Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Photo book through iPhoto

Artful Dodger

Artful Dodger

macrumors 68020
Original poster
Hi all,
Has anyone bought a photo book from iPhoto as of late and what did you think of/about it?
I'm thinking about it and the medium or small size would work nice but input would be welcome as always 🙂
 
I bought a large coffee table size book as a gift and was blown away with the quality. It was a little expensive since it had a bunch of DC vacation pics, but WOW was it ever appreciated by the recipients!! I was very, very impressed.
 
I would agree. They are a bit pricey, but the quality is really good, and they are great as gifts cause people think you put a ton of work into the present (especially if they are non-mac people).
 
I bought a medium soft cover book for my ex-gf(not an ex b/c of the book) and i thought it looked amazing. I also bought 2 of the old hard covers and they were amazing. They really increased the quality however overall by adding the double sided printing and of the layouts. They have some really cool page layouts with different templates for colors. I feel bad sometimes with howmuch people like them yet how easy and fun they are to make!
 
Thanks, I have my pictures set in a book right now so I guess the hard part is putting a few words on the pages I so deem. Interesting to just find out that they us a HP Indigo four-color digital printing press for the books 😉
Can't wait to see if they look as good as on my screen and gifts are in mind after that.
 
I know a number of Wedding photographers here in Ireland who have bought say the large HardBack album with number od pages for 60 Euro including shipping and then sold them back to the people who's wedding it was for 6-10 times that cost, and the recipricants have always been delighted with the results....

I don't condone that behaviour, it just shows you how good they are that people get away with doing that....

They are really nice and make great gifts.. I've ordered a few since they started and have noticed that quality seems to have got better and better over time...
 
Given that they have 'Made on a Mac' printed on the final page and no photographer's logo unless they stick one on, I don't think much of their clients if they're daft enought to pay so much. Much as I love my Photobooks, some of the 'pro' versions that I've seen for people's weddings look far, far more impressive.

The books are good - although a lot depends on the effort you put into making them, making sure that your pictures look good and that their levels/colours are right. Another thing to bear in mind is that they do not look like glossy photos when they are in the book; if you put your nose to the paper, you'll see the pixels. But when you're looking at a normal face to book distance, they look great.

Something worth doing is upping the resolution. By default, the medium/large books create a pdf file at 150dpi to be sent to the printers; it looks OK and is presumably to avoid people having to sit for hours to upload their pictures. There is a little application called Prefsetter which allows you to go into the preferences file and set the resolutions to 300dpi.
 
Yeah, do a search in the forums for it. I posted very easy to follow procedure on how to do it and what to look for. I've done it several times. Applespider and I seem to end up posting this "Up the default resolution" tip in the same thread several times now. Weird.
 
MacRumorUser said:
I know a number of Wedding photographers here in Ireland who have bought say the large HardBack album with number od pages for 60 Euro including shipping and then sold them back to the people who's wedding it was for 6-10 times that cost, and the recipricants have always been delighted with the results....

I don't condone that behaviour, it just shows you how good they are that people get away with doing that....

They are really nice and make great gifts.. I've ordered a few since they started and have noticed that quality seems to have got better and better over time...
Click to expand...

While I agree wedding photogs are overpriced, keep in mind that most of what you're paying for is time and labor, not the physical goods. From the photog's perspective, he's spent 3-8 hours at your wedding, then (if doing digital) a bunch of time on photoshop, and then some more time doing teh layout for the book. It's not like when you make the book you spend no time doing it. So, some markup over the Apple price seems entirely justified. Not saying how much (that's for the market to decide). But 360-600 pounds for maybe 10-20 hours (or more) of labor putting it together isn't entirely unreasonable.
 
Thanks Applespider and Abstract

Something worth doing is upping the resolution. By default, the medium/large books create a pdf file at 150dpi to be sent to the printers; it looks OK and is presumably to avoid people having to sit for hours to upload their pictures. There is a little application called Prefsetter which allows you to go into the preferences file and set the resolutions to 300dpi.
Click to expand...

Yeah, do a search in the forums for it. I posted very easy to follow procedure on how to do it and what to look for. I've done it several times. Applespider and I seem to end up posting this "Up the default resolution" tip in the same thread several times now. Weird.
Click to expand...

I never thought of it until now and it's a good thing you brought it up 😉
 
Le Big Mac said:
While I agree wedding photogs are overpriced, keep in mind that most of what you're paying for is time and labor, not the physical goods. From the photog's perspective, he's spent 3-8 hours at your wedding, then (if doing digital) a bunch of time on photoshop, and then some more time doing teh layout for the book. It's not like when you make the book you spend no time doing it. So, some markup over the Apple price seems entirely justified. Not saying how much (that's for the market to decide). But 360-600 pounds for maybe 10-20 hours (or more) of labor putting it together isn't entirely unreasonable.
Click to expand...

We just finished selecting a photographer for our wedding this October. Through the selection process we found that every photog makes iPhoto-style books (and some only do that style), though they are of better quality (thicker pages most notably). We were actually turned off by these becuase they remined us so much of the vacation books we made ourselves in iPhoto. We ended up choosing someone who still does "traditional" wedding albums because we felt they are more timeless. Many of the iPhoto-style books just looked tacky anyway...way too much crammed onto every page. One guy actually came right out and said that he just ships the photos out to the book company, and they do the layouts. He doesn't do them himself...and he was one of the more expensive people we met with (we didn't choose him)!

But to get back to the OP, yes, I think the books produced by iPhoto are very nice - Everyone we showed ours to was very impressed with it. We've bought the large hardcover style.
 
i have seen the quality of these photo books and they are pretty top notch. of course the photos are only going to turn out well if they are good photos and have good image quality. i would say the minimum dpi you'd want would be 200. Anything at that level or above is essentially good print photo quality.

you can get the kodak photo book for much cheaper, but the quality is very poor compared to the apple iphoto books.
 
Great tips on upping the resolution, thanks guys! One question though - does that require an outside app like Prefsetter or can it be done from within the iPhotobook creation process?
 
If you're using Tiger, you'll need something like Prefsetter since the plist file isn't in text format. It's not in the iPhoto preferences or the photo book upload process.

Basically, quit iPhoto, open up Prefsetter, search for your iPhoto plist, search for BookTarget within the plist, make the change, save and close your plist and then reopen iPhoto. You'll notice nothing different but the upload to Apple will be bigger.
 
Could someone post a picture of their iPhoto book? I've never actually seen what they're like.
 
EGT said:
Could someone post a picture of their iPhoto book? I've never actually seen what they're like.
Click to expand...
Pulled this from some website (so it isnt one I have made)...
book01.jpg
 
I looked at the ones in CompUsa tonight and they look very good but man are they beat from everyone taking a look through them. Medium size looks like a good start for me as most of the pictures are of my dog and another book will be from Niagara Falls.

Once I get the book from the printers/Apple, then I'll post some pictures of them for others to view and give my input about them.
 
kwajaln said:
How could you think that?!? Did you not read any of the above posts by people commenting on how GOOD the iPhotoBooks are?
Click to expand...

In short, no. 😛
 
Applespider said:
If you're using Tiger, you'll need something like Prefsetter since the plist file isn't in text format. It's not in the iPhoto preferences or the photo book upload process.

Basically, quit iPhoto, open up Prefsetter, search for your iPhoto plist, search for BookTarget within the plist, make the change, save and close your plist and then reopen iPhoto. You'll notice nothing different but the upload to Apple will be bigger.
Click to expand...

Thanks for those tips, it was very easy to change the settings. I ordered a couple of medium books a while back, but since iPhoto 5 and the quality was ok. I will try one again with the higher settings and see if it helps. I will post back when then come, probably a week or so.
 
If there are Apple Store nearby, visit one. They have sample books. That said, while I think they are good for casual use, they are hardly wedding photo book quality (especially when printed on Fuji Frontier or Oce Lightjet). Then again, Apple books cost over 10 times less. I would gladly pay more for higher quality books though.
 
Hi all, thanks for the help as my book just got here. During the order process I'm not sure the dpi went through at the higher settings but it still looks good for what I wanted. The medium size is okay (good for gifts) but I'll order the larger size from now on with the hardcover.
Overall I'm happy and a few friends saw this book today and want ones as well. I'll have to play around with it after iLife 06' gets here 😀
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back