anyone ever make a photobook?

[matthewo]

here is mine, photos taken this year in various locations throughout my state.

Photo Books | Photo Cards | Canvas Prints | Calendars | MyPublisher

sorry for the link but its the only way to share it.

im hoping they do a good job I have not used them before, I designed all the pages myself in photoshop. I added a lot of options like layflat pages, better paper, "super gloss" printing and other stuff, was not cheap, but I wanted a book type portfolio to have of my work.

 

[Designer]

Very nice book! Excellent photographs!

 

[LarryLomona]

Very nice book! Yes, I did 2 this year. One from Costco 72 pages and one from Blurb 200 pages. I like both.

 

[wyogirl]

Nice. I do a consumer type (read shutterfly) photo book every year with my kid's birthday pics. Other than that, I did my wedding album which was entirely custom cover to cover, and that is pretty much it.

 

[matthewo]

wow, It would take me a whole year of designing to make a 200page book. this 20 page book took me a good few weeks of working on an off on it. I guess im just a perfectionist.

 

[amolitor]

Blurb's tools are pretty good, and somewhat limited. They make it a bit of effort to make a horrible botch of a book, since it's pretty much a set of decently templates with some tweaking you can do. You can make quite a nice book very easily. Customizing is possible, but takes some effort, and is arguably a terrible idea anyways since most people don't really know what's going to look good.

 

[LarryLomona]

Blurb book took 2 weeks, costco took 4 days, but I am not a perfectionist.

 

[CCericola]

These guys do a very good job as well.
Professional Photo Book and Pro Books

 

[matthewo]

well we will see how the print quality is. i know when i uploaded it way downsized the file size for them (each of the 22 photos were about 4mb each in jpg, but the whole upload said it was only 20mb, hmm). hopefully that is fine, i really over did it with 300dpi, and exact size for each page resolution. i know a lot of the people doing these books probably upsize, which is probably fine. thing is will there be any real different from me putting the extra time in to make sure each photo was at least 300 dpi with no upsizing.

with this book size of 11.25x8.5 its probably fine. still i would have felt better if they had let me send my full sized JPGs at 300dpi, without them murdering the quality. i did my best to sharpen and make the correct adjustments, hope there software didnt "enhance" the photos too much.

i really wish i could find a place that would give a good price and just tell me the exact cover sizes, and each page size, and i could just send them full res, tiffs at 300dpi for each page. a true custom book... oh and add discounts for multiple units.... screw the stupid software tool that is buggy and a PITA to use when there is really no reason if you as doing all the page design in another program