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Digital Media Core: Photo books and calendars

Dec. 31, 2007 Paul Thurrott | Paul Thurrott's Supersite for Windows

Following up on my slightly neglected "Digital Media Core" series, I'm investigating PC-based services that offer such things as photo calendars, photo books, and other photo-related gifts. To date, I've never seen anything as nice as iPhoto on the PC side (though to be fair, iPhoto is scream-out-loud-frustrating sometimes too). I've looked at some of the newer stuff like Blurb, but I'm just not impressed. Any thoughts on this? Has anyone made a particularly nice photo book or calendar on the PC this holiday season, and can recommend the application/service they used?

Thanks! --Paul

Discuss this Article 9

jono1
on Dec 31, 2007
A photography blog I subscribe to posted a quick comparison of photo book services a while back - http://photodoto.com/index.php/2007/12/14/photo-book-buying-guide/. Of these I've tried Shutterfly and Blurb. Shutterfly, being an online service was hideously slow. They had a "quick photo upload plugin" but it was for Netscape, and when I downloaded it just to see if it would work, the installer looked like it came straight from the early 90's (blue-black gradient background etc). I've recently been playing with the blurb program and so far it's quite pleasant to use, although it has crashed once.
ajgelado
on Dec 31, 2007
I've made a photobook of my younger nephew's baptism this Chistmas, using Blurb. The software's user interface is well designed and simple to use, but it is really restraining sometimes (you *should* be able to create your own layouts, for example), and its Java implementation makes it really slow, memory hungry and a bit unstable (thanks to God, it has an autosave feature). Other than that, the web is clear enough explaining the different options available and their limits (if any), shipping is quite fast (the book arrived in just three days to Spain in the middle of Christmas shopping season), and print quality is quite fair, perhaps a bit on the dark side. I'd recommend it for anybody, if you have a powerful enough computer (2 Ghz and 512 Mb of RAM or more for XP, 2 Gb for Vista).
ajgelado
on Dec 31, 2007
I've made a photobook of my younger nephew's baptism this Chistmas, using Blurb. The software's user interface is well designed and simple to use, but it is really restraining sometimes (you *should* be able to create your own layouts, for example), and its Java implementation makes it really slow, memory hungry and a bit unstable (thanks to God, it has an autosave feature). Other than that, the web is clear enough explaining the different options available and their limits (if any), shipping is quite fast (the book arrived in just three days to Spain in the middle of Christmas shopping season), and print quality is quite fair, perhaps a bit on the dark side. I'd recommend it for anybody, if you have a powerful enough computer (2 Ghz and 512 Mb of RAM or more for XP, 2 Gb for Vista).
betsig250
on Dec 31, 2007
My wife has used Shutterfly the last 2 years for calenders and photo books that were used as x-mas presents. I was skeptical at first but after seeing the quality I was quite impressed. Best of all I am the geek in the house and my wife is very illiterate in the tech business but she was able to create these no problem and I impressed in the long run.
bucifan
on Jan 1, 2008
I used Picaboo to create a photo album for my wife for Christmas. I must admit that I do not have enough experience with other products to provide pro's and cons, but I was pleased with the tool! I liked that it was a client based app and that I could save the album and work on it in small timeslots. I do recall that I wish it had more page backgrounds. Hope this is helpful
bonoriffic
on Jan 1, 2008
I used mypublisher.com and was pleased with quality and delivery time. I used it because your first book is buy one get one free. I found the page layout options to be good, but picaboo seemed to be more customizable.
pthurrott
on Jan 2, 2008
Thanks everyone. I will check all of these out. Paul
DRWAM
on Jan 2, 2008
Paul, my wife agrees that you should sell your avatar pic to Folgers. Each time that I see it, I want a cup of coffee!
joedonh
on Jan 3, 2008
My wife has been using Zazzle to sell customized items for her business for a bit and has been quite pleased: http://www.zazzle.com/ It's in the same vein as CafePress where you can create and sell your own designs, but their online creation tools are much easier and nicer to work with, and there are no minimums on orders (and you don't get hit with high rates for ordering small quantities), so you can use it as a quick way to throw together photo-related gifts.

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