Post # 1
Hostess
12057 posts
Sugar Beekeeper
For bees printing their own photo books – wedding or otherwise – which company do you use? Why? I’ve used Blurb in the past (for my University Grad Class yearbooks) and they were great. I’ve never used the others, but I see a lot of bees talking about Snapfish etc.
Just wondering what you’ve used, why you picked them, and would you use them again? I’d love to see pictures of non-professional albums too!
Post # 3
Member
185 posts
Blushing bee
@MsGinkgo: I used Adorama Pix. The quality it GREAT. I would absolutely order from them again.
Post # 4
Member
6534 posts
Bee Keeper
@joleegirl: was it easy to use? because I am currently using Black River and the software I downloaded is such a pain in the ass to use!
Post # 5
Member
8279 posts
Bumble Beekeeper
I used AdoramaPix and was very happy with my books. Their design software is pretty easy to use.
Post # 6
Member
114 posts
Blushing bee
I’ve used shutterfly multiple times and I’m always amazed with their quality. We ended up doing our wedding albums with them because my photographer’s cheapest album was $900. We’ll probably end up spending $200-ish on an album through shutterfly, but our book is 40-pages and we’ll get the fancy leather cover and lay-flat pages.
Post # 7
Member
9142 posts
Buzzing Beekeeper
- Wedding: November 2013 - St. Augustine Beach, FL
@MsGinkgo: I have used My Publisher fror a few projects in the past and found it to be an easy program to use to create professional looking photobooks. I plan to use it for our wedding albums when we get our pictures in a few weeks. I am usually able to find Groupons or Living Social deals for them as well.
http://www.mypublisher.com/
Post # 8
Hostess
12057 posts
Sugar Beekeeper
@Westwood: I’ve never heard of this one – what’s the price range & where are they based?
@castaway83: I’m curious about Snapfish – what’s their software like?
@beachbride1216: Never heard of mypublisher either.
Thanks for the options – I’m going to go hunting! I’ve decided that I want to do a yearbook album for us every year as well – I’m one of those people who has albums and albums of printed photos from the film days but never manages to get my digital stuff printed. I want to make sure we can actually look at all these pictures I take.
Post # 9
Member
114 posts
Blushing bee
@bibbleskip Shutterfly, not snapfish. Shutterfly has great software… you upload the images online (took abou 20 minutes for 160 of my HD photographer images) and then you start a “project”… it takes a little while to figure stuff out, but you choose a style (most are free, some cost an extra $5) and then go from there. There’s different layouts to choose depending on how many pictures you want per page… you can change the backgrounds, shape of the photos, and custom “clipart” stuff. Literally everything is customizable if you want. It does take a while though – I think I took about 4 hours to make our 40-page wedding album, with 3 books of expierence under my belt.
Post # 10
Hostess
12057 posts
Sugar Beekeeper
@castaway83: sorry – clearly my brain is not working well today! Thanks for the information! I’ll check it out. I used blurb to create a 7×7 album over the weekend – I still have to add all the text, but I’m thinking I’ll test out some different options in advance of doing our wedding ones – I’m a designer by trade so I can’t fathom paying our photographer the money she’ll want to do our albums for us! I also want to be able to give albums to our families for Christmas next year and I’ll need at least 3 if not 7 (my mom, my dad, FH’s parents, FH’s grandparents, my grandmother, both grandfathers – not sure about the grandparents, who will want one and who won’t)
Post # 11
Member
7652 posts
Bumble Beekeeper
@MsGinkgo: I use Mixbook for EVERYTHING, whether it be thank you’s, invites, scrapbooks, plain picture books, etc. Easy to create, use, and everything turns out amazing. I made coffee table books for each of our parents last Christmas. I added a few snapshots of what I created (online, I don’t have IRL pics of the books).
You can go as plain or as detailed as you want. These were snaps from the book I made my parents’.
Post # 12
Member
9209 posts
Buzzing Beekeeper
Post # 13
Member
8461 posts
Bumble Beekeeper
Post # 14
Member
172 posts
Blushing bee
I’m not sure what the best is but when I receive my pictures I will be ordering a Moleskine Photo Album. I think it is beautiful and classic! I want my pictures to be the focus, not some design.
Post # 15
Member
524 posts
Busy bee
- Wedding: March 2013 - Callanwolde Fine Arts Center
@MsGinkgo: AdoramaPix is based in NYC. Their pricing list is located here. We ordered our album through them and it was the 10×10 genuine leather book. The printing quality is great and the construction of the album is really nice. I’m ordering a 10×10 hard cover for my parents and an 8×8 hardcover for the grandparents for Christmas, so I’m excited to see how those turn out.
Post # 16
Member
1024 posts
Bumble bee
I created our hardcover wedding album through iPhoto. They use acid-free paper and the results from them are great.
They include a protective sleeve (with matching photos on the sleeve and actual book) and options to have photos on the inside jacket panels as well. It also comes in a slide-in box for added protection during storage.
Not sure if you have an Apple computer, though. (If not, maybe a friend with an Apple computer can let you use theirs? It’s super easy.)
Here are a few images of how they turned out:
