Best place online to create Photobooks?

[Lego Man]

What's the best place online to create a Photobook?

All I know is the one built into iPhoto, yet looking through the templates it seems a little restrictive. There are probably tons upon tons of websites online too.

Does anyone have experience creating photobooks here? What are the best websites/programs to do it?

[SebC]

I've heard good things through my photo club about Blurb.

[Lego Man]

Wow, Blurb looks perfect! I think I'll try out that BookSmart software.

[Firebot]

I do wedding and event photography as a 2nd job, and I've personally used both mypublisher.com and blacks.ca to make and buy photobooks. Both have their advantages and disadvantages and I'd probably reuse both depending on what I'm looking for.

Mypublisher.com
Pros
- Cheap, and often has 40-60% off and even buy one get one free photobook
- Fast shipping and processing


Cons
- Taxes cross border, potential brokerage fees as with Fedex
- Layflat pages I find was subpar compared to Black's, good, but not wow worthy.
- Software much worse then Black's and more 'crude'

Blacks
Pros
- very good album polished software
- IMO a much more professional photobook look especially for layflat (woven), The quality was very solid

Cons
- very long shipping time, much longer then the website tells you if you buy anything 'deluxe' (ships from Europe)
- higher priced overall

I haven't used blurb so I can't comment, but I steered away from it as it had mediocre reviews on a photography site. I may try it in the future though and see the quality for myself (especially considering how so many people use stuff like instagram to destroy their photos)

[Lego Man]

Thanks Firebot and SebC! I'll look into all three and decide. All look WAY better than iPhoto lol

[Regular_John]

Gonna throw my 2-cents in for Blurb.com as well, their Canadian printing/distribution is actually done right here in Calgary at the West Canadian plant over in Inglewood. I don't think they offer local pickup due to their agreement with Blurb, but if supporting local business is important to you (not saying it should/shouldn't be) it's worth knowing.

We did 4 photos from our wedding with Blurb and other than 1 of the four having a smudge on one page we were really happy with the quality.

EDIT: Full disclosure, I used to work for West Canadian so I may be a little biased.

[cKy]

We used Shutterfly as we had a free 20 page hardcover booklet. I have to say I was really impressed with the amount of customization and the quality.

[Russic]

I've tried a few and still find iPhoto to be my favourite. True, the customization options aren't as prevalent as with other sites, but in my experience when you give people too much freedom they can make some pretty grotesque layout choices. I ordered 2 last week and they both arrived within 5 days.

[Knut]

My wife has used Blurb a few times. It is easy and the product quality is great.

[MoneyGuy]

I haven't used it but Groupon has a deal for Photobook Canada. It ends today if anyone is interested in buying it.

[The Yen Man]

Kind of similar question, figured I may as well use this thread rather than create another one.

Does anyone know a good place for blowing up pictures? So far, a quick google search has brought up posterjack.ca. Just wondering if there any any good local places in Calgary for that. If not, posterjack looks reasonable as well. Thanks!

[mykalberta]

I just tired out blurb for a Chirstmas present and was very very pleased with the quality of the printing.

[edn88]

Blurb was good, but my wife has been using iPhoto and it has been super easy for her to create books quickly - and price was comparable, and quality was good with both. Upshot of using iPhoto on the Mac, is if you are already using iPhoto, it is really simple. With Blurb you had to import photos (not sure if this is still required), and when I had used it, required additional install of software.

[JonDuke]

Never heard of Blurb, but +1 for Shutterfly.
Used them twice and was happy with the amount of options and ease of customizing.

[DownhillGoat]

Originally Posted by The Yen Man

Just wondering if there any any good local places in Calgary for that. If not, posterjack looks reasonable as well. Thanks!

How big? I've done up to 24x36 at Costco and was happy with it. Cheap enough if it doesn't turn out well, too.

[Arsenal14]

I've used Blurb and their BookSmart software for a few projects over the last three or four years. What I really like about it is the flexibility it offers for page layouts. From what I've seen a lot of other tools are fine if you're doing nothing but full page photos, but if you want to combine text and images of various sizes on a page it gets challenging. With Blurb I could define a few standard layouts to reuse and can alter anything I needed. I don't think they offered Canadian printing last time I did an order, but if they've added that it's great news.

At any rate, I've had no issues with the print quality or anything like that on any of my orders.

[Lego Man]

Thanks for all the advice! I really appreciate everyones input!

It was between Blurb and MyPublisher, and under normal circumstances I probably would have picked Blurb. However, MyPublisher has a great deal going on until Jan 7th (68% off Deluxe Photobooks up to 70 pages) so I'll try that.

MyPublisher also has a first time Buy One Get One offer, but it can't be used in conjunction with the offer that's going on now so that sucks.

How much do you guys think I'll pay at the door when this Photobooks gets shipped to me?

[Jayems]

My wife made some baby books online with shutterfly. Was happy with results. Quick shipping. Always google "shutterfly coupon" or something like that to knock off a ton of the price. We saved something like $30 by putting in some code we googled. Got a really good book for like $45