billnikon Loc: Pennsylvania/Ohio/Florida/Maui/Oregon/Vermont

I recommend shutterfly.

sue k.

I have made several with SNAPFISH...they run great specials, seem to be easy to navigate and the product is great. Shipping is fairly quick as well...and I am not fabulous on the computer !! The secret with any book creation is to get the images figured out early and then hold down the shift button and load a lot of them at once. Good luck !! Wish more people printed their images instead of holding them on their phones !! We are going to bring up a whole generation that does not have tangible images of their more distant relatives and family happenings !!

markngolf Loc: Bridgewater, NJ

I've used Shutterfly and Costco. Wonderful results.
Mark

fuzzypaddle Loc: Southern Illinois

I have used AdoramaPix on a number of occasions and have had fantastic results. I Have always used their lay flat type of hard back.

photoam Loc: Fergus Falls, MN

I have made 2 photo books using Shutterfly. Those photos came from my Canon G9X and my iPhone 6S. They were of vacations 1-2 yrs ago with grandsons.
The first one took this retired guy a month. It was about 45 pages, 8 x 11 and cost about $75.
For me there was a steep learning curve, but their online instructions, several You Tube videos and phone support were excellent.
The second one took a week and went much easier since I was now experienced. By then I had learned that one can change their suggested page formats, change the size or position of each photo and add or delete a text box, add different borders of differing colors or sizes. It cost a about $55 for 28 pages.
To order a second copy of each at the time of the original order was the price same as then first copy, which surprised me. I never looked to see of it got cheaper if one ordered more copies.
I thought the program was pretty to use and was elegant in the ways one could customize the book.
I never investigated any other programs since this was the highest rated one for a Mac user, as I recall.
The size, hard cover, printing detail and colors and the heavy pages were all excellent.
But you sound more professional than me.

RichardSmithTaylor

I know that a lot of people use Shutterfly, but I like Walgreens, because you can create the book online and have it printed and pick it up at your local store. You can also do a book at the in-store Walgreens kiosk, but you can't save your work product there. The online tools are better and you can save your work product online and work on it over time. There are often special discounts available throughout the year, if you subscribe to Walgreens Photo on e-mail. You can do detailed montage pages, and "easily" add captions to individual pictures. I did a large 30 page book of my wedding (I didn't take the images) got a 75% discount in early December three years ago. And you can go back and print another book months after you first created the book. Walgreens doesn't usually get the credit they deserve for doing high-quality work on a budget. Simple books are printed in-store.

petercbrandt Loc: New York City, Manhattan

I'm working with Blurb with their BookWright program on a book. I have 5000 or so images for the book. I'm deep into it with 36 pages, too deep to start over with another program. Bookwright is not easy !! Subject is Traffic Along the Hudson River. Its still a main highway! I took picture over 2 years and realized why, hense the title. I'm still writting text and reading on-line info on how to capture an audience, making a page turner ! Its not easy !

aellman Loc: Boston MA

jcboy3

I pick a narrow theme. My latest book was birds in flight from my last Florida trip. I prefer lay flat books, that way I can run a picture across two pages. On this one, I keep the bird on a single page and let the horizon cross the page. Then some smaller closeups on the other page. I add some text describing where I took the picture and what kind of bird it is.

Lucian Loc: From Wales, living in Ohio

First off, if you use Blurb, and they do some nice printing but also do some not so good printing. Blurb also offer some book page templates so it makes it easy to create a book. It all depends on what you want and what you expect a finished product to look like. It also depends whether or not you have ever seen a high quality printed book and if you want that type of finished product, or if you just want some basic thing pages printed into a hard cover facsimile of a book.

You need to ask yourself how good do I want it to look as a finished Item, how much is my budget, can I get what I want for that much money. If the answer is no then you need to ask yourself how far down the quality ladder are you prepared to go, taking into account, your budget, before it becomes something you will not be happy with.

Next we need to take a look at the comments you have been getting regarding others who have created their own books. We read some saying, I have used X and have been really happy, or I have used Y and it was great. That is not enough information to go buy, because you need to ask the most important question of these people... and that is, Great or happy with, compared to WHAT?

Just like you ask a teenager who just bought his first car and it cost him $150, how do you like your new car? They will most likely say... GREAT, so you ask great compared to what? They say ohhh ummm, well compared to nothing, because this is my first car. You move forward 30 years to this same teenager as a successful adult and ask him how was your first car. Well he has had years of experience with a range of cars and I am sure you will hear him say, "It was crap", because he now knows what quality is.

Therefore when asking people about their books, ask the second question of... Compared to what, when they say great or happy with the book I had printed. Because if they have not had a quality book printed from a quality photo lab or book printer, then they have no idea what quality printing is. Therefore, the book was good enough for their taste and their budget. That may or may not be good enough for your taste.

We have all seen the same thing with some people's photos on here. You see a carp photo, because possibly the photographer is new, or does not understand what a quality image is, and then you see comments from others like... Great shot, super image, well done, I love it, good work etc. Most of us can see that the image is crap , so we wonder why these comments are being made by others. Is it because they don't know any better, or they have never created an image that was better than that, or are they simply afraid to be honest? If someone asks for critique, then it is better to be honest to let them know that the image is not that great but suggest how it can be improved and give some suggestion how to make it better, that is helpful to them. They will think they are great because others told them that and may well never strive to improve, thinking they are great and that would not be helpful to them.

But back to books, Blurb has a contract with printing houses all across America and some are good, some are great and others are rather poor, so it is sometimes luck of the draw as to what you might get back from them, depending on where you are located. I have had a few books printed with Blurb and some have been very good and others have had some poor printing with bad colour. Ask Blurb for test prints of a few pages so you know what the finished pages will look like. Blurb would probably be your best shot though for what you wish to do with selling your books.

I used to shoot weddings and I would see other wedding photographers offering books and their clients might have been happy with the quality, but some were very good and others were offering poor quality books. If their client had no idea what quality was then they would be happy, until they did see a quality product, and could compare.

I used two Italian book makers when I offered coffe table books for weddings, GraphiStudio and Albums Epoca. Both fantastic quality in printing and finish but rather expensive. That is what I compare books to when I go looking for a more affordable product and what Costco offers, might be nice for some, but when you place that book next to one from either of the two Italian makers, the Costco product would look like crap. Now I understand that most can't afford the high end book and that is why I said that you need to establish a budget first then a quality ladder and then see where you can climb to and still be happy.

You must take other's suggestions as a guide and do your own quality checking before committing to any printing, in order to see if these suggested printers live up to what you have as a standard for your level of quality. To make a great book, you need to invest a lot of time into the layout and design of that book first, then check printing quality and when you find what you are happy to accept, you will have yourself a book you will always be proud of and never tire of opening it and leafing through it. Sorry to ramble on but I hope this has been of some help to you, for you to make a choice of where to go for printing.

petercbrandt Loc: New York City, Manhattan

My intension using Blurb is to make a good dummy to show to publishers, to show concept. I'll be open to layout and editing choices by professionals as long as my idea of doing a book does not fall apart. Publishers have a staff of professionals. I will present to publishers that do photo as well as photographic art.

petercbrandt Loc: New York City, Manhattan

My intension using Blurb is to make a good dummy to show to publishers, to show concept. I'll be open to layout and editing choices by professionals as long as my idea of doing a book does not fall apart. Publishers have a staff of professionals. I will present to publishers that do photo as well as photographic art.

petercbrandt Loc: New York City, Manhattan

Sorry, I know not how my text appears 2x !

pithydoug Loc: Catskill Mountains, NY

I used LR and it uses Blurb. all the templates are created in LR. I specifically use books to record our vacations. Way back it was slides and everyone would gather around. I now create table books and we pass them around when friends and family come by, or take them with us when we see out of town people.

The number of themes is endless. I'm working on "birds in my back yard", local parks, etc. Think about what you like to photograph most and how many pictures you might want and make it a book. Once you get past the learning curve you can knock one out in a day or two. Most of the time is not the tool but the order or pics and how many per page.

This is an opportunity to create a library that literally sits on shelf or table. Beats the heck out of physical pics in binders, or cranking up your laptop to the TV. The also make great presents.

nevessa Loc: High Desert, Eastern Sierra

Thanks for the reply!