For the past few years I have printed my photobooks at Persnickety.
It was expensive (and complicated by the fact that they don't post photobooks internationally) but the quality was great and, most importantly, they offered the 10" x 10" size I now always use.
(It's the size Goldilocks would love: not too small for multi-photo pages like 8 x 8 and not too big and cumbersome like 12 x 12.)
Unfortunately, Persnickety (now run by LifePics) no longer offers that size so I will no longer be using them.
So I was "forced" to return to Shutterfly for the first time in years, since they do now offer 10" x 10". I printed two albums there in the past month.
The first was the album of our trip to Singapore and the United Kingdom.
For the cover I chose a photo of the Thames (we had glorious winter weather when we were there) and ran a "cut out" artistic filter on it.
For the inside pages I used a combination of these photobook templates from Designer Digitals (different for each leg of the trip)
Some of the pages from that album:
The second album was our 2014 month-by-month summary album.
For this I used the Modular Album templates from Designer Digitals:
Some of the pages from that album:
Are Shutterfly glossy pages worth the extra $10?
I opted to pay the extra $10 for glossy pages for the travel album, but in the interests of comparison I just went for the usual pages for the month-by-month album.
When the travel album arrived (which is always an occasion of great excitement in this house!), everyone's reaction was "Wow!".
They absolutely loved the look and the feel of the heavy glossy pages. The effect is similar to a quality glossy photo, whereas the typical photobook page is slightly duller and grainier. (But the slightly 'plastic' finish doesn't pick up fingerprints as much as a glossy photo would.
The quality of the non-glossy Shutterfly pages were as good as any other photobook - but the glossy pages were definitely a big improvement. Some people might not like the very thick pages but we thought they were great and appear very durable, which is a bonus if you have children who like to look through their albums a lot. So in my opinion the glossy pages from Shutterfly are worth the extra money and that is one optional "add-on" I will always choose from now on.
How to print albums of digital scrapbooking layouts at Shutterfly
One of the worst things about switching to a different photobook printer is working out how to upload your layouts and unfortunately that is still a challenge at Shutterfly.
They have done more to meet the needs of digital scrapbookers (though you still need to go through the pesky process of de-selecting the default vivid print option for your uploaded layouts).
There is a dedicated "path" for digiscrap pages (though there were still a few "bang the forehead on the desk" moments while trying to arrange the albums - which is not good when you have, like me, a glass desk).
The Shutterfly digiscrap option for printing digital scrapbook albums is found by going to the Photobooks page and selecting "Go to custom path". Once there click on the size you want.
You will then be taken to a page with a whole lot of pre-cooked photobooks. Click on "Everyday" in the list of Book Ideas on the left hand side and once there, scroll all the way down to the end for the grey digiscrap option.
(It got tricky when I added extra pages as for some reason those pages defaulted to "pre-cooked layouts" with text boxes and multi-photo spaces so you have to look at the far left had side and click on the "idea pages" tab to get the grey digi-scrap option to correct that. If you click on that and drag to the page is reverts to the full page layout you need )
I am glad that Shutterfly now offer the 10" x 10" photobook size (and that Persnickety don't) because I was really happy with the quality and the price on returning to Shutterfly.
They post internationally at reasonable rates and the books arrived quite quickly here in NZ. They also have frequent special offers - I got the first album at 30% off and the second at 50%.
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