I haven’t had as much time as I’d like to play with the new features of iPhoto, but I did manage to create two books. The results were stunning.
I’d created a book last year as a gift for some friends. They were duly impressed and it was very satisfying for me to hold my photos printed in a bound book. But the printing seemed grainy to me (I never did track down if that was a fault of the printing or something in my pictures). Still, they liked the book enough to come over recently to create one to give as a birthday gift (I haven’t yet persuaded them to convert to the Mac).
I was almost ready to try MyPublisher, which is only available on Windows. I played with the Bookmaker software in VirtualPC. The layout features are more flexible than iPhoto, but the fonts and book design are not as elegant as iPhoto’s. Their prices used to be cheaper, but they recently raised them so there’s no incentive to leave OS X (always a painful experience) unless you want to take advantage of their Deluxe books, which are oversized at 12- by 16-inches.
This time around, the printing in the iPhoto books seems to be of a higher quality. I put together two books. The first is a selection of pictures I took over the past few years with my Canon PowerShot S200, a 2.0-megapixel pocket camera. Some of them were not taken at the highest quality setting and had to be upsampled in Photoshop before the little warning icon in iPhoto would disappear. But the pictures look fine.
The second book is a collection of pictures I took last month. My resolution for 2005 is to take pictures regularly and print an iPhoto book every month. At the end of the year, I hope to have a 12-volume photo journal showing my evolution as a photographer. These pictures were taken with my Nikon D70 and the book is beautiful.
The images are crisp and the color is vivid, if slightly darker than what I expected. Overall, I’m very pleased with the quality of the printing.
For tips on preparing your photos for an iPhoto book, see my post on Making the Best Quality iPhoto Books (Updated).
Related Articles:
12 Responses to “iPhoto Books”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
February 22nd, 2005 at 3:10 pm
I’ve done a few books since they were introduced and have noticed the improvement in quality. The biggest influence, however, has been the size of the file for each pix. Set you Nikon tot he max and you’ll see some improvements.
Just received a set of 3 of the smallest books, by the way. Smaller than anticipated, but a lot of fun to play with. Worth playing with.
February 22nd, 2005 at 5:29 pm
Yes, you want to use a high resolution picture for the best results. A couple of my old images that I took at lower quality settings had significant noise, but all of the images taken with my Nikon look great.
I haven’t printed any of the smaller books, but I’ve read the quality is not as high as with the large hardcovers. What was your experience? Anyone else have experience with the other formats?
February 23rd, 2005 at 12:39 am
Thanks for the inspiration Robert. I remember hearing about the new iPhoto book styles (paperback, new sizes, etc.) in the MacWorld keynote and was excited then—the mini ones looked really cool.
So I just ordered my first iPhoto book after reading your post. I’m trying out the new medium sized paperback version (thanks to iPhoto ‘05). Creating an adhoc scrapbook for Rebecca and I each month. Started tonight with photos from January 2005 – ended up putting 48 pictures in the standard 20 page layout. Total was about $15 with very little time invested. Better than going out, buying a blank book, printing digital photos through a service, gluing, annotating, etc.
I’m excited to see the results. If it turns out as great as I’m expecting, this could easily become our monthly standard for “backing up” our best digital photos in a impressive analog format to pass on long after hard drives crash and burn.
February 23rd, 2005 at 12:12 pm
Paul: Let us hear how that paperback version turns out. I’d be interested to know if you are satisfied with the quality of the printing and if it seems like the binding will hold up.
April 21st, 2005 at 6:48 pm
Hi
Just wondering what resolution you sent the images for the ibook. My images were high res shots, but when they uploaded it only said 15 megs total. The images were soft and I haven’t gotten a response from Apple.
BC
April 22nd, 2005 at 10:35 am
Hi Brian,
I don’t think it matters what resolution your images are, as long as iPhoto determines it’s high enough for printing at the size you’ve selected (if it isn’t, you’ll get a warning that resolution is too low). When you upload images for your book, iPhoto probably lowers the quality to reduce file size to the minimum it requires and/or compresses the files, which is why the upload size is much smaller than you’d expect.
I haven’t noticed a problem with the images in my iPhoto books being soft. But whenever you print, the quality of the paper can affect luminosity and sharpness. You might try sharpening your images a bit before you submit your next book. You can do that with the Adjust palette in iPhoto, or use Unsharp Mask in Photoshop or Photoshop Elements.
I’ve noticed that my iPhoto books print a bit darker than expected. For my last book, I lightened them in iPhoto by 5 points on the Brightness scale in the Adjust palette. That improved things, but adjusting brightness brightens everything, which can blow out your highlights. I just want to brighten the shadows. A good way to do that is to open the Levels dialog in Photoshop or Photoshop Elements and move the Output Level (the bottom left slider) to the right. I’m going to try that with my next book.
May 31st, 2005 at 4:46 pm
I was thinking of ordering a book for a school project and so I was worried about a couple of issues such as time and if the book would contain any logos or anything, i don’t really care much about that seeing in that Apple is very discreet and classy about such branding, but i was still just carious. Robert informed me about his experience, being that his books arrived within a week or so and that the inside back page does contain a logo and the tag line
” Made on A Mac” thanks for all your posts they have been very helpful I’m definitely getting one soon.
July 13th, 2005 at 8:37 pm
Previously a Windows user, I just bought an iMac G5 for the sole reason of being able to make Photobooks with iPhoto.
I will also use iMovie.
Up to now, I am quite happy with the OS X experience and I am waiting anxiously for my first Photobook!
July 14th, 2005 at 9:19 am
Welcome to the Mac! OS X offers a far superior user experience than Windows, in my opinion. I think you’ll be very happy with your decision to switch.
July 2nd, 2007 at 7:13 pm
I have used iphoto and mypublisher to print the same books.. They were very similar, but I liked the iphoto quality just a little bit better… the overall binding was a bit nicer. (I used the Mac plugin for mypublisher… I did not use their software to create the books.. I used iPhoto). The main reason to go with MyPublisher is if you want more binding color options. I have published 3 different books with them, and wanted some color variance. The Mac colors did not match my cover photos.
Stay away from Picaboo for anything other than templates. I returned my books for a refund with them. Their software does not reflect the finished product accurately. They bled my pictures off the page on all four sides by about a half inch in all directions on an 8×11 book. I created each page in photoshop, so my final product was ruined. When questioned, they said that this was a necessity to get the page to bleed to the edge. In all honesty, I did add white borders before I printed with Mac, so they may do the same thing… but I doubt it is as bad.
July 3rd, 2007 at 9:21 am
Thanks for the info, Amy. I hadn’t heard of Picaboo, but I’ll be sure to stay away.
August 8th, 2007 at 7:14 am
I spent two hours putting together my iPhoto book, laying it out, choosing themes and coulours and text.
Clicked “Buy Book” only to find out that my country is not a “supported iPhoto Book country”. I don’t live in Botswana or Zanzibar. I live in Australia.
Very very few things make me want to not rave about Apple.
This is one of them.