Photobooks

[neb]

Hi Guys

Need a hand, my cousin died in a road accident last year, and it's coming up to the anniversary. Anyways his sister gave birth to a baby a couple of weeks later so i want to make sure that child never forgets her uncle.

I need to find a company that can create a photobook thats very customisable . I want to be able to do the normal photos but then at the end i want to do a mix of small photo's with text written by his friends about him so when she's older she can read about him.

Is there any service that exists like this ? I can see some that i can just use text but i want to be able to put an image of the person that was writing about him next to each sentence so she can see how many great friends he had.

Any help would be very much appreciated.

[rbarry]

Hi neb,

Sorry to hear about your sad loss, but what a lovely idea you have in memory of your cousin.

The following advice assumes you are from the UK. If not, you will find similar software for your country from a quick search on Google.
There are many photobook business's that will fulfill your criteria. Here are some of the more recognised ones that will allow you to download free software, or use it on line, or both, so you can compose exactly what you want. The beauty is you can start a project and leave it open so you can come back to it as often as you like before committing it to publication. My advice is for you to go to the suppliers websites and see which software best matches your needs.


Blurb
Jessops Photo (cewe software)
Aldi print software
Myphotobook.co.uk

The above all have links on their websites to the software you can download free of charge. This is not a comprehensive list, just a few suppliers that I have downloaded in order to view their software. Blurb is probably the most established from this list but there are many others to choose from. Other members here will have their favourites and I'm sure they will add to this list.



I don't know for sure, but it may be possible to set up a password enabled account with one of the on line software suppliers that would allow friends and family members to access a Photobook started by yourself, so they could then add their contribution in exactly the way you describe. If that isn't possible, then an alternative may be to choose the best downloadable software that suits your needs, get all those involved to do the same, and send one of them a saved file of any work completed so far for them to add to. Once saved it could be sent back to you to send on to the next contributor and repeated for all contributors.

Hope this is of some use, and welcome to the forum.

All the best,

Rick.

[Pyates75]

A fantastic idea

I used Jessops recently and they use a 3rd party software which, although isn't the most user friendly, does get the job done.

For my business I use sim2000. They are aimed at professional photographers, but I think they recently launched a 'public' site. Their software is great and incredibly customisable.

As Rick said - have a look and see which one you feels meets your needs

Pauline

[JulianBaird]

I've always used Blurb. The software (Booksmart) is great, and you can fully customise page layouts (text and photos). There are numerous paper, cover and book size options as well. Customer service has always been excellent as well on the odd occasion when I've needed them. Highly recommended.

As for the collaboration requirement, the only way you could do that with Blurb would be to collate the comments / text and photos from other contributors and add to the book yourself.

PS. What a great idea and I'm sure your cousin will love your idea, however you output it.

[rbarry]

neb doesn't talk much.

[GeoffWessex]

I'm most impressed by the Sim2000 website - and the quality looks good. But you don't get much indication of prices unless you sign up.

[AndrewKulin]

Came across this 15 page link last year where a fellow compared something like a dozen photo-book suppliers by actually ordering a book of his project from each of the suppliers. Could be quite useful to you.

http://www.digitalhomethoughts.com/n...w/97676/0/1/15

[GeoffWessex]

Interesting review. I'd only seen Blurb books before and wasn't impressed with the paper quality but I'd heard they did a better quality paper for quite a lot more money.

Certainly Photobook Canada would suit me here, but I'm returning to the UK in the new year and it would be great to see a similar review of the British (or at least European) offerings.

I wonder if any of the Photo Magazines might put such a comprehensive review together..... they seem to review everything from walking boots to lens cloths, so a book review shouldn't be much of a problem.

[rbarry]

Good call Geoff, although I think they may have done this within the last couple of years. All the same, I would be interested in an up to date review since a lot have fallen by the wayside and others have stepped in to replace them.

Update!!

Just opened up my Jan 2012 subscription copy of Photplus that arrived this afternoon to find a two page mini test covering six photo book suppliers. The results in reverse order:

6. Apple
5. Bonus print
4. Blurb
3. Yophoto
2. Bob Books
1. Jessops

Last update!!

Reading my Jan 2012 photoplus mag back to front, I now discover a "Your Letters"
entry on page 20 from Sheila Wylie asking for Photobook comparison tests. This is answered by turning to the aforementioned two page article on page 104!

[GeoffWessex]

Well, I must say that Jessops at "No.1" surprised me! We hear so many bad things about them it makes a change to see they do something right. I'll have a look at that list again when back in UK.

"Bonus Print"? Surely not the same Bonus Print that made bad prints from negatives for all those years?

"Bob Books" look very nice.... if a bit pricey (particularly when compared to that US/Canada survey above).... 28x21cm, 66 pages - 67 pounds. Or 30x30cm, 82 pages, 110 pounds. Still, worth it for 'the really special' coffee table book.

"Yophoto".... appears to be a bit more cheap and cheerful - 30x30cm, up to 50 pages, 50 pounds.

I suspect that, even taking a professional review into account, it's still a case of 'suck it and see'.