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In July it was discovered that Apple is planning to discontinue its physical Photo Books printing service on September 30, 2018. With Apple's first-party option disappearing, users will be left to create and buy physical books from third-party companies, and now one such company -- Mimeo Photos -- has announced the release of "identical" formats, templates, and book sizes that Apple Photo Books currently offers its users.

mimeo-photos.jpg
This means that those users who opted for Apple's printing service in the past will now be able to transition to Mimeo Photos and its macOS extension to find all of the features that they're used to. Specifically, in Mimeo Photos the company says customers will now find design themes, product sets, templates, book sizes, materials, and print quality that is all "the same" as Apple's Photo Books service.
"This is a real opportunity for us to expand our successes as a prominent Apple Photos extension since the beginning," said John Delbridge, CEO, Mimeo. "We are really excited to see an increase in demand from countries like Australia and Japan in addition to our strong US customer base."
The company points out that in addition to the same Apple themes, book formats, and other materials now found within the extension, Mimeo Photos also offers a few other features for designing and creating physical photo books, cards, and calendars. Users can crop and move photos easily with in-depth transformation tools; write personalized texts in numerous fonts, colors, and sizes; add colors into pages with various background options; and choose from a "large variety" of layouts.

Pricing for the two services also appears largely similar, with Mimeo Photo's softcover landscape books starting at $9.99 in a medium size and increasing to $49.99 for extra large hardcovers. There are also calendars available for $19.99 and cards starting at $0.99, just like Apple Photo Books.

Those interested can download Mimeo Photos for free on the Mac App Store [Direct Link].

Article Link: Mimeo Photos Releases Themes, Book Sizes, and Templates 'Identical' to Apple Photo Books as Apple's Service Ends
 
How does the quality compare to Motif (which I believe was also an Apple's printing partner before it launched an extension)?
Anyone have experience with both Mimeo and Motif photos?
 
How does the quality compare to Motif (which I believe was also an Apple's printing partner before it launched an extension)?
Anyone have experience with both Mimeo and Motif photos?
After trying both Mimeo Photos and Motif, I personally prefer Mimeo Photos for their book quality, layouts, design and overall easy to use interface! Motif gave me very limited creative freedom to design my pages the way I wanted them to look. With Mimeo, I was able to move photos and text freely around the page for a look and feel I envisioned.

Hope that helps!
 
Even if the hard copy books are the same as they were before, this extension system no longer allows you to export the album to PDF, or am I missing something? I like keeping a pdf version of the hard copy albums that I order. Or is this a feature that was removed at the time of the Photos introduction?
 
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Even if the hard copy books are the same as they were before, this extension system no longer allows you to export the album to PDF, or am I missing something? I like keeping a pdf version of the hard copy albums that I order. Or is this a feature that was removed at the time of the Photos introduction?
I've noticed they listen to their customer feedback a lot and work with our ideas to come out with great new updates. I recently provided feedback on a calendar event feature and they included it in their latest update!

You should contact their support team to express your interest in the PDF feature, I'm sure they will listen and work on it!
 
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Very curious to see how the quality compares.

I have ordered both Mimeo Photos and Apple photobooks and comparing them side by side, I see no difference in the quality. The photobook quality looks identical between them, which makes sense considering Mimeo has been printing Apple photobooks for years!
 
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Even if the hard copy books are the same as they were before, this extension system no longer allows you to export the album to PDF, or am I missing something? I like keeping a pdf version of the hard copy albums that I order.
Great question, i’d like this too.
 
I have been experimenting with a few photobook services and, so far, Mimeo looks to be the most promising. I have not had an order printed so cannot comment on the quality of the end product.

In terms of ease of use, while it does have similarities to the Apple system found in Aperture or Photos there are some features I would like to see added.

A wider range of backgrounds, not just solid colours e.g Mixbooks has much better backgrounds available. I can install my own but the Mixbook system is more convenient.

Print PDFs and import PDFs from e.g. Aperture.

Re-order single pages not just a double page.

Round trip editing from Mimeo - Editor-Mimeo. i.e. be able to click on an image in Mimeo, have it open in a photo editor, make changes and then save with those changes immediately visible in Mimeo.
 
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After trying both Mimeo Photos and Motif, I personally prefer Mimeo Photos for their book quality, layouts, design and overall easy to use interface! Motif gave me very limited creative freedom to design my pages the way I wanted them to look. With Mimeo, I was able to move photos and text freely around the page for a look and feel I envisioned.

Hope that helps!
In Mimeo how do you turn off Autofill?
 
I have personally been using Motif. I used Apple Photos all the time so it was nice to transition to something that offered a similar experience.

Motif's parent company RR Donnelley provided the printing for Apple. See this article:https://9to5mac.com/2018/07/31/apple-photo-printer-rr-donnelley-new-motif-app/
So, they offer the same products but the app functions a lot better for me than Apple Photos did.
 
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