blackest Loc: Ireland

Hi I was looking at another thread asking about a cheap printer for producing an album and really printing at home is not cheap and besides even having produced the photo's you still need to get from there to your album.

I've just been looking at photo books on snapfish (.ie) which is part of HP and they seem to be reasonable in price. You can compose your book online or they have software that you can download to produce your book offline. So far for a 26 page book it looks to be less than $60 with a maximum of around 126 pages.

I've not done this before and I have no idea of the quality of the end result but it seems quite appealing. I guess it might be worth investing in a calibration tool for your monitor so your images come out as you expect and not too dark.

compared with buying your own printer supplying it with ink calibrating the ink paper combination buying the ink, buying the paper getting it to print where you want it on the page... It seems a good alternative to home printing.

So has anyone taken the plunge, and had a photobook made were you pleased with the results and which company did you go with and of course how much did it cost?

bsprague Loc: Lacey, WA, USA

Have you looked at Blurb?

Anvil Loc: Loveland, CO

I have used both Snapfish and Blurb. I like Blurb more. The results of each were good, but Blurb has more choices. I also like the fact that Lightroom has a link to blurb. With Lightroom, you never have to convert you files to jpeg and store them.

blackest Loc: Ireland

Blurb looks to be a better choice, snapfish say they have a mac download but only offer a pc download of the software.
yophoto.co.uk seem to be the best quality printing and have a hand stitched binding. I think the software available will probably decide my choice and blurb and yophoto seem to be the front runners.

DaveO Loc: Northeast CT

My wife has had great success with "Shutterfly." It's not uncommon for her to get one ready and wait for one one their sales.

Morning Star Loc: West coast, North of the 49th N.

Blurb is what I have used. But rather than using their pages, I have made my pages the same size as the full page of the book size I selected. I think it's called "full bleed" - will have to look that up again. I found it gives me more flexibility.
Right now I'm working on books to give to our sons for Christmas, more text than photos. But again, I'll be making the pages the size of the book, so I'll only have to put one "image" on a page.
One feature of Blurb that I really like, is that for just a few dollars you can order a pdf file of your book. Meaning that the boys will be getting a hard-cover photobook for Christmas, and the grand-kids a pdf file! Not my fault if it is too small for them to read on their smartphone or iPod.... they do have perfectly good computers as well !

krashdragon

I like Adorama's photobooks. They printed on what feels like real photo paper. I did say not to change or improve the color. I like the results.

LarryFB Loc: Depends where our RV is parked

Since you don't mention what computer or operating system you are using, my comment may be totally useless. I have used iPhoto (now Photos) on a Macintosh for several photo books. Apple prints excellent photo books and it's easy to do, and at a reasonable cost with excellent quality.

Russ1700

I've used Blurb many times and found it excellent. When they introduced a Lightroom version I made the mistake of going that way as well. Big mistake as I found out that the Lightroom version does not have as many options as the PC version. Also everytime time I've used it from Lightroom I've had download issues. I contacted Blurb support for help, however they simply didn't want to know. Finally they admitted that there were compatibility issues with the Lightroom version and couldn't say when/if they would be fixed. I now say give it a big miss, simply not worth the hassle.

hj Loc: Florida

I am shocked no one has yet mentioned MyPublisher. I have used them to make at least 10 - 12 books and am always amazed at the quality. I always wait until they have a sale with great prices and also highly recommend choosing the "lay-flat" pages option along with their premium paper. I just checked their page and find they are offering a free photo book with lay-flat pages to new customers.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

I've printed half a dozen or more with Adoramapix. I always wait till they're having a sale.

http://www.adoramapix.com/app/home/

mikedidi46 Loc: WINTER SPRINGS, FLORIDA

I have used Shutterfly for the past few years [since they purchased Kodak Gallery], and i have had 4 books made along with calendars and the quality is excellent.

Trentc Loc: Denver, CO

I have used Snapfish, Shutterfly, and Flickr. Flickr was by far the best quality, but also the most expensive. The others certainly aren't bad, and I wouldn't hesitate to use them again, but the book from Flickr was really nice.

John Howard Loc: SW Florida and Blue Ridge Mountains of NC.

Second this view. I have found the Apple software for composing / designing the books to be the most flexible and easy to use. I have done 8 books, some small paperback and some almost 100 pages hardback with printed covers. Only one time did the print quality disappoint. I called Apple printing service and they replaced the books in perfect condition. When I called, they were able to look at the file I had uploaded and confirmed the image files were more than adequate. They took full responsibility.

blackest Loc: Ireland

Thanks for all the great replies for me I am on a Mac, some of the software for authoring seems a little rough around the edges. Some seems to support saving as a pdf file but tend to add little extras like a barcode across an image or something in the footer.

On the whole though it seems that this is a valid and cheaper option to produce albums than printing them yourself.

Though some of them are a bit cheeky blurb wants you to pay an extra $20 for not having their logo on your book.