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Photobooks V’s traditional photo albums
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I still like to put traditional traditional photo albums together, family etc. I find that it is still the best way to show your photos around to family and friends.
Traditional photoalbums are very labour intensive though. It is daunting when every 6 months (???????) I expect to go through all the work, but it has always forced me to clean up my photos,
edit and save them. I guess I would still have to do that.Anyway last year I did a trial photoalbum with photo.com. I will admit I enjoyed the flexability, write as much of a note as you like or none at all, arranging photos in whatever way suits me great stuff!!
BUT I found the quality poor. It just couldn’t match the prints from my local expensive pharmacy.Has anybody any opinons on this?
If I decide to go with still printing 6x4s any recommendations about online services. I’d like to keep it Irish for some reason?
I’ll be away for a fwe days so I’ll catch up with you then.
Hi James,
Don’t know alot… here goes,
The majority of Photobooks are produces on:
1: Kodak Nexpress
2: HP Indigo
3: Xerox Igen
4: XeikonKodak,Xerox and Xeikon are all Toner based machine, ranging 600 DPI to 1200 DPI.
The Indigo uses liquid ink, I think it’s around 1200 dpi.
All machine are used by professional photographers, I have seen samples from all, each machine has its strong points and its weak points, Colour management is becomming a focus point for all digital print manufacturers, HP have just been certifed Gracol G7, (US version of our fogra (PRINT standard) for certain, the other device manufactuers should be getting there in the next few weeks.The problem is when you go online you have no way of knowing what vendor is using which machine. I suppose you could be cheeky and request test samples and find out what machine they are using, by process of elimination you can then select which device suits your work best.
Also the 6 x 4″ are not produce on the same type of machines the photobook or calendars are produced on.
Don’t take this as gospel,
Adrian
I recently saw an example of fujipix photobook, and theirs is much more like a traditional photoalbum. they print actual photos as prints and then laminate them into the album.
I’ve used Kodak and Spectra in the past. Kodak was so-so, Spectra I’ve been very happy with. Good quality, very sharp images. Just stay away from pure B&W with them, their print process can’t handle it at all for photobooks or cards. Kodak I felt was expensive for what you get. It looks good, but was easily twice the price of the spectra equivalent.
I also got a photobook done with blurb.com earlier this year, very much book-like, very light paper, but the picture print quality is still good, and actually requires higher standard of image than spectra. Not sure how/why, but using the same image on spectra it printed at ~A4 on their photobook no bother, but with blurb their quality checker limited it to about two-thirds the size.I’d suggest getting a similarly sized album from a range of suppliers and see which you are happiest with. Personally I prefer the options that allow book creation & editing offline, and you only need to go online when it’s finalised and you’re ready to order.
I have used quite a few online photobook services as presents for family & friends and have found by far the best quality was from a company called http://www.mypublisher.eu.
You will never get the same print quality as you will from regular prints, but mypublisher came closest (for me anyway).
It depends on what you are looking for but Steve Crozier (Stcstc) on this site does a range of photobooks.
Rgds
Kevin
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