Today I’m flying to California to visit one of my best friends. I’ll be around off and on to check in, but I wanted to leave this post open for a great discussion. Plus, I’ve got even more fresh new content lined up all weekend.
Today, let’s talk photo books!
- What are the pros and cons of a bound photo book vs. printed layouts?
- Do you create photo books? For what types of memories?
- What do you love or hate about photo books?
- What companies/services do you use?
- Do you upload layouts or use their templates?
I created a photo book for my wedding and another for a big family vacation. I choose the photo book because there was no way I could ever scrap that many pictures. But, this is YOUR post – head over to the comments to share what YOU think! And don’t forget to take a little while to enter our giveaway.
I have made several photobooks – most from Shutterfly, they have beautiful leather covers and also the image wraps are nice. I have made a couple from ArtsCow too – not too bad, but I think the Shutterfly ones are nicer. I think the simplicity of the premade layouts they provide for the photobooks make them nice since they don’t take a lot of time to make – sometimes it’s an overwhelming, and super time consuming task to make that number of traditional pages.
I’ve made a number of photobooks, all themed based (vacation/ year in review/ family recipe, etc)… I’ve mostly gone through Shutterfly because of speed of getting my product. Only once did I go through Arts Cow and it took over a month to get my book. I did use one template at Shutterfly because I had a free book coupon, but I just feel odd showing people the book, because they know that I’m a scrapper and this isn’t my work. So, I do all my own layouts. I just love the look of the book and how it looks on the coffee table or book shelf…
I have made 2 photo books. The first was a receipe book thru Inkubook because they were the only ones who had a 8 1/2 x 11, portrait style. I uploaded my scrapbook receipes to their site. My second book was thru My Publisher. I used their templates and the book was my grandson’s second year. I also got the book cover. The book was awesome. I really like the photo books. I have a few traditional scrap books, but always have trouble keeping the pages snug, just bugs me when they are loose.
I am from germany and I did my first books with fotokasten.com – now I am searching for a new company where can I have printed my 2009 books
I’ve done about 15, and researched a ton of companies. I’ve used Blurb, Shutterfly and Artscow.
Blurb – Did a HUGE book with my wedding pix. (200+ pages). Nice job, reasonable pricing. Spine broke on the first book, but they were very nice about replacing it. (They were having some production problems with that at the time, think it’s fixed now.)
Shutterfly – Can get a bit pricey – look for discounts. I used them for parent books for my wedding since I got free coupons through David’s. Very nice job.
Artscow – Cheapest prices I’ve found. They’re in Hong Kong, so can be a bit slow. Pretty good quality – not outstanding, but fine. Lots of discounts available.
I’ve done a 3 or 4 photobooks, I like how they came out generally. I found some great actions to help me prepare my LOs quickly and easily.
Winkflash – The cheapest I have done, because they have coupons for unlimited pages. The quality of the printing is a little lower than the others I have tried, but the service was fast.
Shutterfly – Good quality, I really liked how the book printed – clear and bright.
Snapfish – Not as nice as shutterfly, but overall it came out nicely.
I have used Shutterfly to make about 5 books now. Every one I have made has been by using their templates and designs. I just began experimenting with designing my own digital scrapbooks and have yet to upload my projects…so I’m not exactly sure how Shutterfly will work. However, they provide instructions on how to size your pages to fit and print correctly. Hopefully it’ll turn out as good as the other books have! As with some of the other comments, I also wait for the specials before buying anything. I think the most common special I’ve seen is 20% off all photo books.
I haven’t made any photo books yet, but plan on making a ton in the next few years. Way too many photos to go through and not a lot of time. I found out about Rocketlife and their amazing software and have set up a site of my own using there software. I have checked out other sites and by the time you have finished creating an account and uploading photos, you can be done creating a full book with the Rocketlife software! Plus you can upload scrapbooking items and put them on the products too!
I have a calendar and a mug that I made and am so impressed with the quality, that I won’t use any other program.
Check it out at: