MyPublisher review(ish)

[Gordon]

I recently put together a book using mypublisher.com
It arrived in the post a few days ago so I thought I'd share my experience with y'all

I was at a wedding in Australia, shot a fair bit during the ceremony/ reception as well as several dinners and parties before and after the event, so I had plenty of pictures to choose from and also a fair amount of 'details' in and around the big day. I looked at quite a few options for creating photobooks and settled on Mypublisher because of their PC support and relative quality/ price. (basically the same books as iPhoto uses)

Importing files
I edited/ sized/ processed all the files in photoshop, saving them in the right colour space and size for mypublisher's book creator. Pulled them in without any problems to the book software

Layout
First problem. Their software is quite clunky. Luckily I was backing up the project as I went along because occasionally it would decide to re-sort/ re-layout pages and mess with the flow/ layout I wanted. I suppose this is really a feature for someone who isn't very software literate - it tries to keep you with a workable book- but it was really annoying when I knew how I wanted it laid out.

After a few attempts I got the hang of the software and was able to stop it doing most of what it was trying to do and actually got a layout that I wanted. As discussed in some other posts, you need a lot more photos for these style of books than a traditional album. They lend themselves to having one 'great' photo with several supporting shots along the side and that sort of thing.

Uploading
Second problem. I uploaded the finished book to the mypublisher website. Somewhere along the way it had problems with a couple of the files - dropped them out of the layout and reordered everything in the book. All I got was an 'file error' message during upload. Looking at the book on my system it was shuffled/ reordered and I had no easy way of telling what they were going to print from my order (you can't preview it on their site, only on the host PC) I was able to cancel the order and resubmit (after restoring the book to the previous layout from a backup copy) and get the order in.

The book arrives
They arrive very well packaged - strong box within a shipping box. Good presentation too, nice packaging and inside a plastic sleeve, in the box within a box. They also look fantastic - the print quality is very high (not as great as a chromira or inkjet but very good nonetheless) I am extremely happy with how the photos looked - no major contrast shift, great colour accuracy - basically just what I'd sent them. The linen cover feels good, the window cut has a plastic border that holds things together and looks quite professional. They include a fairly subtle end page at the back of the book with their info on it - I guess I could cut it out but it didn't bother me.

So the end result was great but the assembly process could do with some work. I'm open to other suggestions :) Total book cost for ~30 pages was $50

[Silvernic]

Gordon, I love mypublisher. It allows you to provide a decent album for a lower budget bride while still maintaining your profit margin. I don't think I would count on them as my only album provider, but for people on a budget, I think this is a great option!

[huxley]

im glad things worked out for you in the end... and as you probably already know iphoto is the way to go ... easy, reliable, cheap. so i guess my suggestion is buy a mac?????