Coffee Table Books

[MrsAttackKitten]

Who did you order yours from? Do you have any photos of your layouts? I'm at a loss for ideas with only 8 pages complete! I plan to use mypublisher.com since they have the buy one get one free deal.

[genndan100502]

I got my wedding ones through mypublisher, but also have used sony's imagestation (http://www.imagestation.com/photo-gifts/photo-books/?INT=isc-Photo-Gifts-Promo7) both are great.

[tlew12778]

My photographer is doing mine. Sorry! I posted a link to a thread in modern bride on the thread in GCC.

[shaqangel]

i got mine from mypublisher

[PinkPanther]

i second mypublisher!

[Kristy]

I bought mine from Shutterfly. I liked their layout program the most because it was the easiest to use for a novice like me. The books were a little thin, but I just did the minimum amount of pages I wouldn't get overcharged for. The picture quality was excellent though, and they were on sale at the time. I ordered 8 (we gave them as Christmas gifts) so we got a bit of a discount for getting so many. Arrived quickly, too.

[Asha]

did anyone else have trouble downloading my publisher. my computer keeps getting stuck. i think that norton thinks it is a virus, but it pops up in my tool bar, but i am unable to check norton bc my screen is stuck to check. i have tried this a few times and it keeps happening.

[jesseybell]

I am going to order mine from MyPublisher. I like how many layouts they have, but I am going to do the majority of them as custom pages (or 1 photo per page) and I'll design them in Photoshop.
I can't wait to get started with this project. I've been waiting 6 months to do it!!

[Etoile]

I had a really horrendous customer service experience with Mypublisher, and ended up going with Imagestation, and I was beyond thrilled with the books we received. They were absolutely beautiful and everyone loves them.

[Kingdono]

I have prints that I want turned to digital photo's does anyone have suggestions on how to do this? I called one place but they want .75 per photo I have over 500 that woudl need to be scanned. I want to make our book and one for my parents and his. They would all be different. Any suggestions would be great.

Trish

[KarenS]

Actually $0.75 per negative sounds like a really good deal to me if they're already cut negs.

Alternately you could buy your own negative scanner and scan them yourself. If you have more than 500, that's a total of $375 at $0.75 each. So you could buy a very basic film scanner for around $150 and save quite a bit of money. However, don't underestimate the amount of time it takes to scan that much film. I suspect it'll take you several months of scanning - assuming you do a couple of hours a day.

This one looks like a decent scanner and will handle 35mm negs:
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?O=productlist&A=details&Q=&sku=248360&is=REG&addedTroughType=categoryNavigation

[laura]

We did one large coffee table book for ourselves, and we got smaller versions of the same book for our parents to save money. We gave them to our parents as gifts, so I didn't feel "bound" to let them all choose individually. We bought ours from our photographer, so I can't help w/ other sites. Basically I just sent her the pics and told her how many pages I wanted, and she put it together. We love it. Here are some sample pages:

http://images.snapfish.com/34557%3C4723232%7Ffp335%3Enu%3D325%3B%3E475%3E276% 3EWSNRCG%3D3233343773%3C49nu0mrj

http://images.snapfish.com/34557%3C4723232%7Ffp335%3Enu%3D325%3B%3E475%3E276% 3EWSNRCG%3D3233343773%3C4%3Anu0mrj

http://images.snapfish.com/34557%3C4723232%7Ffp335%3Enu%3D325%3B%3E475%3E276% 3EWSNRCG%3D3233343773%3C4%3Cnu0mrj

http://images.snapfish.com/34557%3C4723232%7Ffp336%3Enu%3D325%3B%3E475%3E276% 3EWSNRCG%3D3233343773%3C53nu0mrj

http://images.snapfish.com/34557%3C4723232%7Ffp335%3Enu%3D325%3B%3E475%3E276% 3EWSNRCG%3D3233343773%3C55nu0mrj

[wander_woman]

Has anyone used http://www.digi-books.com/books.aspx? They look really nice but are A LOT more expensive than My Publisher/Shutterfly books. Does anyone know if there's a noticeable increase in quality? Is the "Kodak Endura Luster Printing" that they offer better than what My Publisher offers?

[solongtogo]

Try also looking at www.sharedink.com

I've heard fantastic reviews about them...

[jesseybell]

I scanned in about 150 of our pictures. In toll it took about 4 hours. Now I can finally design our coffee table books. If my parents want pictures that aren't in there, then they are going to order them separately from photographer. The MyPublisher books will be enough of a 'brag' book for everyone.

I didn't want to go through my photographer because I want some control how it looks. Plus I haven't been very happy with their post-wedding service.

[Asha]

i got the coffee table book that i ordered from www.shutterfly.com
i ordered one for my parents for a xmas gift. it turned out well. i didn't choose any of the fancier layouts, but that's ok with me. the quality is pretty good too. plus, you can't beat the price.

[Sunshine]

Thanks for this thread!!!!!
I actually JUST saw one of these books the other day and fell in love with it! I am going to check out the places listed!
THANKS!!!:D

[mrstim]

How do you do this in PhotoShop??????

[KarenS]

How do you do this in PhotoShop??????Um. That's kind of asking "How do I cook a 7 course meal?"

Designing a coffee table book in PS is not something that you can just describe in a couple of paragraphs on a message board. Especially when we don't know your level of experience or skill with PS.

Karen

[mrstim]

I guess I should have clarified my question - Revised below:

When you do this in photoshop, do you save the page as a .jpg or .gif file and then upload it and fit to the page, OR do you have a way to upload the photoshop file onto Mypublisher???

Did that help?? :D

[KarenS]

Ah much better! :)

I don't know about mypublisher - but the companies I use ask for you to save it as a high resolution jpeg to upload. I would NOT save a file that you're going to have printed as a gif - too much compression and it drops out colors. Gif is a web presentation format, not a printing format.

Mypublisher should have specifications on their website telling you to update.

Karen

[Chris~n~Jen]

Just to let everyone know. It appears that shutterfly is having a sale on their photobooks right now!

[chortles]

I just ordered books from Mypublisher. Hopefully they'll be worth it! (they have a 50% 0ff coupon).

[nicole]

I know this is an old thread, but I'm trying to hit all the wedding-related threads since I've hit my 6-month anniversary. Hopefully I can help future brides and BTBs too!

I designed and ordered 4 books from My Publisher and I'm very happy with the books I've ordered. The only thing I would recommend is not ordering a dark linen cover. It seems to show every little thing, including finger oils. I did order one leather cover as an experiment and it seems to be well worth the ten bucks.

I'm pretty sure this is our photo book (we ordered 2 for us since we had a BOGO free code, and one for each of our parents). I did design some layouts myself, but only maybe 10 or so? I really like that you have the option of BG colors, and I liked the black a lot better than white.

ETA: I chose My Publisher over Shutterfly because I ordered a small (5x7) book of a vacation from them and didn't like that you couldn't turn off numbered pages and there's a large Shutterfly logo (http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c256/goddessnike13/NWR/IMG_0187small.jpg?t=1174186605) that's visible through the 2nd to last page unless you do a full bleed on that 2nd-to-last page. (the MP one just says mypublisher.com in maybe a 12- or 14-point font.)

http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c256/goddessnike13/NWR/photo-book-an-1.gif?t=1174186012
http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c256/goddessnike13/NWR/photo-book-an-5.gif?t=1174186191
http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c256/goddessnike13/NWR/photo-book-an-3.gif?t=1174186141
http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c256/goddessnike13/NWR/photo-book-an-4.gif?t=1174186184

[QueenDillyDally]

Thanks for bumping this thread nicole! Looks like you got a great book made!

Geez! It's been over TWO years since our wedding and I still haven't had a picture book made yet. :eek: Such a slacker I have been!

Has anyone used SNAPFISH for their coffee book? Just wondering about the quality compared to shutterfly and mypublisher. Most of my photos are on snapfish so it would be easier for me to use.

Another question...
Is there a way to make SCANNED photos come out in a better quality?
I have my prof photographers permission to scan/copy all of our photos (I even have the negatives). But, when I have scanned them onto my computer using my scanner, they come out fuzzier. I *wish* my photographer had done ALL of our pictures in digital. Any ideas? Would it be better quality if I paid a photo company to take the negatives and make them into a digital CD? I am clueless with this stuff. TIA!

[tlew12778]

You can have digital scans done of the negatives at a photo lab. Shop around for price bc I was quoted as much as $3 PER NEGATIVE down to about $.25 per negative. The more expensive place was an actual photographer with a lab, the cheapest place was only a photo lab. There are various types of scanning from what I understant. With some they scan for screen-viewing quality only, while with others, you get print quality scans.

[QueenDillyDally]

You can have digital scans done of the negatives at a photo lab. Shop around for price bc I was quoted as much as $3 PER NEGATIVE down to about $.25 per negative. The more expensive place was an actual photographer with a lab, the cheapest place was only a photo lab. There are various types of scanning from what I understant. With some they scan for screen-viewing quality only, while with others, you get print quality scans.

Thanks! I may just have to do that! Would be soooo much easier (even though more expensive) to just have all my negatives on a photo lab created CD! Talk about heaven! :)

[Smilin13]

Has anyone used SNAPFISH for their coffee book? Just wondering about the quality compared to shutterfly and mypublisher. Most of my photos are on snapfish so it would be easier for me to use.


I can't vouch for the quality....but the program actually is a complete PAIN in THE BUTT!

I spent quite a few hours over quite a few days working with the program, and had nothing but headaches.

I have done a shutterfly book, but haven't ordered it yet....and that program was MUCH easier to use.

:)

[nicole]

I have done a shutterfly book, but haven't ordered it yet....and that program was MUCH easier to use.

ITA with this, Shutterfly's program is a lot easier to use. Snapfish was one giant headache.

[tenofcups]

Has anyone used Blurb? I've read good reviews on other Web sites about it. I'm about 90% done my album from my wedding (from more than a year ago!). Just need to do some final touches and send it off. So far the interface has been *really* easy to work with, but of course I haven't seen the final printed product yet.

[jenji]

I also did our wedding book on Mypublisher and was VERY pleased with the quality. also it was so fast! We also used them to do a coffee table book of vacation pictures that I really love.

[dragonfly28602]

I built mine at shutterfly.com. I am so pleased with the results.