Photobook recommendations - where should i get it from?

[TaraQ]

I am thinking of creating a photobook to give to relatives this xmas. Has anyone had experience of creating one? If so, what company did you use and would you recommend it? I want it to be as cheap as poss but of a good quality. I have a bonusprint code but not sure if they are the best company to use. Any advice welcome! x

I used photobox and the quality was fantastic, even photos which themselves weren't very good quality snaps looked great in the book

I've used both Photobox and Snapfish. Both are good - Photobox a little better but often more expensive. Check them both to see what offers they have on - I go back and forth between them depending on the deal I can get.

Thanks both. Will have a look for some voucher codes. x

I use photobox - not the cheapest, but they often do good offers, so I wait for those. I have just got an A4 lay-flat book back (full of landscape photography) and I agree with baubles - the quality is fantastic. Some of the photos were only taken on my mobile (not very high pixel count) and they look amazing! They have a good range of backgrounds/layouts etc.

Albelli blow the socks of everyone else, my second choice is photobox, keep lookling at Groupon, they have loads of offer, Albelli have a FB offer today and I highly recommend them, they are fantastic, pay the extra for the glossy paper.

albelli

DO NOT use minibox, also called Hippo, EVER, they are simply dreadful.

I get mine from truprint / snapfish. I buy one for DH every year of the DDs and him
:)

I've found Lulu.com excellent. They're a self-printing company rather than a photo specialist but I found them cheaper and better than the kodaks and snapfishes of this world.

IIRC the one I did was less than £50 for about 150 A4 pages and a customised hardback cover.

I preferred the layout options too and found the interface easier to manipulate.

Asda is brilliant, very good quality and cheap. Keep meaning to pop in myself, they do personalised wrapping paper and other cool stuff too

timeforachangebaby - I saw the offer, but I wasn't sure about their choice of backgrounds; they seemed very "busy". But maybe that was just a sample on the home page and I need to investigate further.

Also, do you know if their lay-flat books have that nice sort of matt card that photobox do? I don't just want lay-flat binding, I want thick cardboard pages (like a professional wedding album for example). I am so pleased with photobox's one.

I don't know the answers to your questions - re backgrounds I always use either plain or my own photos made opaque (circ 30% transparency).

I will say albelli are highly regarded on photography forums I use - I do a 100 page photobook every 6 months, plus one for every family holiday/very special occasion record family life - and if I could afford it they would all be Albelli.
Photobox are who I mainly use because they have so many groupon deals - but Albelli quality far exceeds anyone else I've used (they are mote expensive though).

The other thing I like about Albelli is the software is downloaded.

Ah, sod it, I've got so many photos, I'll give them a whirl and see what I think!

Noooo!!!! I've downloaded the software and I love it. I'm going to lose hours/days of my life now.

I've sorted out the background thing, it's fine - and better than photobox because I can choose exactly my own shade. And being able to use all my fonts from Word is a huge bonus, too.

The only thing I can't quite work out is where to get the frames from. I usually faff about framing my photos in other software and then downloading them as jpgs in photobox. But I don't seem to have any pre-loaded options.

Oh well, I'm sure I'll work it all out.

There are frames - lots of them - using a part of your own photo is nice (as background), look at their sample wedding one

if you want to make your own photobook at home for free and print at your printing machine you can try www.free-photobook.com/en/home.html