Photo Book Reccomendations

December 16, 2006 11:27 AM

What are some good ways to create an affordable hard-bound photo book online?

My wife and I used Snapfish to create these as Christmas presents this year, but the interface has some real problems and certain aspects of Snapfish just annoy us. So what other things are similar to Snapfish that we can use to create a nice memory/photo book?

posted by superbird to Sports, Hobbies, & Recreation (12 answers total)

If you have a Mac, you can do this in iPhoto.
posted by mzurer at 11:32 AM on December 16, 2006

Most recent relevant question. Lots of links there, to other Ask Mefi questions also.
posted by whatnotever at 11:33 AM on December 16, 2006

The Today Show had a little piece on photo books this morning during a gift guide segment. The one they featured was from lulu.com. I am thinking of going this route. It's quicker and easier than traditional scrapbooking.
posted by LoriFLA at 11:45 AM on December 16, 2006

Slate had a shopping feature that reviewed different sites that do these based on quality, price, and service. They liked Shutterfly best. The whole article is here:

http://www.slate.com/id/2143039/
posted by mostlymartha at 12:05 PM on December 16, 2006

If you're on a PC, what you want is Picasa (from Google, software free).

Print information here

And I believe it has some interface with tabblo
posted by filmgeek at 12:05 PM on December 16, 2006

Here's an article from Cool Tools
posted by perpetualstroll at 12:08 PM on December 16, 2006

I did hardback baby books for grandparents from Snapfish.com and I was very happy with the results. As always, YMMV.
posted by dejah420 at 12:21 PM on December 16, 2006

And I was very pleased with my book made with Shutterfly. They came out on top in this review of photobooks made online.
posted by Pater Aletheias at 12:59 PM on December 16, 2006

I did one documenting my youngest son's first year of life from MyPublisher. It was around $50 with a black linen cover with cutout front displaying an opening photo. It would have been $30 but I added extra pages beyond the (I think) 20 that are included in the lower price. I was VERY happy with it, and I am anal about things like that. It was exactly what I expected and the interface was easy to use. I didn't use any of their templates; I created all my pages in PhotoShop and uploaded them as a full-page photo, but there are many templates you can use. The pages and binding are very good quality and you can get them printed on one side or both sides of the pages. My entire album was black and white so I don't know how accurate their color printing is. Hope this helps.
posted by forensicphd at 4:20 PM on December 16, 2006

I'd like to second Shutterfly. I made some very nice little wedding albums for my parents, and the interface was easy to use.
posted by christinetheslp at 5:49 PM on December 16, 2006

I second the suggestion of using MyPublisher - highly rated by Walt Mossberg of the WSJ, and I've been a happy customer of theirs now for two years in a row. Their software (Windows) runs well and has recently been upgraded.

The books I've produced were in color, used their templates, and like the fact that I can add text captions unlike many of the others.
posted by scooterdog at 7:12 PM on December 17, 2006

I do this for a living (design photo albums for weddings) and I've had real problems with MyPublisher (who, incidentally, also makes the iPhoto ones.) I have had the best luck with Shutterfly. What I do, though, is create full-bleed pages in Photoshop and upload them to Shutterfly and use their full-bleed template.
posted by pyjammy at 10:12 AM on December 18, 2006