Weddingbee boards

penguin    June 7, 2008   Berkeley, Ca

Oh no!  What seems to be the problem?

penguin    June 7, 2008   Berkeley, Ca

Let me know if you still have problems!  I can email the post to you hehe.

penguin    June 7, 2008   Berkeley, Ca

I know I made noise about making a Kolo Album for our parents for Christmas, but in the end, I just couldn’t choose only 30 pictures to include in the album, so I went the Blurb route instead. I considered an Mpix assembled album for a while, which I’m sure makes much higher quality albums, but the $200+ price tag (times 3, for 3 sets of parents) turned me off a bit. Blurb’s free book making software was easy to use and in less than a week the books arrived at our doorstep! I thought I’d pass on a few things I learned about Blurb’s books. I chose the hardcover ImageWrap option and premium paper.

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I’d use a BOLDER font on the cover. Especially on the spine, where the text is white on black, it is a little hard to read.

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The quality of the color of the ImageWrap is not as great as if you bought a hardcover book with a dust jacket. The colors are a bit washed out. That being said, I still like the ImageWrap option and would use it again, but if you’re looking for crisper, truer images on your book cover, go with the standard dust jacket option.

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The premium paper is nice and thick, and the images are crisp. I’d say you can could compare the printing to a really nice, high-end glossy catalog.

One thing to note is to not put images (like the one below) with the focal point near the middle of the book. The books don’t open up flat, so you’ll lose a little of the image. I should have flipped this image horizontally before adding it to the book, so that Mr. Peng was on the outside edge of the book.

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I tried to take a really close up shot of the images, but I guess it’s still somewhat hard to tell what the printing looks like. You can see, though, that there is no loss of detail, and the photo colors are pretty true.

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I even printed our wedding invitation in the front.

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I can honestly say that for the price difference of a Blurb book vs. an album, that the Blurb gives you huge bang for your buck. This book of 50 images (one image per page) cost $35, whereas a pro album would have cost well into the hundreds. I would have also added more than 50 images!  At the time I thought that 50 was a lot of images, but the book is seriously thin, and I had 700+ images to pick from, so I should have added more!

This by no means can take the place of a pro album though; you have to remind yourself that this is a <span style="font-style: italic">book, not a <span style="font-style: italic">photo album. All in all, I’m really happy with the Blurb book, and am thinking of printing out yearly books of our photos, so we can have them neatly catalogued by year!

I’ve never made a book before so I have nothing to compare this one to, but I’d love to hear your feedback on other book/album companies out there!

What’s your favorite book making/album service? Do you have any advice as to what companies are better than others?