Photo Guest Books

KATERS882

Hi,

I had my sister take our engagement photos and she offered to do our photo guestbook for us.  She is the creative and artistic one in the family.   She is not a professional photographer (doesn’t do it for a living) but she majored in it in college.  She actually works with Photoshop all the time but  she has never done a photobook online before and I have never done a photobook before either.    I was leaning toward using Shutterfly since we have a $20 gift card for the book but it is kind of overwhelming on which company to actually use.  My sister will use whichever company we want her to use….she doesn’t have a preference since she doesn’t know much about them either.

1).  Do you know if any of the photobook companies work well with Photoshop?

2).  Have you ever done a photobook before?  If so, which company did you use and why? 

3).  Does one of the companies have more options or more custom options that are available than another?

4).  Do you have any advice or tips for using any of the photobook companies?

Thanks for your input.  I appreciate it.  I will definitely pass this information on to my sister.

Love is Bald

I do a photobook using snapfish for all of my travel pictures from vacations.  I really like the quality of pictures, pages and book cover.  I havent used photoshop to do anything special to the pictures though.

jenniferandstephen

I have ordered five or six books from Shutterfly (as well as wall canvases) and generally recommend the website pretty highly.

The Shutterfly software is easy to use, and there are a decent number of spreads. You will have lots of space to store your pictures, can save multiple albums and can use the storybook feature if you would like to organize your pictures quickly.

Since you upload complete images (already 'photoshopped') there should be no concern with what editing software was used as long as the picture quality/resolution is high. This is especially important if you plan to do any full or half page spreads. There is information available on the website about the size and type of images that can be uploaded (.jpg, .gif, etc.)

The pages in Shutterfly books are better/thicker than other websites I've used. We used a fine point Sharpie marker for our guestbook and had no concerns with smudging or bleeding of the ink.

I really like the photo hard cover and have used that for our engagement and honeymoon books. I would not recommend the "suede-like" cover as I think that material gets fingerprints too easily. The "leather-like" material is ok and a little more durable but it is definitely not high quality fake leather. I used that for our family albums for a more formal look.

Sign up for the website and get all the extra coupon codes! If you have the time, always wait for sales. I have noticed, and maybe this is coincidence, that if I leave a completed project in my account, I tend to get a coupon code specific to that item. There are also frequent sales for free shipping.

Clearly, I use this website a lot so let me know if you have any questions. Happy photobook making!

seniah

I agree with above poster.  Shutterfly is a piece of cake. I've loved everything I've gotten from them.

PenelopeSnuz

I just created ours on iphoto on my mac this past weekend.

beautifulnryan

I created our engagement picture guest book and our wedding album with MyPublisher - it was easy to use and the book looked so professional.  We got a lot of compliments from them.  They also have coupon code/deals.

Try googling reviews -- here's one that has a chart:
http://www.digitalphotos101.com/photo-book-reviews.htm

MrsLibrarian

I used Picaboo for our guestbook, it turned out really nice.

I haven't used Photoshop for any photobooks that I've made, however, I made our wedding album using Blurb.com and I am pretty sure that they take pdf uploads.  They do really beautiful work.  I'm so happy with our book.

hz80408

I've used Picaboo to create photobooks for my parents with our wedding pics.  It was awesome, had lots of options and layouts.  My fav website by far. Pricier, but it's worth it for something that's a keepsake.

Next I like shutterfly, it's good quality to for the price.

Snapfish, I was disappointed in.  I ordered at the beginning of December, so maybe it was holiday rush, but on one of my pages, the ink looks like it bleed onto the other page so that set of pages is a big blur.

SoonToBeMrsDi

I've ordered from a lot of them because I'm testing out where I want to order my guest book from!

I think I'm going to go with Blurb. It seems to be the best quality. I haven't tried Picaboo though or MyPublisher.

@hz80408 - I ordered books for Christmas from Snapfish too. Then a week or so later I got doubles of all 3 books I ordered with a note saying sorry we had some quality issues. I would call them and ask for a reprint! I'm sure they will do it.

aimers1525

I ordered our photo guest book from Picaboo. It was pretty easy to use. I did a very basic design, but I'm sure there are other features I didn't use.

KATERS882

Thanks for your help.