Toronto Photography Meetup Group

I am looking for your reviews about some of the companies that produce photobooks. I used Blurb last year and am now looking for something less expensive.

Am producing approx. a dozen photobooks for a group of 16 year old girls who will be having their portraits taken as part of the celebration. This doesn't need to be extremely high end--clarity and quality are desirable.

One idea that I found on another site is using lulu.com to print and then having them bound in hardcover. I wouldn't even know where to have that done but it sounds like a cool idea.

TPMGers, can anyone help me out with their experiences?

We've done a few books thru Lulu, and I would not recommend them for portraits. They are the cheapest by far, but I find colour accuracy and photo quality to be a problem. For a non-pictorial book, they're great.

We've done our last few photo books thru Blurb, and I would say picture quality wise, Blurb is several times better than Lulu.

I've used Blurb a few times and have been happy with the results. The software is very user friendly as well.

Less expensive than Blurb? I don't think you'll have much choice out there, unless you're doing a long print run (like, 1000+ books). Lulu can be cheaper in some cases, but I'm hearing the quality can be hit-or-miss. Same with Blurb, actually, so maybe you're not losing out on anything.


What kind of books? Hardcover or softcover? What size? Any particular style of binding? Cover material?


You can Google for Toronto binderies or bookbinders, but I suspect getting them to rebind printed material may end up costing more than the original books, especially if you're doing something like a 20-page softcover 8.5"x8.5" from Lulu which is $10 + commission + shipping.

Hi Brian,

I am doing these for a mom who does not mind spending money but does not want to turn her daughter's birthday party into an exercise in oneupmanship. Hence, I'm looking at other options to Blurb. I ordered a book for a friend last year and she loved the final product.

Thanks for your review! Much appreciated.

jcl

Hi Kin,

That's good to know. It's hard to tell what the final product will look like without actually seeing it and touching it in real time.

I appreciate your input. Thank you.

jcl

+1 for Blurb. I wanted to produce a photobook for my parents' 50th anniversary but wasn't sure of the potential quality issues. So I had one done for myself through Blurb and the reproduction and colour was perfect. Had the book done for my parents and they loved it. I will be doing myself a new book every year from now on.

PIKTO does an awesome job -- they are pricey. But you can get an 8x10 book done for as little as $35 I think.

Has anyone tried these guys here:

http://www.photobookcanada.com/

I've had mixed results with MyPublisher.com. The binding, ease of use, templates, speed of completed product, page thickness and price seem resonable and the people I got them for loved them. However, I know how these photos print out on my Epson and the photo quality at the level isn't there. When our dollar was around par, I had a few books printed it up. The photos seemed to be a bit darker (almost like too much ink absorbtion), but they were acceptable I guess for their price. I would equate the photo quality (not page thickness as that was good) on par with Popular Photography's internal pages.

To clarify I do work with a calibrated monitor. I would like to find a place that has image IQ equal to a magazine like Digital Photo Pro.