How long for iPhoto books in UK/Europe?

[Applespider]

I ordered an iPhoto book on Sunday night which apparently printed on Monday and shipped on Tuesday.

There are no tracking numbers for it though since it apparently comes by normal post (after charging nearly £5 shipping!) and is suggesting 7-9 days until arrival - annoying since I'm on holiday next week - but which I'm guessing (hoping) is a worse-case scenario.

Anyone in the UK/Europe (since I think they come from Holland) ordered an iPhoto book recently and can remember how long the shipping actually took?

 

[pulsewidth947]

I havent ordered a book, but when I was tracking my Powerbook it took 2 days to get to me from Holland. Cant imagine it'll take much longer than that.

 

[coot]

Hi,

My photo book was apparently dispatched last Friday, was hoping to see it by now

That was also partly the reason for getting an iMac, trying to move most of my photo/graphics work away from PC.
Shot a wedding, did all the photoshop work, upload to iphoto ( the progress bar never worked, looked liked it had crashed/timed out so I kept stopping and starting again. Turns out it was sending data ( the router was flashing away ) after all, just no progress bar ) - couple are now back from honeymoon and wanting to see their pictures, grr....

Cheers,

Pete.

 

[Applespider]

A couple of the responses on the Apple discussion boards suggest that it does indeed usually take 10-14 days from hitting 'Buy Book' to it arriving in your hands.

I really wish Apple would sort out their shipping in the UK/Europe. Things seem to sit around for days in various locations without much happening to them. It's not quite so bad when the shipping is free but when they're charging £5 to deliver, you'd think they'd beat the average internet retailer who usually manage to deliver in 3-5 days for stock lines.

 

[liketom]

last time i orderd one it took 30 days to get to me

 

[coot]

30 days!?

It'll be a nice 1st anniversary present for them......

Pete

 

[Applespider]

last time i orderd one it took 30 days to get to me

Was that all shipping time or did they take a long time to process? Will now turn off any hope of getting it before I leave for my trip to Scotland and seeing Mum's face when she opens it...

 

[abrooks]

I ordered a book back in November and I don't recall it taking longer than 5 days from order for it to arrive.

 

[liketom]

Was that all shipping time or did they take a long time to process? Will now turn off any hope of getting it before I leave for my trip to Scotland and seeing Mum's face when she opens it...

i orderd when they came out and it was shipped from china and took 30 days

my 2nd book i think was shipped from germany and took 3 weeks

mind you it took them 6 weeks on both books to take my money out of my credit card .

The books are definitely worth the wait

 

[javiercr]

took a week and a half for me, good presentation (box, wrapping etc) but the quality of the paper and the printing was disapointing, the pictures look soft (and it's not my fault , they look ok on the screen and my printer), the paper was too thin.

 

[Applespider]

the printing was disapointing, the pictures look soft (and it's not my fault , they look ok on the screen and my printer).

I'm curious to see how mine comes out - I'm quite sure that I'll check my work email on Monday (from Scotland) to find a message from despatch saying there's a parcel on my desk and have to wait a week!

As regards the quality though, after having a read through some of the Apple boards before ordering, there seems to be a general agreement that you should 'tweak' the targetdpi settings for the books before ordering them.

Apparently, if you do a 'save as pdf' option to have a look at the book before it prints, you'll get a great looking book - and the file size (for 20 pages or so) will be about 50MB. However, if you don't change the settings, iPhoto when it creates the book to upload only uses a 150dpi setting which will end up uploading a file about 15MB. Obviously much quicker to upload but also a lower quality. If you go in and tweak the settings, to 300dpi, the file size uploaded will be more like the local 50MB mark and the images, apparently, look much sharper. Obviously though it will take much longer to upload.

There is also the limitation that since it's not photo paper, the pictures will look flatter than they do printed offset.

 

[javiercr]

Apparently, if you do a 'save as pdf' option to have a look at the book before it prints, you'll get a great looking book - and the file size (for 20 pages or so) will be about 50MB. However, if you don't change the settings, iPhoto when it creates the book to upload only uses a 150dpi setting which will end up uploading a file about 15MB. Obviously much quicker to upload but also a lower quality. If you go in and tweak the settings, to 300dpi, the file size uploaded will be more like the local 50MB mark and the images, apparently, look much sharper. Obviously though it will take much longer to upload.

I had that problem , saves to 50Mb but uploads only 10Mb version, how do you change the settings???? i'd be very grateful to know, i looked everywhere but i'm not an expert in iphoto (i don't like it, only to order books)

 

[Applespider]

I had that problem , saves to 50Mb but uploads only 10Mb version, how do you change the settings???? i'd be very grateful to know, i looked everywhere but i'm not an expert in iphoto (i don't like it, only to order books)

Download Pref Setter. Quit iPhoto and then open up Pref Setter. You'll see a list of all your plists. Search for iPhoto and open up its preferences.

Search within that for Book - and you'll find 3 settings - for small/medium/large books. I think it's called BookSmallTarget or something along those lines. Change the preferences from 150 to 300 (the Small ones are already at 300) and save the changes. Quit Pref Setter and open up iPhoto.

Now if you recreate a book to send to Apple, it will be larger. You can check by making invisible files visible and going for a hunt around the /tmp files in your user directory.

 

[Cuckoo]

Mine took almost 4 weeks. And I too was quite disappointed with it's quality. And i'm not a nitpicker, but i hope they have sorted out the quality, mine looked like a 300dpi <maybe 400> but not near photo quality, not even close to newspaper quality....

Goodluck, and please keep us please informed if the quality is any better, beceause the idea is great....

 

[johan_tanying]

I am in China and no iPhoto-book service here. But I used iPhoto (awful program isn't it? - slow as syrup with 17000 images and keeps crashing all the time on a G5 1.8 DP with 1.25 GB RAM) and created two 100+ page pdf's at 300 dpi as a try.

A good service provider can then pick up your file at 23 (11 pm) or later and have the hard cover VERY nicely printed book(s) delivered the following morning. (I was not in a hurry so I gave them two days). They are using the latest print-on-demand equipment from companies like Kodak. Price is around 4-8 Yuan (0.5-0.9 USD) per doublesided printed 120 grammes sheet (A4 or A3) plus some 30 Y (4 USD) for the hard cover using a ful-wrap .psd/.jpg of your own design.

Using Apple's iPhoto-book - I don't think so!

 

[javiercr]

Download Pref Setter. Quit iPhoto and then open up Pref Setter. You'll see a list of all your plists. Search for iPhoto and open up its preferences.

Search within that for Book - and you'll find 3 settings - for small/medium/large books. I think it's called BookSmallTarget or something along those lines. Change the preferences from 150 to 300 (the Small ones are already at 300) and save the changes. Quit Pref Setter and open up iPhoto.

Now if you recreate a book to send to Apple, it will be larger. You can check by making invisible files visible and going for a hunt around the /tmp files in your user directory.

wow, thanks! (at least it wasn't that obvious )

 

[Applespider]

Good news... (kind of)

My iPhoto books arrived at my office this morning (on the 7th business day) after creating them and the 9th day overall.

Bad news...

I'm in Scotland and can't see them to check quality but our very kind receptionist is going to post them up for me

 

[Cuckoo]

Well. that's good news....

i really hope apple has done something about the quality.....

 

[coot]

Hi,

My book came on Saturday, rang up the bride and groom to come round as they are desperate to see it.

Couldnt fault the quality, binding nor presentation.

That is until I got halfway through and saw SOMEONE ELSES &^%ING PHOTOS bound in with mine.

My pictures are from a wedding, in a certain style, the offending pics are snapshots of someones 23rd birthday ( and they look to be in the states ,im in the UK )

Needless to say the Bride and Groom were not best pleased and I'm left looking like a muppet.

Apple want me to send the book back ( at my expense! ) before they will fix their error.

Apart from that, I ( and more importantly the couple ) would have been over the moon with the book.

Hope yours turns out good, if so you will be well pleased with it.

Cheers,

Pete.

 

[Applespider]

Eeek! I'm sorry that yours was screwed up - particularly since it made you look bad in clients' eyes.

Mine were forwarded on from work yesterday and arrived this morning and are lovely. It looks just like a glossy catalogue - my mother is amazed and highly impressed! There are a couple of pics that I'd say were just OK but that's more to do with the intial resolution that anything in the printing process and you'd have to look very closely to spot it. The rest all look wonderful and I'm really pleased.

I'll be ordering more in the future. I guess that 300dpi trick is what makes the difference.