coffee table books...supplier?

[emogirl]

Hi All..i'm looking for a reliable supplier, Canadian, of coffeetable books. Also, which do you prefer, the heavy cardboard pages, like a child's chunky book, or regular book pages??? I've had lots of people ask for these and want to offer them this year, but a reliable supplier is key.

 

[seanberry]

The photo club that I am a member of had a discussion of this the other night. One lady recently shot a wedding and used these people:

http://www.blurb.com/

They aren't Canadian, but I must say the book was very good looking. All you do is download their software, arrange the book (up to 440 pages) and send it off to them for printing. It's worth a look, I plan on getting one with pictures I'll be taking in Italy in March.

 

[emogirl]

Sean, I really like this sight over most of the ones I've checked out. Thanks!

 

[Jazz]

emogirl -

(I sure hope this is the kind of “coffee table” book you’re talking about, or else I’ll feel pretty silly posting all this crap if you meant something else.) :mrgreen:

I recently received an offer for a free photo book from Shutterfly. They are a major photo host site and supplier of prints and photo books. I thought, why not? It was free and I was curious about these remarkably cheap books. Well, you get what you pay for. My book looked terrible. I called Shutterfly and eventually got to the head of their quality control, who was extremely helpful. These are the problems I had with Shutterfly, but many of these places probably have the same issues.

1. I prepared the images in AdobeRGB color space, and he admitted that their conversion from AdobeRGB to sRGB is problematic. I should have prepared the images in sRGB.
Lesson #1 – Do the conversion to sRGB yourself. Do not rely on anyone else to make the conversion work.

2. He said that since most of their growth comes from parents sending photos of the kids, their system is set up to automatically make major attempts at color correcting our images, unless we turn OFF their color correcting efforts in their software, kinda like color managing in PS and also in the printer driver at the same time. Their QC guy says that their auto-correction system works for most of their customers, but agrees it does not work for anyone who wants low key (dark) or high key (light) photos, or anyone who uses PS for critical work. In other words, when I sent a low key photo, their system tried hard to open it up to middle grey, and it was awful.

3. All of my sepia images and my b&w images were ruined, because of both #1 and #2. Their system, it turns out, can’t handle seeing sepia. It appears to their system as a color cast, and the efforts to correct it, as you can imagine, are not effective. Also, he mentioned that if you’re sending b&w, make sure to tell their software that it’s supposed to be b&w. Then they won’t apply their algorithms to “fix” it.
Lesson #2 – Turn off their default auto correction efforts.

4. Why are they so cheap compared to traditional printing? Here’s why. Shutterfly, and many of the suppliers of these “coffee table photo books”, print on an HP Indigo digital press. The problem is the Indigo inks are flat. Blacks are bad. The prints will not compare well to inkjet. Shutterfly’s business is booming. They started with 3 of these presses and now have 22. They’re outgrowing the Indigo presses and are switching over (2007) to a Xerox system which uses, he said, more reflective inks. We’ll see.

5. On the bright side, the paper they use is good and the binding is good. Delivery was very fast. :mrgreen::mrgreen:

Because they screwed up my photos so badly, the QC guy generously gave me a free reprint credit, and responded openly and honestly to my questions. But the quality of their printing is so bad, I won’t be using them again. The guy told me their business is mostly casual shooters who want photos of their kids bound into a book for cheap. That is where their growth is, and most of those people don’t consider the quality to be a big deal. Well, just so you know my perspective, my friends tell me I’m a ridiculous freak when it comes to quality. (Nice friends huh? )

These books are a really good deal, pricewise. You get a bound photo book of your own photos for under $100, or thereabouts. If they were printed on a traditional printing press, they’d cost thousands. Just don’t go looking for high quality printing. If you prepare in sRGB, turn off their auto-correction routines, and don’t mind the inks being on the flat side, everything should be fine.

I’m only familiar with Shutterfly, but here are some other suppliers I’ve heard of:
Blurb
Picaboo
Asuka
Photoworks
Snapfish
SharedInk

[FONT=&quot]Hope this helps.[/FONT]

 

[photogoddess]

VisionArt books are AWESOME!

 

[Big Mike]

Some friends of ours had some made at Black's...the quality and finish of the books was pretty good...not fantastic...but pretty good. I don't know how much she paid for them.

The one thing that I've heard people complain about is that Black's is too prevalent in the book...the last page, for example, is just a big Black's logo...and I don' think that you can choose to omit that.

 

[mavrik]

www.apollo-imagizing.com

along with asukabooks, apollos are about the most "professional" of the soft page coffee table non flushmount books.

 

[seanberry]

Sounds like a fun experience Jazz . Although I don't know what the original images looked like in blurb book, the output looked pretty nice. Nothing felt cheap, but a 5 minute scan probably wasn't enough to determine that. The last page has a small blurb.com logo (maybe an inch by inch) but otherwise unobtrusive. I'm not sure if they have some similar "auto correct" but I would hope you would be able to turn it off.

 

[mavrik]

btw the apollo books do NOT have an apollo imagizing logo printed in or on them.

 

[zaramuni]

I used Photoworks and got they have really nice coffe table books. Price wise though, I understand they are more expensive from others. Shoppers (easypix) and Loblaws seem to be offering these types of books to. Haven;t tried them out yet.

 

[harkain]

Graphi Studios has very nice coffee table style albums.

http://www.graphistudio.com/en/index.html

Everyone loves these books when they see the samples in our studio.

 

[KaraM]

Can I add my opinion as a recent bride and not as a photographer? I absolutely LOVE our album from GraphiStudio! Everyone has commented on the cover (which is polished metal). As a matter of fact, the album was one of the main reasons we went with the photographer we did.

 

[photogoddess]

Asuka, Shared Ink, Art Leather, Leather Craftsman, Vision Art and Graphi all do coffee table style albums. If you offer Graphi books, make sure you quote double the turn around time. Graphi has been going through some rapid growth lately and their turn around time leaves MUCH to be desired. That said, their books are really cool. Just as an option to Graphi, Pictobooks also does albums with a metal cover but are rather expensive.

 

[emogirl]

thanks everyone....i'm searching out all your suggestions and finding the one i like best. So far, i'm mostly a fan of the site BLURB, but i am still working on a canadian supplier. I have tried a black's one, havnet got it back yet, but from what big mike says, i'm probably not going to be happy about it. I wasnt pleased with their software anyway. I did the sample of my dad's cattle, so he'll be thrilled with the book anyway, and I can chalk it up to a try!! I am also trying photo in press, which is canadian, i like their software but their text options are nil, however, they tell me they are upgrading their text option in next software come march, so I am waiting on them a bit. I'll let you know what I discover, as I am trying books from 3 different places then you all will know if you need it!!!!

 

[emogirl]

Jazz...thanks for all that great info!!!!! I think i will step up my research a little bit more with these companies.

Kara...thanks for your input - you are my customer, and that's what i need to hear!! Might I ask, what did you pay for your finished album? I'm trying to keep a price point around $300-400.