Making your own professional quality album

[RichNKatHolly]

Hi again everyone. I just got my wedding pictures from my photographer (on DVD). I'd like to make my own high quality albums. Now, in my searches, the only sites I find deal strictly with professional photographers. Please tell me I'm not stuck with Shutterfly and Snapfish!?

I plan to do an album for us, and perhaps 5 smaller albums for family. Any advice would be much appreciated.

As always, thank you in advance.

 

[11290]

My daughter did her wedding albums (hers, parents, grandparents, etc) and does her travel albums with www.mypublisher.com.

Relatively inexpensive and easy to use free software.

 

[annnewjerz]

Hi again everyone. I just got my wedding pictures from my photographer (on DVD). I'd like to make my own high quality albums. Now, in my searches, the only sites I find deal strictly with professional photographers. Please tell me I'm not stuck with Shutterfly and Snapfish!?

I plan to do an album for us, and perhaps 5 smaller albums for family. Any advice would be much appreciated.

As always, thank you in advance.

Are you looking for an album only---or is a photo book okay? If you are interested in a photo book, I would highly recommend Blurb.com, especially if you can make your own layouts in an editing program like Photoshop (which I hear is really easy to do). I just recently made one of their 5x5 hard cover books of pictures I took at a bridal shower for a co-worker, and the quality was great. You can get the cover picture printed directly on the cover rather than a dust jacket (or you can get a dust jacket if you prefer), the quality of the paper was nice like a coffee table book and the price was reasonable. The colors were great and seemed true to what I saw on my computer screen. You can do a photo only book, or insert captions.

I would google Free Blurb.com Coupons or something to that effect before ordering. My book was $30 and I was able to get free second day shipping with an HP coupon code.

I also like the fact that you can "publish" your book and even if you only make 5 as gifts, you can direct relatives to the site and they can order a copy of the book you designed within 15 days or something for themselves.

Good luck and congrats on the wedding!

Edited to add: A friend at work had a book done by My Publisher and I'd say the quality of the photos and paper was comparable. Two things I liked better about Blurb was A. they have the hardcover with the image printed on it, whereas My Publisher just had a dust jacket and some other photo cut-out cover thing and B. My Publisher books only go up to 100 pages. If you do multiple images on a page, that might work, but if you want all full-sized images, I think 100 pages (or 100 photos) is a little limiting. On Blurb you can go up to 400 I believe.

 

[jrc-elpaso]

I used Picaboo to make a photobook of our cruise to Alaska last summer and was extremely pleased with the result. The only limitation it has is that you can't alter any of the page layouts. Right now I'm using Smilebooks to set up one with just general photos as a test of quality. You can do more with the page layouts - move pics, resize, add text boxes, etc. In both of them you download the free software and set up your book on your PC - then upload and order the book. Both have a variety of sizes, cover types, etc.

 

[mabas9395]

mpix.com is another good one.

 

[Chikabowa]

If you are looking for a professional flush-mount album, then you'll need to contact your photographer and they will be/should be able to produce an album through a professional company.

There are a lot of advantages to having a well-made and quality flush mount album. The others that have been resourced above are simple coffee table books where the images are printed onto paper - much like any coffee table book out there.

If the true artistry, quality, and the beauty of a full flush-mount album is what you are looking for, then going through your photographer will be your best bet. They are expensive, no doubt, but really masterpieces when they are all finished.

Definitely the absolute best in terms of displaying and keeping wedding portraits for a lifetime.

 

[Angrypenguin]

I had a photographer friend of mine recommend Bayphoto.com for professional (and large!) albums. I just got married as well, and plan on designing and putting together the book myself. We'll be utilizing one of the other companies (mpix, shutterfly, etc.) for the albums for our parents, but for the one for us we wanted a "real" professional look; I'll probably end up going with their "Pacific" line of albums.

You utilize their BayROES software to create the photo book the way you'd like, and then order it. Good luck!

 

[RichNKatHolly]

Congrats to you too Angrypenguin!

Thanks for all the recs. My photographer also just recommended mpix and blurb so I'll check those out today first and then move on.

I actually meant to say photobook (duh!). I don't want anything formal as our wedding was not formal at all.

Thanks again guys, you always come through with great info. I loves me some photography board!

 

[jann1033]

sounds like you have decided but just a warning, i might steer clear of tabloo, ( think that is spelled right) i got a book from them and it started losing pages after a few weeks. i also got one from shutterfly for granddaughter and it has held up really well for about a yr+ of use by a 4 yr old. shutterfly is not fancy by any means but they did a good job with mine.

 

[RichNKatHolly]

sounds like you have decided but just a warning, i might steer clear of tabloo, ( think that is spelled right) i got a book from them and it started losing pages after a few weeks. i also got one from shutterfly for granddaughter and it has held up really well for about a yr+ of use by a 4 yr old. shutterfly is not fancy by any means but they did a good job with mine.

Thank you for sharing your experiences. So sorry about tabloo, that stinks!

I am in the process right now of making my father and MIL an album through Shutterfly (25% off code that expires today just made it too irresistible) so I'm glad to hear that it worked out well for you.

 

[mabas9395]

If you are looking for a professional flush-mount album...

OK, I'll be the one to plead ignorant. What exactly is a "flush-mount" album? I don't think I've ever heard that phrase before (I might know it if I saw it, but I apparently don't know what it's called).

 

[Angrypenguin]

Flush mount albums are the albums that professional photographers usually use when designing/creating a wedding album. The pages don't "bend up", so to speak, from the spine and instead lay flat. They're heavier and higher quality. Something like this: http://bayphoto.com/bayweb/pro_albums_pacific.htm

 

[Chikabowa]

Flush-mount albums are hard bound books, covered in leather or some other sort of select material. Most have a choice between thicker pages (like a children's board book) or, one of the companies I use, has thiner style pages, but still ridged. The photos are actually hand-mounted to the pages and run flush to the edge of the page.

They really are beautiful... here are some pictures of one of my samples (the quality of the shots isn't so hot, but I was just taking some snapshots to show some other photographers the product when I got it in house). Everything is custom designed in-house by us. You can definitely see the difference between something like this and a shutterfly book.

This is the cover - it's actually a photo printed on a metal cover and then bound with leather.

They lay-flat and have no gutter so that pano prints are straight across.

The binding is all hand done and impeccable.

Here is an example of an album with the thicker pages - it's just aesthetics and what you like better.

It's still a lay-flat album (the spin isn't completely broken in on this particular sample), but this particular album has a 1/4 inch gutter split between the pages.

So yeah... when someone is talking wedding albums, there are sooooooooo many choices. These are two of the best companies out there (the company that makes the yellow album was just voted by the Professional Photographers of America as the best album presentation). And they definitely aren't cheap... but as I said before, total masterpieces when you are finished.

When the original poster made mention of looking at companies that only deal with pro-photographers, this is the type of album I thought they were looking for because, yeah, these companies only sell to established businesses and not direct-to-consumer.

 

[Angrypenguin]

Chikabowa,

That album looks great! What did you use to design them?

 

[Chikabowa]

Chikabowa,

That album looks great! What did you use to design them?

We do all custom design in house (no templates) and then send files to our album production companies for printing and binding. Everything is laid out in Illustrator.

Each of those albums represent about ~40 hours of pure graphic design work. And while these albums aren't cheap, the amount of labor that goes into each one adds significantly to the cost.

 

[RichNKatHolly]

Beautiful book, Chikabowa!

Just thought I'd pop back in and tell you we decided to use Blurb! What a fun website. It really works with the type of wedding we had and the whole informal feel, the vision of the book I have in my head, etc.

Thanks for all the recs. I'm keeping them on hand for future needs.

In the meantime, I'm hoping the parent albums I did at Shutterfly come out nice too.

 

[spinetnglr]

I think you will be pleased with your choice of Blurb. I did a photo book for a friends wedding last fall and was very pleased with it. My friends also had a very informal wedding and I put together a book on Blurb with the photos as their wedding gift and they loved it.