Photo Books and other Items from Digital Photographs
One of the cool things about digital photography is the ease with which your photographs can be shared online. But you can also use that online connection to send your images to companies that will turn them into high-quality photo books, calendars, cards, mugs and other "real" items.
We've tried creating photo books using several of the popular online services - and, amazingly, had good results with all of them.
Photoworks.com
is one of our favorites and they offer one of the wider varieties of products. Creating a book at Photoworks is a fairly painless process, with all the work done from within your web browser. Books can be made in four different sizes, we especially like the "medium" size with the ability to put a photo on a glossy cover. Calendars can be made in four different sizes including 12" x 7"
and 10" x 14"
. And, if you're looking for prints of a higher quality that what you're getting from your home printer, Photoworks offers digital prints
at sizes ranging from 3.5" x 5" all the way up to 24" x 36" - and at reasonable prices. (If you create some "sale-worthy" items, you can even create an online storefront and set your own prices!)
Picaboo.com only does photobooks, but they do them very well. Their book creation process can be a little easier than Photoworks, you download some software, run it on your PC to create books, then upload the books to Picaboo for prints. It can be a bit easier than working with a web-based interface. They have two different sizes, 8" x 6" and 11" x 8.5", with both available in hardcover and a softcover version available for the smaller size. Not as glitzy as some of the options at Photoworks, but still nice books that are built to last a long time.
We recently discovered Blurb.com and we're looking forward to testing out some of their options. They're all about books and offer them in four different page sizes (10" x 8", 8" x 10", 7" x 7", 13" x 11"). And, if you're willing to pay the price, you can go crazy and make books of up to 440 pages! Or as little as 20-40 at much more reasonable rates. There are professionally bound softcover and hardcover options, with a dust jacket you design on the hardcover books! For professionals (and pro-wannabes), they also offer a bookstore option to sell books at prices you set. Blurb's "Booksmart" book creation software is free to download and easy to use.
