Here's one thing that I'm excited to share with all you people out there, especially photo enthusiasts. Now there is an alternative way of printing your beautiful pictures for display, rather than printing 4R size photos and slot them into generic photo album with tacky design covers, we now can print it on a shiny glossy paper and bind it nicely into a book. We can also arrange the pictures the way we like it, 4R, 3R, 8R, square, oval... you name it. It's like your very own published magazine, how wonderful is that??
It was my mum's birthday last month and I decided to give her a photobook as a gift. Coincidentally
Photobook was having a special offer, 40% off that month, which was really good bargain. The service was quite fast (considerably for Malaysian standard), I've submitted the files on 31 March midnight and it arrived in front of my doorstep 7 days after.
Here's the verdict:
I decided to go with the debossed hardcover book with 40 pages. The linen hardcover that binds the book looks very good and keeps the pages intact. I don't think the pages will easily comes off with that kind of binding.
Also the cover material gives it a 'professional' look (at least for a layman like me). And the front cover pic seems to be embedded inside the cover. Let's hope that doesn't peel off easily too. Haha! Oh ya, the theme for my first photobook was babies. It's a collection of baby pictures of us adik-beradik (siblings) from all different years. All 6 of us.
The content was hundreds of baby photos (I'm not sure if there's a limit to the number of photos) on 40 pages of thick and smooth silk paper (to be precise it's 148gms silk). As you can see below, the book spine holds the pages properly.
The best thing about this book is that it gives your total control on how you want to arrange the pictures in each pages. This can be done by using the software that I've downloaded from the site. Big, small, rectangular, oval, diamond shaped borders, you name it. It's up to you honestly. Below is an example of the pages inside the book.
It took me 4 intensive and very focused days (and nights) to scourer through a dozen of albums just to find the right pictures, scanning them (fortunately the scanner is brilliant enough to be able to scan 6 pics at the same time and saving it as 6 different files), editing and restoring old, dull and damaged photos using Photoshop (now I have created a customised set of action for automation that's quite reliable for batch processing) and arranging them into the book. Phew.. that's a lot of mumbo jumbo.
So, here's a good tip...
Honestly if you ask me, it would be easier to just create a photobook with photos that are already in digital format, you can cut 75% of the process I've mentioned above and just focus on the photo arrangements. Which will eventually be the final outcome of your book.
I know a lot of wedding photographers includes this kind of photobook in their service, but why just limit it to just weddings?? You can create a book about your travels, your family, even your cat, anything! And why let other people do it for you when you yourself can design your own book. Get that creative juices flowing!
Go on to
Photobook, have a look and try it out for yourself.
(ps: Photobook didn't paid me a cent for this promo, I'm just a customer who's happy with the service provided).
