Best online photo book
 

Has anyone had any experience with making one of the online photo books? I would like to try one with the pictures from our last vacation, but am wondering which company might be best - Shutterfly, Snapfish,My Publisher or ? Are some easier to use than others? What would you suggest?

I just emailed my sister about this very subject!

I haven't made one, but a friend did make one with Shutterfly and it was very nice - beautiful actually, very good quality. I have also seen their cards which are very nice.

www.blurb.com is the company I'm using for my parent's anniversary book. A friend brought several different books of hers and I really liked the paper and book quality.

sundowner had a nice one from mypublisher.com (I believe).

If you have a mac, iPhoto's is easy as well.

I made one with Shutterfly and it turned out very nice.

I believe it was upon the advice here ?

I have seen books made with
blurb.com
mypublisher.com
picaboo.com
photoworks.com

All were similar, all were very professional.

Each company offers essentially the same thing, with different interfaces, different layouts, etc., giving each company something a little different to offer for slightly different types of customers.

Check them out and see what "style" works for you.

I personally like picaboo.

Hello Wanderfrau and thank you. I couldn't remember the others we talked about at our gtg. I'm going to check them out before I send my pics to blurb.

i've used blurb for two different books. i think they were the best value.

with the first book i was 80% happy with the result. the photos had jumped up in contrast and looked like they had a gray haze over them.

the next book, i changed my monitor settings so what i was looking at more closely matched the printed copy. i was extremely happy with the results.

if you look on the blurb forums, people have posted a lot of tips on how to make your pictures look the best. people have also done comparisons of the same book published with different companies and posted their opinions.

I made a calendar on Shutterfly that I am quite pleased with. It was very easy to upload photos and tinker with it over the course of a few days.

i've been very happy with products from shutterfly. I think they do an excellent job with prints of all sorts.

I did make a photobook with iphoto and ordered from Apple. It was the easiest if you have a mac. I'm not sure the print quality was as nice as shutterfly though.

Thanks everyone for taking the time to share your experiences. I think right now I am leaning towards Shutterfly - though Picaboo sure seems to have a lot of options for backgrounds etc. Maybe I'll try a small photo book on each of their sites - and then I can compare results for future use.

I have used both Shutterfly and Walmart.com. Found tat Walmart tended to be a bit more user friendly, but both books turned out AWESOME.

I made one of wedding pictures from my son's wedding. I used Walgreen's. It turned out great. I only spent $35 on it. I was afraid that it might turn out cheesy so I didn't want to spend a lot on it. What a wonderful surprise when I received it. Almost as nice as the $400 one I purchased from the photographer at my daughter's wedding. Live and learn...

bbk

I have used PICABOO several times. Very good quality and very user friendly.

I recommend visiting Smilebooks - http://www.smilebooks.com
Not only do they have very easy to use in-browser software, you can also download their software if you prefer. The quality of their finished product is incredible, and they are quite affordable. Im not sure if it is still active, but when I made my photobook, I used the code ZA30 for another 30% off the already great price. Let me know what you think!

I did one each from Shutterfly, Snapfish, and myPublisher. All of them had faults in that I couldn't always get the right mix of portrait and landscape photos on the pages as I wanted to.

I have often gotten free books, or used a buy one get one free promotion. One offer was from Oprah I believe, on Shutterfly. Get on their mailing list and watch for those free offers. Right now they have one for 35% off until Dec.15th. There are frequently offers for free shipping as well. I use Shutterfly more often than the rest, and I have done many, many photo books. You do need to make sure the resolution of your photos is high enough if you want anything larger than a 4x6 in the books.

I just checked my email and it is Snapfish that currently has a 35% discount offer.

bigtyke
The trick to getting the exact mix of photos on the page that you want (along with whatever captions, etc) is to make a "digital scrapbook". Essentially, you choose the picture layout that is one picture that fills the entire page, but that picture is a "collage" of your pictures and captions. It is somewhat advanced, you need something like Photoshop Elements, but once you learn, you won't want to go back to the templates.
Google digital scrapbook and you will find lots of how-to's.

I've made loads of photobooks and here's what I found.
Snapfish and shutterfly make good books, but it's kind of hard to make books on their sites.

I agree that the quality is pretty much the same wherever you make the book.

Sometimes travel businesses have their own photo book sites, like www.morrismurdock.ziblio.com. I like that idea, but I guess it depends on what kind of book you're making. Their book making process was pretty easy to use if you ask me.

Blurb is nice too, but you have to download software, which I hate doing.