapest, but they often offer author discounts and many options for you to sell your books (at cost or for profit; privately or publicly). Excellent quality each time.

The main thing that sold me on them is that they offer 3-4 ways to create your book from very easy, simple, intuitive, to high end professional with InDesign, to something in-between, my favorite, called BookSmart.

**travelswsage** · 02-03-2017, 08:25 PM

I used My Publisher for a couple of projects quite a while ago and was very happy with the outcome of both books. I also tried Shutterfly when they were running one of their specials and it did become pricy after adding a few upgrades -- I was happy with how the book came out but setting up the book in their software was quite a pain in the .... -- My Publisher's book template was far easier to use. My Publisher is now owned by Shutterfly.

One thing to beware of when using different book publishing companies is to double check the fine print on their terms of service -- some publishers were requiring photographers to relinquish all moral rights in their photographs as a condition of using the service. This was a few years ago now and I think most of the publishers have rescinded this policy (My Publisher did originally have this language in their fine print -- when I queried them on this they responded -- "No rights are waived when you publish with us. I apologize about the misconception.") Just something to double check when using a new service.

**ashurbanipal** · 02-03-2017, 09:54 PM

Originally posted by SpecialK

I've used both Shutterfly and Adoramapix. I have gotten 4 books of individual vacations, and happy with both places. They are reasonable but options can start to add up. I would sign up at each and see if any coupons come your way.

I would second this. I've used them both in the past, and routinely receive coupons and special offers from them via email.

--Steve

runswithsizzers · 02-03-2017, 10:50 PM

I've used Blurb for a couple of projects. I got some satisfactory results, but there are issues. Overall, I'd say my experience has been OK, but not great.

Blurb offers their "Bookwright" software as a free download for building the project, and they also have a web-based option. I have only used Bookwright, which is not very pleasant to use, especially if you are wanting much text in the book. Every time I paste in new text, Bookwright wants to change font size or font family. There is no way to build a set of favorites for Heading, Body, etc, so you have to constantly scroll up and down the (many) font families. In general Bookwright seems like beta-ware, but it does offer enough control to do about anything I wanted to do, although sometimes not without a fight.

I have also started a project using the Blurb Lightroom plug-in, but never finished it. While generally much nicer to use than Bookwright, in one important way, Lightroom was even worse for text than Bookwright - there was no way to link text boxes, so I could not flow text from a text box on one page to another. Not a problem if you are writing only a few short captions, but my project had a lot of text, so I had to switch back to Bookwright, and start over.

Lightroom is also less flexible about layouts. After you pick a Lightroom layout, say 4 photos per page, you can change the size of the photo boxes, move them around, delete one, etc. However, you can't do something in Lightroom that Bookwright allows, and that is: in Bookwright you can just draw a photo box, or a text box, wherever you want. You can also save any custom layouts you create as a template (I believe Lightroom does that, too.)

As for the finished project, I was satisfied, mostly. What I did - and I suggest you do this too - is to just get one copy as a proof, before putting in a bigger order. My first book had a lot of black and white photos, which came out too blue in the first printing. After a few emails, they agreed to reprint the book at no cost, and the second book looked good, as did my re-order for 10 copies. (I was not required to return the 'blue' book.)

My second project was built from scans from some poorly exposed Kodachromes. I did the best I could to retrieve the lost shadow detail in Lightroom/Photoshop, but several were still on the dark side. Bookwright has feature to turn on some kind of "photo optimizer" which seemed to brighten up the dark ones quite a bit. It also punched up the color, especially the reds, maybe a bit too much. Unfortunately, the optimizer is either off or on - it can not be selectively applied to individual photos. I printed one book with the filter off and one with it on, and for this project I believe the gain in shadow detail was worth the cost in really bright colors (hey, it was Kodachrome).

Blurb printing prices are somewhat expensive, but you get a price break at 10 copies, and a second price break at 20, if you want that many. Also, there is ALWAYS a coupon for 10-15-20, sometimes 25% off, so be sure to find one of those, either on the Blurb site or ...

So, I'm recommending Blurb with some reservations, but I've not used anything else to compare them to, so there may be better options. If you are a Lightroom user, and don't need big blocks of text, I'd suggest trying the Lightroom plug-in first.

---------- Post added 02-03-17 at 11:54 PM ----------

Originally posted by dflorez

Appreciate it so far. I've been looking into blurb, but the internet seems to think the quality varies quite a bit book to book.

I've made books in the past for other people using adoramapix, (since their individual photo print quality seems similar to what I can print at home) but unfortunately I always just had their products shipped direct to customers/families (I know, that's awful), and haven't actually seen with my own eyes the quality.

Blurb will reprint at no cost if you have a problem, but it does add a week or two, so beware if you have a tight deadline.

close-enough · 02-04-2017, 12:01 AM

Originally posted by dflorez

Hey everyone!

It's about time I turn past trips/adventures into something tangible. Over the past year I've been to California, Tennessee, Colorado, Canada, and recently Cuba - and while biased, think I've taken a few quality photos in each place. I've been googling reviews/suggestions, but it always leads to websites that are about as valuable as snapsort...

Do you guys have first hand experience with any DIY photo book companies? Any that stand out, or have appropriate quality without breaking the bank?
Any suggestions greatly appreciated.

Mypublisher has a new sale every week or so. If you don't have a deadline, you can work on your book and wait for the right sale. I like the one where the books are 75 cents each. Of course, they are small 20 page business card size books. But they make nice spontaneous gifts. They have significant sales on larger books as well.The same sales come round every 2 mnnths or so.

02-03-2017, 02:30 PM	#1
dflorez Forum Member Join Date: Dec 2010 Location: Florida Posts: 91	Photo book suggestions Hey everyone! It's about time I turn past trips/adventures into something tangible. Over the past year I've been to California, Tennessee, Colorado, Canada, and recently Cuba - and while biased, think I've taken a few quality photos in each place. I've been googling reviews/suggestions, but it always leads to websites that are about as valuable as snapsort... Do you guys have first hand experience with any DIY photo book companies? Any that stand out, or have appropriate quality without breaking the bank? Any suggestions greatly appreciated.

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02-03-2017, 02:48 PM	#2
jatrax Site Supporter Join Date: May 2010 Location: Washington Cascades Photos: Gallery \| Albums Posts: 12,991	My wife has used Shutterfly with good results. I have no experience with it myself but she seemed to have no issues and the book came out nice. You can also just use Lightroom to build your book. They use Blurb as the printing host. I've never used Blurb either but if Adobe has them integrated with Lightroom I would say they are worth a look anyway. The convenience of building the book in Lightroom would be a big draw for me. However, the Lightroom tools may not be as extensive as the on line tools provided by Blurb or Shutterfly direct.

02-03-2017, 03:14 PM	#3
jacamar Loyal Site Supporter Join Date: Feb 2011 Location: Toronto Photos: Albums Posts: 3,443	I asked a similar question a while ago: Just a simple photobook... - PentaxForums.com At present I have two completed photobooks waiting to be uploaded but I can't get "MyPublisher" to upload them. Latest is that they are saying their software is not working with my Microsoft Edge and I should go back to Internet Explorer. I would have thought that Edge would be fairly commonly used and that they would have compatibility with that. I found their software a bit clunky to use with occasional crashes, but otherwise it worked OK with no data lost when it crashed - you just have to reopen the software. I prefer to assemble photobooks on my own computer rather than upload my photo library to their site (as some suppliers require) and wait for long upload times to add new pics, but that's no good if, after a lot of work, you can't upload the end product.

02-03-2017, 03:27 PM - 1 Like	#4
Quartermaster James Loyal Site Supporter Join Date: Oct 2014 Location: Anchorage, Alaska Posts: 653	Call me simple, but I like Costco.

02-03-2017, 04:17 PM	#5
interested_observer Loyal Site Supporter Join Date: Jun 2009 Location: Tumbleweed, Arizona Photos: Gallery \| Albums Posts: 5,707	I use LightRoom and I have come across their "photo book" capability. I have never used it, but it does look interesting. I was over at our local Costco last week picking up a large test print and another person was there picking up a printed photo book. It did look nice and they were happy with it - but have no idea at to the amount of work that went into it.

02-03-2017, 05:18 PM	#6
dflorez Forum Member Join Date: Dec 2010 Location: Florida Posts: 91 Original Poster	Appreciate it so far. I've been looking into blurb, but the internet seems to think the quality varies quite a bit book to book. I've made books in the past for other people using adoramapix, (since their individual photo print quality seems similar to what I can print at home) but unfortunately I always just had their products shipped direct to customers/families (I know, that's awful), and haven't actually seen with my own eyes the quality.

02-03-2017, 05:46 PM	#7
AstroDave Loyal Site Supporter Join Date: May 2007 Location: Flagstaff, Arizona Posts: 1,637	I've used Walgreens for several books. You make your book online, but you can pick it up at a local Walgreens (no shipping charges!). You can add captions for you pictures. The results have always been available in hours. If you sign up with them, you'll get all sorts of discount offers (often half price - that makes a 10 sheet book - 20 pages of pictures - about $10) . The results (for the books and photo calendars, too) have always looked fine to me. The biggest nuisance with a book is that is doesn't lie flat (that's a significant extra charge). If you get friendly with your local store, though, you might get them to print it as a calendar, which uses spiral binding and does lay nice and flat. The trick here (as I learned the hard way!) is that you have to invert the back of each page - otherwise when you flip the "calendar" page (the spiral bind is horizontal, not vertical) your picture(s) will be upside down. I haven't tried, but it might work, to ask them to use the spiral binding on the side, rather then the top, of each page.

02-03-2017, 06:12 PM	#8
ramseybuckeye Site Supporter Join Date: Apr 2009 Location: Hampstead, NC Photos: Gallery Posts: 17,292	I recently used Shutterfly because of a free (pay shipping) offer and it turned out good. I believe I have also used Adoramapix and MPix with good results. I would guess they are all pretty good, I would see who has the best offer at the time.

02-03-2017, 06:27 PM - 1 Like	#9
SpecialK Pentaxian Join Date: Dec 2006 Location: So California Photos: Gallery Posts: 16,481	Originally posted by dflorez Do you guys have first hand experience with any DIY photo book companies? I've used both Shutterfly and Adoramapix. I have gotten 4 books of individual vacations, and happy with both places. They are reasonable but options can start to add up. I would sign up at each and see if any coupons come your way.

02-03-2017, 06:32 PM	#10
SpecialK Pentaxian Join Date: Dec 2006 Location: So California Photos: Gallery Posts: 16,481	Just saw this: Adoramapix - Save up to 30% on any print/book! - PentaxForums.com

02-03-2017, 07:48 PM	#11
Alex645 Site Supporter Join Date: May 2015 Location: Kaneohe, HI Photos: Albums Posts: 3,526	5 years ago, my first digital DIY book was with Costco and although the price was unbeatable, I was dissatisfied with the numbers of options in terms of layout, fonts, sizes, etc. For the last 4 years, Iʻve used Blurb and have made 5 different photo intensive books with them. They are not the cheapest, but they often offer author discounts and many options for you to sell your books (at cost or for profit; privately or publicly). Excellent quality each time. The main thing that sold me on them is that they offer 3-4 ways to create your book from very easy, simple, intuitive, to high end professional with InDesign, to something in-between, my favorite, called BookSmart.

02-03-2017, 08:25 PM	#12
travelswsage Site Supporter Join Date: Jun 2016 Posts: 385	I used My Publisher for a couple of projects quite a while ago and was very happy with the outcome of both books. I also tried Shutterfly when they were running one of their specials and it did become pricy after adding a few upgrades -- I was happy with how the book came out but setting up the book in their software was quite a pain in the .... -- My Publisher's book template was far easier to use. My Publisher is now owned by Shutterfly. One thing to beware of when using different book publishing companies is to double check the fine print on their terms of service -- some publishers were requiring photographers to relinquish all moral rights in their photographs as a condition of using the service. This was a few years ago now and I think most of the publishers have rescinded this policy (My Publisher did originally have this language in their fine print -- when I queried them on this they responded -- "No rights are waived when you publish with us. I apologize about the misconception.") Just something to double check when using a new service.

02-03-2017, 09:54 PM	#13
ashurbanipal Loyal Site Supporter Join Date: Nov 2008 Location: Lincoln, Nebraska Photos: Gallery \| Albums Posts: 515	Originally posted by SpecialK I've used both Shutterfly and Adoramapix. I have gotten 4 books of individual vacations, and happy with both places. They are reasonable but options can start to add up. I would sign up at each and see if any coupons come your way. I would second this. I've used them both in the past, and routinely receive coupons and special offers from them via email. --Steve

02-03-2017, 10:50 PM	#14
runswithsizzers Senior Member Join Date: Jun 2011 Location: USA Posts: 186	I've used Blurb for a couple of projects. I got some satisfactory results, but there are issues. Overall, I'd say my experience has been OK, but not great. Blurb offers their "Bookwright" software as a free download for building the project, and they also have a web-based option. I have only used Bookwright, which is not very pleasant to use, especially if you are wanting much text in the book. Every time I paste in new text, Bookwright wants to change font size or font family. There is no way to build a set of favorites for Heading, Body, etc, so you have to constantly scroll up and down the (many) font families. In general Bookwright seems like beta-ware, but it does offer enough control to do about anything I wanted to do, although sometimes not without a fight. I have also started a project using the Blurb Lightroom plug-in, but never finished it. While generally much nicer to use than Bookwright, in one important way, Lightroom was even worse for text than Bookwright - there was no way to link text boxes, so I could not flow text from a text box on one page to another. Not a problem if you are writing only a few short captions, but my project had a lot of text, so I had to switch back to Bookwright, and start over. Lightroom is also less flexible about layouts. After you pick a Lightroom layout, say 4 photos per page, you can change the size of the photo boxes, move them around, delete one, etc. However, you can't do something in Lightroom that Bookwright allows, and that is: in Bookwright you can just draw a photo box, or a text box, wherever you want. You can also save any custom layouts you create as a template (I believe Lightroom does that, too.) As for the finished project, I was satisfied, mostly. What I did - and I suggest you do this too - is to just get one copy as a proof, before putting in a bigger order. My first book had a lot of black and white photos, which came out too blue in the first printing. After a few emails, they agreed to reprint the book at no cost, and the second book looked good, as did my re-order for 10 copies. (I was not required to return the 'blue' book.) My second project was built from scans from some poorly exposed Kodachromes. I did the best I could to retrieve the lost shadow detail in Lightroom/Photoshop, but several were still on the dark side. Bookwright has feature to turn on some kind of "photo optimizer" which seemed to brighten up the dark ones quite a bit. It also punched up the color, especially the reds, maybe a bit too much. Unfortunately, the optimizer is either off or on - it can not be selectively applied to individual photos. I printed one book with the filter off and one with it on, and for this project I believe the gain in shadow detail was worth the cost in really bright colors (hey, it was Kodachrome). Blurb printing prices are somewhat expensive, but you get a price break at 10 copies, and a second price break at 20, if you want that many. Also, there is ALWAYS a coupon for 10-15-20, sometimes 25% off, so be sure to find one of those, either on the Blurb site or ... So, I'm recommending Blurb with some reservations, but I've not used anything else to compare them to, so there may be better options. If you are a Lightroom user, and don't need big blocks of text, I'd suggest trying the Lightroom plug-in first. ---------- Post added 02-03-17 at 11:54 PM ---------- Originally posted by dflorez Appreciate it so far. I've been looking into blurb, but the internet seems to think the quality varies quite a bit book to book. I've made books in the past for other people using adoramapix, (since their individual photo print quality seems similar to what I can print at home) but unfortunately I always just had their products shipped direct to customers/families (I know, that's awful), and haven't actually seen with my own eyes the quality. Blurb will reprint at no cost if you have a problem, but it does add a week or two, so beware if you have a tight deadline.

02-04-2017, 12:01 AM	#15
close-enough Junior Member Join Date: Apr 2009 Location: Portland, Oregon Posts: 44	Originally posted by dflorez Hey everyone! It's about time I turn past trips/adventures into something tangible. Over the past year I've been to California, Tennessee, Colorado, Canada, and recently Cuba - and while biased, think I've taken a few quality photos in each place. I've been googling reviews/suggestions, but it always leads to websites that are about as valuable as snapsort... Do you guys have first hand experience with any DIY photo book companies? Any that stand out, or have appropriate quality without breaking the bank? Any suggestions greatly appreciated. Mypublisher has a new sale every week or so. If you don't have a deadline, you can work on your book and wait for the right sale. I like the one where the books are 75 cents each. Of course, they are small 20 page business card size books. But they make nice spontaneous gifts. They have significant sales on larger books as well.The same sales come round every 2 mnnths or so.