Saying 'Hello!' to my first photo books (From Photobook Singapore)

I'm very new to photo books.

So, let's hear a little bit about my story, shall we?

I've heard about them from friends, seen them on promotion at fairs, and saw quite a few photo books my cousin-in-law made. They are lovely, I must admit. And space-saving.

But I was not a photo book kind of person. Well, at least until I came to accept the fact that I probably would not have enough space in my house to store all the photo albums with 4R prints. Much as I love 4R prints (mainly due to my fears of photo books being ruined by little hands. Or clumsy hands. Just sayin'.) one has got to be practical.

So I puckered up my courage and went ahead to purchase 4 vouchers on Photobook Singapore because they were on sale. 

A whopping 75% discount!

That meant that instead of the usual $100+ per book of 40 pages, it's now $30 + $10 shipping for one book. What a great deal!

And what a bad idea to purchase 4 vouchers at one shot. We'll come to that later. 

Probably in another post.

After all the blunders I've made, and I wished someone had told me about them earlier (but no one did because either I didn't tell them about me making photo books, or those are some really stupid mistakes probably no one makes), I finally created three photo books for my honeymoon that I'm pretty pleased about. My fourth book is on the way!

First Look

Within a week after I placed my order, a very nice DHL uncle knocked on my door and I received a slim little package.
This.

He asked, "You only ordered one? I had people who ordered fifteen at one shot!"

That was my test copy. More will come later, uncle! :)

I assume that each book will come in a separate box since we have to order the books separately unless they are copies of the same book.
I haven't figured out how to save on shipping yet.

I love how the book is wrapped.
Simple. Clean, Neat.

The print and quality

After we figure out that we should toggle the brightness setting on our computer and not blame Photobook Singapore for it, our photos actually came out pretty vibrant.

I did wish that the photos turn out a little sharper, but it could be my choice of papers.
Or my camera settings.

But the print quality isn't bad!
I just wished I had taken better photos.

The software. And some ideas.
To be honest, the software is quite intuitive and pretty easy to use.
I love that you can add scrapbooking elements into your photo book and spruce the book up a little.
Or, better still, import your own .png images or vectors.
I found some free ones from Angie Makes, and they are gorgeous.

No complaints about the software, really. Unless, you make silly mistakes like I did initially and boy, I got quite frustrated.
Then again, my fault for not reading the user guide carefully.
More on that later too.
Maybe I should really write a separate post on it.

Now a little tip.
It was near the voucher's expiry date, so I was rushing and pulling my hair, going
"You mean I can't even draw a rectangle? Or a line? Seriously?"
Nope, I found out later that, well, you can!

There is an "insert shape box" option on the menu bar.

This is really useful for masking photos that I want to show, but not focus.

We can adjust the transparency of the shape box too.

For instance, I really wanted this photo because it shows "Stadt /City".

I like little details like this from travel.

But other than the sign, there was nothing much about this photo I want to keep. And I needed space on the page to indicate that this is Füssen.

So, I added a shape box over the photo and adjusted it's transparency, and there!
The photo is included in the book but it is subtle.

I used the same technique for the first page of my photo book, which is the same throughout all the three books, because I have no idea what photos should be on a prominent page like this. It indicates the places we 'visited' in each book.

The Husband will probably not understand the waste of space. Perhaps like he always says, it's just me. But this does give the three books a little continuity and flow, no?


Something sweet.
Photobook Singapore allows an extension of 21 days, which is great for people like me who buys vouchers but are unable to complete the projects in time. This can be only activated 7 days prior to the expiration of the vouchers.

I don't know if other companies does it too but I think this was really a sweet gesture on their part.
They didn't have to!



Now a quick summary.

• My maiden experience creating photo books was with Photobook Singapore.
• I made a few blunders but it was overall, a wonderful experience.
• Photobook Singapore is fast. (Less than 7 days!) They are printed in Malaysia so I guessed that helped too.
• The quality is pretty good.
• The software, easy to use. Somehow even easier on the Mac.
• I somehow ended up with a trilogy. Well, sort of.

Edited:

When I uploaded my photobooks for printing at night, (usually after midnight), it took me about 1.5 hours. Dreary when I really needed sleep. For one of the books, I uploaded it in the morning and it was done within 20 minutes! Not sure if that made a difference but for my next books, I'm going to attempt uploading them in the morning.