iPhoto book recieved

I ordered an iPhoto book about a week and a half ago, and it came in last night. I assume lots of other people ordered them during the first week, explaining part of the slowness.

The front cover photo is on a white "matte", actually the front photo, title and subtitle are printed with about a two inch border on the sides, .25 inches on above, and either .25 inches below, or two inches depending on whether you measure from the picture or title. At least with the image I chose, and a blue linen binding the effect is not wholly pleasing.

The binding appears to be good quality, the inside cover is a nice striped grey, alas I was not given the chance to put any text ot images there.

The pictures inside the book are single sided (i.e. the left page is always blank), for a book with only ten pages this is probably a good thing, but for a larger book it would be much nicer to print both sides. The layout of the pages seems identical to what the software showed me before I ordered. The quality of each print seems quite nice, at a normal viewing distance. If you look at them up close they are not as nice as my cheep ink jet on good paper, I was expecting much better. I was expecting an Ofoto quality print (i.e. garish colors but great detail).

The inside back cover has the white Apple logo in the center, and "Created on a Macintosh" along the bottom edge.

It's fun, but it isn't something I would expect from a professional. It isn't what I would want a wedding album to be on. It would be great for a scrapbook, a trip report, or a coffee table novelty.

I don't feel like I wasted $30, but I don't think I got a great deal either. I think I'll be better off doing the prints on my own printer (which iPhoto also helps with) and see what a local copy shop will charge to bind it -- it'll at least look nicer even if I think it will cost much more.

Thanks for the review Stripes. It's too bad the quality isn't better, but I suppose Apple had to make some decisions regarding quality vs. cost and settled on that as a compromise that would appeal to the most people. In time, we'll probably see the quality improve.

David

A friend of mine recently got one of these as well, and my impressions were similar. Fun for sending to grandma, but has a very amateur feel so I wouldn't recommend it for any function you'd want to charge for.

Plus it seemed rather pricey to me.
-- http://www.seanansorge.com

Member said:

A friend of mine recently got one of these as well, and my
impressions were similar. Fun for sending to grandma, but has a
very amateur feel so I wouldn't recommend it for any function you'd
want to charge for.

Click to expand...

If you got "amateur feel" from the page layout, there are about five canned layout schemes to pick from. If you got "amateur feel" from print quality, or the cover, I'm gonna have to agree.

It has been quite the conversation piece at the office today though.

Member said:

Plus it seemed rather pricey to me.

Click to expand...

At about $3/page it matches the 8x10 cost from ofoto, so if the print quality matched it really wouldn't be all that pricey. Since the print quality is much worse, yeah, it's not such a great deal.

David Dodd said:

Thanks for the review Stripes. It's too bad the quality isn't
better, but I suppose Apple had to make some decisions regarding
quality vs. cost and settled on that as a compromise that would
appeal to the most people. In time, we'll probably see the quality
improve.

Click to expand...

I'm not sure how we will see the quality improve unless Apple decides to make less money, or have a second more expensave printing option.

It's a pity, the PowerShoot 100 image on the cover looks as good as the D30 images inside (well, except the D30 images have depth of field effects the PS100 won't do, and some panning that would be quite hard on the PS100...)

Hi stripes,

Thanks for experimenting with the iBook. I don't have a Mac and was curious how it would turn out. I like the idea though.

I guess I'll make my pages in photoshop, order 8x11 prints from ofoto and find some place to bind them up and put a nice cover on it. I don't think kinkos has nice covers, so they are out... sigh

--JohnV

JohnV73959 said:

I guess I'll make my pages in photoshop, order 8x11 prints from
ofoto and find some place to bind them up and put a nice cover on
it. I don't think kinkos has nice covers, so they are out...
sigh

Click to expand...

I think Adobe Illastrator, or Quark Express seems like a better tool for the job (text layout, treating your pictures as large blobs to move around). I wrote something else up (as a reply to an iPhoto thread) about how easy (and limiting!) the iPhoto layout is. As a breif summary the longest part of the pricess was deciding what text to put on each page, in part because it did a stunningly good job of making the layout do about 80% of what I wanted, and it only took 5 minutes to get it to 95%, and in part because it is impossable to make it any better then 95% (no fine control at all of where the pictures go on the page, just which ones go on what page in what order, and if there are one, two, three, or four images on the page). I have high hopes for a bit more control in iPhoto 2.0. I have no illusion that it will ever turn into Quark Express though...

P.S. Mac's are pretty cheap, esp. if you will settle for an "old" iMac. Then again you could buy a nice lens with that money, so maybe they arn't cheap enough

Member said:

I don't feel like I wasted $30, but I don't think I got a great
deal either. I think I'll be better off doing the prints on my own
printer (which iPhoto also helps with) and see what a local copy
shop will charge to bind it -- it'll at least look nicer even if I
think it will cost much more.

Click to expand...

I do several of those kind of books, only much much larger a year. I use a comb binder and buy the combs in whatever size I need. The largest is a flattened oval and will hold 180 pages of heavy photo matte paper from Great White Shark. I use card stock for a cover and Epson heavy weight matte photo paper for an inside cover with a color print. Most of my pages have several pictures with a lot of text. It is a journal. I've done it for eleven years now. My first effort was done in grayscale with an old Apple Stylewriter printer. Later ones were done on my HP Laser printer, with the last three years in color with the Epson. One year I had it bound by a local book binder who did a marvelous professional hard cover book binding with it. He charged $20 a copy.--Dave Lewis