PhotoBook

[DaddyBrady]

After many painstaking hours and a bit more than a week of waiting, our PhotoBook arrived today from our Soutwest Splendors tour in September/October. I have one word:

Wow.

Or three words:

Totally worth it.

Here's the story. We were on an adults-only Southwest Splendors at the end of September; fantastic trip. (http://www.disboards.com/showthread.php?t=1972329

Through a mix-up, we received a discount certificate for Disney PhotoPass worth $100. (It was for return travelers, but our "return" is next year.) After I saw all the photos from the guides, I wasn't sure I wanted to spend the money for the Photo CD. There were some great pictures, but that still left me with literally several hundred of my own photos plus hundreds from other people on our tour, still all on a CD or hard drive somewhere. I've never printed any of our thousands of digital photos. I guess I miss the days of film. You may have had many fewer pictures, but at least you had them!

So I thought I'd see about a PhotoBook. I figured since we had this $100 credit, I might as well use it. (Okay, Christmas cards will be in the mail soon, so that counted for some of it!)

It was great! I could use the pictures from the guides, plus I could upload my own pictures. (Important note: you can only upload 160 of your own photos, and I couldn't figure out how to delete photos once I had loaded them to the site, so plan ahead.) I saved pictures from other people on our trip and then uploaded them too. I also scanned each of the pins and uploaded those as JPEG files. And I want to town.

The PhotoBook starts with 20 pages I think for about $70, and each additional page is $1.49. I ended up with 38 pages. I have full page photos, pages with one, two, three, and four pictures, captions I wrote, and of course, the scans of my pins. I created a day-by-day narrative of our trip.

So, with immense excitement, I opened the book today. It has a nice leather (vinyl, probably) cover with a silver embossed AbD logo, and the text I put on the cover:

Soutwest Splendors
Brady and Mario's Adventure​

The pages are thick paper, like high-quality magazine stock. The photos have rich, deep color and fine resolution. The page layouts provide artwork, primarily stamps and seals from the various AbD tours, that give it a casual feel. The caption text has a sort of old-fashioned typewriter look. It's amazing. I was right back on the tour, amazed at the Grand Canyon, hiking to Delicate Arch, laughing as Mario fell into the Colorado River...a bit teary-eyed at the final campfire the night before we left.​

Production Details
The book is produced by Josten's, who does yearbooks. The quality is fantastic. The PhotoBook editor gives you the ability to select the page background and layout, then you drag and drop pictures from your various PhotoPass albums onto the pages. There is some ability to edit the pictures, basically zoom and position. The interface for creating the book is pretty good, although there are some things that are a bit annoying. (Like if you change from one page layout to another, you usually lose the editing you've done to the pictures on that page.) The page you see is much smaller than the actual so sometimes it's hard to really know what you're going to get. But nothing in the final book was a disappointment; all the pictures were really high-quality with great color.​

Bottom Line
Even if I hadn't had the discount, the PhotoBook would still have been worth the cost. The word "souvenir" comes from the French, "to remember." I have an absolutely amazing souvenir that will enable me to always remember this fantastic trip. I put in many of the pictures of the incredible landscape we saw, and pictures of my partner and myself. (So great to have other people's pictures to use so there are shots of the two of us together. I don't know how many pictures I have of one of us, and how few I have of both of us.) And I have pictures of all the friends we made on the trip--some of my favorite pages in the book!​

So, if you're on an Adventure, make sure first off that your guides get lots of pictures of you and your family. Second, share pictures with the other people on your tour. Finally, make a PhotoBook! For the first time I have something more than a gallery of JPEGs on my hard drive, I have something I can show my family for years to come.​

 

[wdwsos]

Thanks for that great review! We bought the book after our Imperial Cities trip in 2007 and I feel the same way. It's been on my coffee table ever since (when I'm not carrying it with me to show friends when we go out to dinner!) and it's a wonderful reminder of a fabulous trip.

This year I bought the photo CD and may try to do the Kodak Photo Gallery book instead. I can't imagine it being better quality, though, and it won't have those wonderful AbD backgrounds that make this book so special.

It may be too close to the holidays to use this gift idea, but another thing I did after Imperial Cities was use one good picture of each of my boys and have a puzzle made on the Kodak site for their girlfriends. The puzzle is made of very good quality material and comes in a nice tin box with the photo on the cover. The girls loved it! Well, they did at the time anyway... one of them is now out of the picture so she may be lighting a match under each of the 100 pieces, one by one...

Dotti

 

[cindy18]

DaddyBrady, we made a photo book from our July, 2008 Southwest Splendors tour, and I agree with everything you said. One thing I had not realized, though, is that there is a page limit to the book. I found this out the hard way. I don't think it ever says it anywhere, but you can only add another 40 pages, for a book that is no more than 60 pages long. Now, if you do 4 pictures on a page, that's 240 pictures, which is a lot, and you pay by the page, not by the picture, so it's a very good price. But I had to go back and redo several of the pages to fit the story I wanted to tell into 60 pages, so I just wanted to let everyone know to be careful when you're laying out your photo book.

 

[lpizzuro123]

I am doing a Disney Photobook from our November Disney Wedding trip. I am almost finished putting it together and can't wait to get it. I am upset about the 60 page maximum. We were down in WDW for 2 weeks and have a ton of pictures - not including any wedding pictures. I had to scale back on alot of photos. I did most of the pages with 3 or 4 photos - I just hope the ones with the 4 per page the photos do not look too small.

BYW - your trips sounds wonderful. We have not done any Adventures by Disney tirps yet but hopefully in our future.

Linda

 

[kristilew]

We actually bought the disney photo cd and used those pictures along with ours to do a photobook on shutterfly. It also came out amazingly well - we love it! I think I am spoiled for doing regular photo albums ever again. We did a large format book (12x12) and had 40 some pages. Total cost was around $80.

Delta airlines sent us a certificate for a free smaller photobook, so we let dd make her own from the adventure. So cute!

 

[DaddyBrady]

I did most of the pages with 3 or 4 photos - I just hope the ones with the 4 per page the photos do not look too small.

I think it's a bit misleading when you're working in the PhotoBook editor because the pages look small, but in print the pictures on the three and four phote page layouts are still good sized. I zoomed in often for those pictures and they came out quite well. The final page is about the size of letter paper, so if you can visualize your page layout blown up to that size, you'll have a better idea of how the pages will look when printed.

I didn't know about the 60 page limit; I'll hae to keep that in mind for our next trip!

 

[lpizzuro123]

I think it's a bit misleading when you're working in the PhotoBook editor because the pages look small, but in print the pictures on the three and four phote page layouts are still good sized. I zoomed in often for those pictures and they came out quite well. The final page is about the size of letter paper, so if you can visualize your page layout blown up to that size, you'll have a better idea of how the pages will look when printed.

I didn't know about the 60 page limit; I'll hae to keep that in mind for our next trip!

Thanks for the info about size. I should be finished this week and I can't wait to get it back. Not sure if I will do another one for our next trip.

Honestly, I have been putting together photo albums for so many years I have no room left to store them. I think next year I am going to make a 2009 book and everytime I take photos put them in this book and just print it out at the end of the year.

Linda

 

[DaddyBrady]

Honestly, I have been putting together photo albums for so many years I have no room left to store them. I think next year I am going to make a 2009 book and everytime I take photos put them in this book and just print it out at the end of the year.

I'm exactly the opposite! I have boxes of actual photographs and now megabytes of digital files, and exactly none of them have ever seen the light of day. That's why I fell in love with the PhotoBook--I have something to show. It's a tiny fraction of the pictures we took on the trip, but it's still more than I've ever had easily available.

 

[sayhello]

I'm exactly the opposite! I have boxes of actual photographs and now megabytes of digital files, and exactly none of them have ever seen the light of day. That's why I fell in love with the PhotoBook--I have something to show. It's a tiny fraction of the pictures we took on the trip, but it's still more than I've ever had easily available.

Most people don't want to sit through megabytes of pictures, anyways. I find having an album of the choice photos works wonderfully for sharing your trip & pictures with most people. Your PhotoBook sounds MARVELOUS!

Sayhello

 

[beansf]

i am glad that you guys were impressed by the quality of your photo book. I have a question. I was considering getting a photobook rather than buying the CD, however, it seems the editing tools at your disposal are woefully inadeguate. There is no way that I can see to fix red eye. Are there tools available to you when you are making the book that I don't see when just browsing my pics? If not, I am afraid I will have to pass on the book. I do want to make a book, but I was planning on fixing my photos first with photoshop and then using mypublisher or some other service. I may have to just go ahead without the photopass pictures. $130 is a lot to spend for a few more pictures.