MyPublisher Photo Book Review

I don't get it. I've seen numerous conversations on the web comparing Shutterfly and MyPublisher, and it seems like the people with the strongest opinions are always those who like MyPublisher better.

I don't like MyPublisher.

I've tried to like MyPublisher. I really have. I've made two photo books with them. The first was our family's "2010" year book, and the second was a Christmas present for my sister last year. I just really really don't like working with their software. It's a program that you download to your computer. You assemble the photo book offline, then order it and upload it to their website.

Software faults:

• Customization is annoying. To change the location of photos or text on the page, you have to drag the photo box with your mouse. You cannot inch it along with the arrow keys on the keyboard. Because you have to drag it, you cannot be extremely accurate - you have the limitations of screen size and mouse dexterity. It's hard to get things to line up properly.
• There's a huge lack of background choices, themes, and frames. You're very limited in your choices.
• Some layouts, if they're part of a theme, are locked and cannot be customized. There's no reason given or any logic in this, it's just how it is. Some layouts, seemingly at random, just can't be altered.

Additionally, the order process is backward. You make your order first, and then you upload your book to their website. (Remember, you create the book in a program on your computer, not on the internet). This arrangement - ordering before uploading - opens the ordering process up to error and frustration. What if you order the book, and the order goes through, but then the book does not upload? You've already purchased the book, and now it can't be uploaded? It makes far more sense to upload the book first, and then place orders.

Other things I don't like about MyPublisher:

• Shipping is expensive.
• Several pages printed unexpectedly dark.
• You can't order different books at the same time; just multiple copies of the same book.
• Their deals aren't great. They often have a "buy one get one free" deal going on, but it's for two copies of the same book. And I don't need two copies. I just want one discounted copy. The best deal I have found for them that comes up occasionally is through Photobook Girl. She will sometimes have a code where you can get up to 70 extra pages free - and pages usually cost $1 each. So you can get a 100 page book for $35 (plus the ridiculous $12 shipping. That's $3 more for shipping than Shutterfly charges for exactly the same size book).

Anyway, with all that said, the book itself is pretty good. I got the "layflat pages" option and that turned out really cool. Here's the "2010" book that I ordered from them:

Nice cover - I like that the picture stretches all the way to the spine. I wish they had more cover layout options, though. They didn't have very many.

The inside has a nice gray end sheet and then a nice vellum cover page:

Here's one of the couple pictures that printed unexpectedly dark - and it stinks that it's the front page. On my computer, Jason was bright and easily seen. In the book, he's very dark. I know that if I had printed this with Shutterfly, Jason would have printed brighter and much closer to what I saw on my screen. I've never had problems with pictures printing dark with Shutterfly - and so was surprised when it happened a couple times in this MyPublisher book. 

Here's an example of  a layout (note how flat the pages are):

 Another view of how flat the pages are:

Here's another problem I had - the words were cut off here. This one was probably my fault; I'm guessing I ignored some warning or something. But I was surprised when I saw it. In Shutterfly, I definitely know when I'm ignoring their warnings - they make it obvious and remind me like three times. In this book, I don't remember ignoring the warning (although I bet there probably was one).

Some more layouts:

 Another example of how flat the pages are:

The back cover (again, I like how the picture stretches all the way across):

The spine. The one fault with the cover pictures running all the way to the spine is that it makes the spine look kind of funky, because you can see the front and back covers next to the white spine even when the book is on the shelf. (Instead of just seeing the white spine with words.) Maybe it looks more normal if you order a 20-page book, and they just didn't adjust spine width for a 100-page book? I'm not sure, but the spine looks a little funny to me when the book is on the shelf:

Paper quality: Excellent

Binding: Excellent. I got the layflat pages, and think they turned out really cool. Plus, the binding is nice and strong.

Print quality: Very good, except for the couple pictures that turned out unexpectedly dark.

Price: With the deal I got (free pages), I did save quite a bit - it was like $35 + $12 shipping for a 100 page book. So, not bad. But the expensive shipping is ridiculous. It doesn't need to be that much. And I don't like how most of their deals are "buy one get one free" of the same book. I don't need two copies of the same book. I just want one, cheaper book.

Sorry, this turned out way more negative than I was planning! I want to reiterate that I do like the book. I just don't like working with the software. But the book itself is very good, with just a few minor faults. Overall, I'd recommend MyPublisher, especially if you don't mind their software and the price is okay for you.

To see my other photo book reviews, check out the posts below:

Shutterfly Photo Book Review
Shutterfly Premium Leather Layflat Photo Book Review
Shutterfly Calendar Review
York Photo Photo Book Review
AdoramaPix Photo Book Review
Collage.com Photo Book Review
Photo Book Comparisons

Shutterfly Premium Layflat Photo Book Review

This year I finally finished making our wedding album. It only took three years to put together, haha. :)

One of the reasons it took me so long to make this book is that it took me a long time to decide which photo book company to use. I knew that I wanted layflat pages, and when I first started planning this book there were only a few companies that offered that feature. (This picture is a good explanation of what layflat pages are.)

Two companies that I seriously considered were AdoramaPix and MyPublisher. I ordered different layflat photo book projects from each company to test them out. I decided against AdoramaPix because of the page constraints (you can only order very specific amounts of pages, and 76 pages was the most you could order) and the real photo paper in the books which, while very nice, wasn't as clear and sharp as I wanted. (You can read my whole AdoramaPix review here.)  I decided against MyPublisher because of the gutter in between the layflat pages and because some of the pictures in the album printed unexpectedly dark.

While I was trying to decided which company to use, Shutterfly came out with their Premium Leather photo books with layflat pages. At the same time, they upped the maximum number of pages per photo book from 100 pages to 111 pages. I had used Shutterfly many times before (you can see my big review of Shutterfly here), was very familiar with their software and print quality, and was really excited to see these new options. Once they came out with their layflat pages, it didn't take long before I decided to make my wedding album with them. So I did, and I'm very happy overall with the finished product.

Here are my thoughts on all the different aspects of the book:

Cover
I love the black leather cover with the stitching around the edges. For all of my other photobooks I have hard image covers (which I also love), but for this special album, our wedding album, it's really nice to have a classic, leather cover.

Paper
The paper used in this book is much thicker than in regular Shutterfly albums. It's double-thick; the way the book is constructed is that each page is glued back-to-back with the next page. It looks great, feels great, and has gives the book a gravitas appropriate for a wedding album.

Picture Quality
Great! Very clear and bright. Good as or better than the pictures in a normal Shutterfly book. Like with my regular Shutterfly books, I didn't have to lighten my pictures more than normal before putting them into the book. (Other companies, like MyPublisher, I would have had to make the pictures extra-bright for them to print bright enough in the book.)

Binding
Here's where I ran into problems with this book. I ordered two copies of the book - one for us and one for my parents - and both copies' bindings broke after short-term, gentle use. How the binding is constructed is that the pages are glued back to back to back to back through the whole book, and then to the covers on either end. The pages are not attached to the spine, just to each other. This probably would not be a problem in a smaller book, such as if you stuck to the basic 20-page book. But Shutterfly allows you to go up to 111 pages, and I took advantage of that fact and used the entire 111 pages. And I think that this type of construction simply cannot support the weight of 111 double-thick pages glued back to back to back. In each of the books, the binding broke when pages pulled away from each other where they were glued together. In one book, this happened to pages in the middle of the book; in the other book, it happened where the pages were attached to the cover.

To Shutterfly's credit, customer service was awesome when I contacted them about this problem. They reprinted and shipped, without charge, a new copy of each book. However, I definitely think anyone planning on making a layflat book with Shutterfly should be aware of this potential problem. The more pages you add to the book, the heavier the pages will be all together, and the more likely they'll pull away from each other and you'll run into this sort of problem.

Here are a couple more pictures of the book!

You can see how flat the pages actually lie:

 

And with the layflat pages, you can do cool, uninterrupted two page spreads. I did two in my book, one of our dessert table and one of the big group shot:

Here's right where the middle crease is. No gutter, just straight across:

Here's a picture of the spine. You can see on the bottom right where two pages are peeling apart from each other; that's the weakness I talked about above.

Here's the thickness of the 111-page premium layflat book compared to a regular 111-page book:

And compared to a regular 20-page book:

And, in case you want to see what all the different pages in the book look like and what kind of layouts I used, here's the whole book:

Click here to view this photo book larger

Because of the binding issue, if I were to make another layflat book with Shutterfly, I wouldn't go much higher than the standard 20 pages. A hundred and eleven pages, while an available option, doesn't seem like it's really able to handle the layflat format. It's just too thick and heavy and the binding on the pages pull away from each other. If Shutterfly improves this in the future and somehow makes the binding more sturdy, I might consider making another large layflat book.

But, like I said, I'm very happy overall with the book. I'm just being very careful with the new, unbroken copy that Shutterfly sent me so that its binding remains intact.

And that's what I thought of Shutterfly's premium leather layflat photo book option!

To check out more of my photo book reviews, check out these posts:

Shutterfly Photo Book Review
Shutterfly Calendar Review
York Photo Photo Book Review
MyPublisher Photo Book Review
AdoramaPix Photo Book Review
Collage.com Photo Book Review 
Photo Book Comparisons

Shutterfly Photo Book Review

I will never get tired of talking about photo books - I just love them. I could talk about them for hours. I think they are such a great way to get the pictures out of my camera and computer and into a format that my family can enjoy. And, lucky for me, I have a husband with infinite patience who will listen to me talk about them every day, all day long.

I've been making photo books since 2010. I don't remember how I first learned about them, but I do know the first company I really knew the name of was Shutterfly, and they were the place I went to when I wanted to make one. The first photo book I made was an 8x8 book of our honeymoon, for Jason for his birthday. When it came, I think I liked it even more than he did. (Man, I'm like those people that give golf clubs or something to their spouse, when their spouse doesn't golf and they do.)

During the rest of 2010 I made a few more 8x8 books, but in 2011 didn't really do anything with photo books until the end of the year. That's I got bit by the "record my personal history" bug - and I've never recovered. I decided that I wanted to document my entire life in photobooks, and I've been working on that since.

At some point, I researched all the photo book companies (either in 2010 or 2011), and decided to stick with Shutterfly for most of my projects because they seemed like the best fit for me in quality and price. (To see the different reviews I read, check out this post: Photobook Comparisons.) In total, I've made fifteen books with Shutterfly, and I thought it was high time I finally wrote a review on them. So, bear with me for how long this post is - I guess I've got a lot to share after having made so many Shutterfly books!

Shutterfly

Website: www.shutterfly.com
Number of photo books I've made with Shutterfly: 15

Software

For the most part,  the software is fine. It can be buggy, and there are some improvements I'd like to see made, but overall it's not at all bad to work with. You upload your pictures to the Shutterfly site and work on your book online, so you can access it from any computer (which is great). They have a large selection of page layouts, backgrounds, and embellishments. On top of that, you can fully customize each page's layout until everything is just where you want it, in the dimensions that you want it. One thing I wish Shutterfly would implement, though, is being able to save your custom layouts. Some layouts I alter in similar ways over and over again - I'd like to be able to save it so I could just select my customized layout without having to do it all over again. But, overall, the software is just fine.

Paper Quality

Very good. I've always liked Shutterfly's paper; it's nice and thick, and I've never noticed any bleed-through (being able to see the picture on the other side of the page). It's good paper.

Photo Quality

Shutterfly's photo quality is very good. In the earlier books (the ones I made in 2010), the pictures were more grainy, but they seem to have gotten better over time. The pictures are very clear and bright. With other photo companies, I've had problems with the pictures sometimes turning out too dark, but I've never had that problem with Shutterfly. With those companies, I now know I have to brighten images before uploading them to the software. With Shutterfly, I don't have to worry about that. I know it's hard to illustrate printing quality with a picture of a picture, but here's an attempt:

Nice, bright, and clear.

This is the first book I made, printed in 2010. You can tell (or at least my very picky eyes can) that the picture's a bit more grainy. 

Printed earlier this year (2013) - nice and clear.

Binding

Shutterfly's binding is good, but it can look a little bit different on every book you get. Here's the binding on a bunch of the books compared; I'll give you the page number and dimensions.

20-page 8x8 book:

20 page 8x8 book:

111-page 8x11 book:

20-page 8x11  book:

52-page 8x11 book:

20-page 8x8 book:

The binding on the four 8x11s:

And five 8x8s:

I have had a problem with the binding before, but it was successfully resolved by customer service. Last year, I ordered a 20 page 8x8 book. When the book arrived and I was flipping through the pages, I noticed that I could see right down to the glue between two of the middle pages. You shouldn't be able to see that - usually the pages are tight enough that it would take real effort to see down that far. But there it was. The pages seemed very vulnerable along that seem - they laid too flat and seemed like they could come off really easily. Here's a picture I took at the time:

So, I contacted Shutterfly customer service and explained the problem - and they offered to send me a free new copy of the book, with free 2-day shipping! I was very impressed with their customer service, and when the new book came it had no problems with the binding. So my take-away message with the binding is this: in general, it's very good. And on the occasions that, for some reason, it isn't good, customer service will replace your book with no hassle.

Cover

The cover quality at Shutterfly is very good. I always go for the regular hardcover. They have a couple different options - softcover, matte, padded, cloth, leather - that I haven't tried and I'm not likely to. I have done the premium leather cover for my layflat wedding album, but that's something I'm reviewing next month and I'll talk about it then.

Here are the covers of my 8x11s:

I do wish Shutterfly offered more cover layouts in their software. You can customize the layouts - add more pictures, move things around, etc - and while I don't mind doing that with the inside page layouts, I'd like to have some more ready-made cover options for the covers available. For some reason, they don't offer the "Get more layouts" option in the software for the cover like they do for the inside pages. You either have to choose from one of their smallish selection of cover layouts, or go into customization. I don't know why they just don't offer the same, full selection of layouts for the cover that they do for the inside pages.

Here are the spines:

And the backs:

And the 8x8s:

Book Sizes

Shutterfly offers a lot of sizes of photo books. They recently added a couple more, and now have (height x width) 5x7, 7x9, 8x8, 8x11, 10x10, 12x12, and 11x14 photo books.  I've always made 8x8 or 8x11 books. When I first started making photo books, I always made the 8x8 size because they're cheaper and Shutterfly often has "free 8x8 book" promotions. But before I made my Girls' Camp book, I did some calculations and realized that 8x11 books (which are actually 8.75x11) had 96.25 square inches of space per page vs. 64 inches per page in the 8x8 books - and that's a big difference! For a 20-page book, you get 645 more square inches to put pictures on. And ever since I made and received my first 8x11 book, I definitely prefer that size. I still make 8x8 books sometimes - they're great gifts, and they're a good size for a "single event" (one birthday, or photoshoot, or vacation) type of book. But for the types of books I usually make (year reviews and the like), 8x11s work better.

Here's an 8x8 book compared to an 8x11 (really 8.75x11) book:

Page Layouts

Shutterfly offers a very large selection of page layouts, and full customization on top of that. I use the customization feature pretty often, to nudge pictures and text around or to change dimensions and sizes of pictures.

Here are all of the page layouts in some of my 8x11 books, and the layouts of some of my 8x8 books. You can flip through the pages by clicking the buttons. (For mobile users - I don't think the embedded widget will work for you guys. I'll post a couple regular pictures of layouts after these widget things.)

My "Girls' Camp" photo book, the first 8x11 I ever made:

                                        Click here to view this photo book larger

Below is the book that covers my junior year at BYU, the year Jason and I were engaged. I went more "digital scrapbooking" with this book, creating my own layouts in Photoshop, using my own backgrounds, and then uploading them to Shutterfly. I like how the book turned out, but I'm still more of a just-do-it-all-on-the-website type of person:

                                       Click here to view this photo book larger

And here's my "Freshman and Sophomore Years at BYU" book. I think this one might be my very favorite of all:

                                 Click here to view this photo book larger

Some 8x8 layouts:

                                        Click here to view this photo book larger

                                   Click here to view this photo book larger

For the mobile users: Here are a couple 8x11 layouts -

And a couple 8x8 layouts:

Page Count

Shutterfly books start at 20 pages and can go up to 111 pages. Additional pages have an additional price per page (which is different based on the dimensions of the book you're making). When books go on sale, extra pages go on sale too.

Here's the thickness of a 20-page 8x11 book compared to a 111-page 8x11 book:

Price

Shutterfly is very reasonably priced, if you buy order your books during their sales and use special offer codes. I've gotten really, really good deals by stacking special offer codes and sale prices.

Things I've learned over the course of making so many Shutterfly photobooks:

• I personally prefer the 8x11 size. I can fit more pictures on each page and I like the layouts better. I like the size in my hands and on my shelf.
• In general, I prefer more pictures on a page vs. less. It's just how I like to tell the story. I made my first couple books intuitively like this, but then after reading a lot of reviews on the website Photobookgirl and her saying that she recommends not putting more than 6 pictures per page, I began to question my methods. "Maybe I should be putting less," I thought. "That way each picture will get more attention." So that's what I did with the "First Half of 2011" book that I made this year - I spaced out the pictures a lot more and put less on each page. And you know what? When I finished, ordered, and received that photobook, I liked those layouts the least of all. That's just not my style. I've learned just to trust my instincts about what I think looks good. And that's what you should do, too - trust what you like.
• Feel free to use as many pages as you need to tell the story. When I first started making photo books, I felt very constrained about making sure I didn't go over the first 20 pages, because I didn't want to pay for each additional page. But you know what? The extra pages are worth it. And they're usually on sale, and don't cost that much anyway. Just this week, by stacking several deals, I got an 82-page 8x11 book for $18.77, including shipping. Just do it. Just use as many pages as you want. It's worth it.
• To get the best prices: Always, always, always wait for a sale. Sign your email up with Shutterfly so that you get their coupons and special codes in your email. Search online for promo codes before you order anything. Like them on Facebook so you see the deals they post to their Facebook page. When I buy Shutterfly books, it's almost always with at least one special offer code AND during a sale, so that the offers stack on top of each other.

Whew! That was one long review. If you have any questions about Shutterfly or my experience with them, feel free to ask! Happy photo book making!

To check out more of my photo book reviews, check out these posts:

Shutterfly Premium Leather Layflat Photo Book Review
Shutterfly Calendar Review
York Photo Photo Book Review
MyPublisher Photo Book Review
AdoramaPix Photo Book Review
Collage.com Photo Book Review
Photo Book Comparisons