MyPublisher.com FTW!

July 12 2008

Over the long weekend in the States last week, I passed a fair bit of time making physical images out of recent digital photographs.  The effort made for an interesting experiment, as I tried working with three photobook services -- Flickr/QOOP.com, MyPublisher.com, and iPhoto itself on my (daughter's) iMac.  As the subject of the post indicates, MyPublisher.com is the hands-down winner, and here's why.

I was working on the iMac/iPhoto with snaps from three recent trips -- Playa Del Carmen, Mexico, Istanbul and Athens, and Paris and London.  I placed an order with each of these three services at the conclusion of all the deleting, sorting, cropping, and digital manipulation.

Flickr/QOOP: Considering that all of these photos already existed on Flickr, I assumed it would be easy to work with QOOP.com to build some pretty cool albums.  In the end, I discovered that QOOP's choices for photobooks are extremely limited -- in fact, you have absolutely zero ability to manipulate the layout of a book.  It's simply a stream of pictures, in the order in which you determine.  Unfortunately, this isn't apparent until after you finish the process of putting your photos in sequence.  That was a real time suck.

In the end, I still used a Flickr print service.  I ordered individual prints of the photos from Playa del Carmen, delivered via a nearby Target store.  I know there are several vendors that offer this web-to-print service, but it's still a technical marvel to me.  I took my wife to the store about an hour later and just stopped off at the photo desk.  We picked out an album while in the store, and now we have our memories of Mexico.

I think QOOP has some interesting photo products, including canvas prints.  But the photobook experience was disappointing, and I'm not sure how quickly I'll try again.

Apple iPhoto:  As with all things Apple, iPhoto's book-ordering service is very sleek and easy to use.  The one-click purchase option, tied to your existing Apple.com account, is a nice bonus.  The downside is that you have relatively few page layout options, and sometimes iPhoto thinks it is smarter than you in working with layout.  As I mentioned the last time I blogged on this topic, the production output from that first use was sub-optimal, and it took a lot of extra effort to "warm up" the photos in the album.  I had already done a fair bit of work with my Istanbul photos to make them look their digital best, so I decided to give Apple one more shot and click "order".  I'll update this post early in the week when the actual book arrives... even though it was ordered the same day as the MyPublisher book (below), it's not here yet.
Update: Well, it's here.  Some of the pictures look surprisingly grainy (shot at 6 MP), and a few appear to have uneven color application (clear blue sky has different shades).  The paper feels damp (perhaps because the shipping box sat in a FedEx delivery truck all weekend).  Overall, I'm unimpressed, again.

MyPublisher.com: My wife and I have used MyPublisher.com before, and when it came time to build our Paris and London album, there was no question of which site I was going to use.  MyPublisher.com has an extensive list of book design choices, both hardcover and paper-bound.  For the pages themselves, a near-limitless set of layouts exist, including some interesting montages.  The software is incredibly easy to use, offers a constant navigation tool, and is available for Windows and Mac.

Also, while re-ordering a project on iPhoto involves re-uploading it, MyPublisher.com keeps the uploaded album online.  In fact, if you'd like to see my finished Paris and London album, you can click here.



Image:MyPublisher.com FTW!



The album arrived on Thursday and I was totally impressed, again.  

MyPublisher.com often e-mails coupons and discounts, further drawing you back to using the service.  I'm sure in the next few weeks, as I catch up on some more printing needs, I'll be back on MyPublisher.com.

Ed Brill | Highland Park, IL USA Category:  Travel  Add/View Comments [18]

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  1. 1  Kathleen McGivney http://kmcgivney.typepad.com | 7/12/2008 7:50:55 PM

    I also love MyPublisher.com. We have used them twice to print books of our first trip to Italy and found the layout options, product quality, and production speed to be amazing. We've ordered hardcover books and had them in our hands in 4 days. In fact, we like them so much that we're using them to print our wedding albums.

    I wish they'd send me a new discount code though, since I have to print a bunch of stuff soon!

  1. 2  Jess Stratton http://www.momelettes.com | 7/12/2008 7:53:21 PM

    Here's one I thought was cool (though I haven't personally used their services): { Link }

    Apparently you can order an entire photo hardback book of your blog, which I thought was pretty cool. You import the entries, tell it whether you want comments or not, and choose the layout with all the photos.

  1. 3  Tim Leach  | 7/13/2008 2:14:59 AM

    Well done, Ed - there are some really beautiful photographs in your London/Paris album.

    It's not one of the better known things to see in Paris, but aren't the catacombs in Paris fascinating? Apart from the extraordinary number of bones and skulls and the intricate way that they're piled up, I love the morbid and sobering inscriptions left there by the men who moved all of the remains from the cemetries.

  1. 4  Dvir Reznik http://dvirreznik.blogspot.com | 7/13/2008 4:09:50 AM

    Ed,

    There's another print service which is very popular in Israel, called lupa.co.il ({ Link } They have a very intuitive software, that allows everyone to create a photo album based on existing templates, send to the company and get the finished results by mail. I've contacted their customer service to understand if English is supported.

    Dvir.

  1. 5  Curt Carlson  | 7/13/2008 5:48:00 AM

    I use shutterfly to create my photo books. I like it because the tools are all web based, (no software to install) and there are lots of choices for page layouts. Creating any project at shutterfly is quick and painless, of course, it helps if you use them to store/display your photos.

    Curt

  1. 6  Suzanne Minassian http://minassian.wordpress.com | 7/13/2008 12:53:30 PM

    Ed, this totally saved me. I recently had a party for my mom & dad's anniversary ({ Link } ) and used the Ritz Camera online-print-to-store-pickup option for a group shot we were sending out as thank yous. As a follow on we wanted to make an album of the photos for mom & dad. I'm definitely going to check out mypublisher - your book came out beautiful. Well done and thanks for the tip.

  1. 7  Lars Olufsen http://www.olufsphere.com | 7/13/2008 4:16:17 PM

    That's a neat service!

    Do any of you know of a similar service in Europe? When shopping online in the US, we danes get hit with some NASTY taxes, close to 180% all-in-all. That kinda kills the business case.

  1. 8  Ian White http://www.computerweekly.com/blogs/IT-collaboration-technology-blog/ | 7/13/2008 5:39:53 PM

    I have used the iphoto option quite a lot and have been impressed but I do agree re warming the pictures. Can you say what the comparative cost is?

    Ian

  1. 9  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 7/13/2008 9:16:36 PM

    @8 I think in the end, MyPublisher.com is slightly cheaper than iPhoto for a similar number of pages, especially with their frequent promotions. They automatically give you a "discount" for orders over US$50, but coupons can give you more. Also, if you look through my Paris/London album, at the very end, you might get an offer for a free album ("for new customers").

  1. 10  Ben Rose http://www.jaffacake.net | 7/14/2008 9:16:28 AM

    @7 Lars,

    If you follow the link to Ed's album, you will see clear links to mypublisher.com EU and UK on the bottom right of the page.

  1. 11  Loretta Golby  | 7/14/2008 9:26:45 AM

    Hi Ed,

    Great book.. I was wondering if you ever used Blurb { Link } (thought I got the name from your blog in January) and how it compares to these others? I have been happy with the books from Blurb that I have done.

  1. 12  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 7/14/2008 9:35:07 AM

    @11 Blurb was mentioned in a Twitter response to this blog... I guess I will try them out for the next effort... :)

  1. 13  Kevin Mort http://www.theglobalmind.com | 7/14/2008 10:54:17 AM

    Interesting. I've been looking at some services like this, and Mpix is one that I see in Popular Photography each month.

    I'll have to take a look at MyPublisher as well.

  1. 14  Jackie  | 7/15/2008 12:07:28 PM

    I used MyPublisher for books for my mom, mother-in-law, and grandmother-in-law for mother's day and they absolutely LOVED them! Slick and professional looking.

    But I was also recently told about another site that has even more flexibility - picaboo.com. Appears to be comparable in price (for the 20 page minimum anyway - their additional pages are more) and also sends coupons every month or two. Same idea - download a client, drop in your pictures, and choose layouts and backgrounds. The difference is even MORE layouts and TONS of backgrounds. I'm designing a baby book for my twins and found MyPublisher too restrictive since their baby layouts are only all pink or all blue (I guess they never thought about boy/girl twins). They also have a nice way to see all your pictures and set the flow before actually building the book. I only just wish you could go back to that flow and set single pictures in different places.

  1. 15  Michelle  | 7/26/2008 4:33:32 PM

    Hey check out OurHubbub.com… There's a great selection – fun – fast and easy! Also, it's all online with no software needed!

  1. 16  In the know  | 8/4/2008 12:42:06 PM

    Nice layout and photos. I particularly like the architectural upshot photos.

    MyPublisher.com is great. I've only used it once. My kids put together a memorial book for a childhood friend who was in the military. The kids completed putting together the book three or four days before his birthday and wanted to have it in time to his mother since it was his first birthday since his death and knew this would be of some comfort to her. We didn't think it would get back in time since they had it shipped standard mail (they couldn't afford the extra for overnight). The books arrived within a day and half from the time the order was placed. The book looked great and the mother cried when she saw it. Thanks MyPublisher.

  1. 17  JCW  | 11/14/2008 6:49:13 PM

    I've had TERRIBLE customer service from mypublisher. I easily created a book but for some odd reason the "purchase" button doesn't show up on my computer, and I've been trying to get help for about 2 weeks. I keep getting bounced from one person to another at customer support, and have been promised that someone from tech support would contact me, but am still waiting. Very frustrating! I keep telling them that I want to give them my money, but they don't seem very responsive - odd.