Wedding Photographs from Digital to Print- What to use?

[WishfulThinking]

Hi everyone,

Our wedding photo CD is in the mail as we speak

so we are now looking into how we should make our own wedding album and real photo copies of these high quality images. Online services would be preferable and most convenient. We''re hoping to keep it affordable, hence not getting an album from the photographer, but still looking for good quality. I have been scoping out the shutterfly website as they seem to have good deals and cute set-ups for the books-- has anyone here used shutterly to make an album?

Any suggestions from you about what we should do would be awesome. Thanks in advance, and I will be sure to make a thread with pictures as soon as they arrive!

 

[October2008bride]

I''m going to do the same thing!

I''ve used www.blurb.com and was happy with it - not super impressed, but it was nice enough.

For my wedding pictures, I''m going to use www.pikto.ca as that is who my photographer uses and recommends. That is where they print their proofs and we''ve seen those and were extremely happy with teh quality.

 

[FoxyBride]

Most photographers use www.adoramapix.com. They have everything from regular Kodak paper to high end metallic paper.

If you're looking to save and don't mind slow shipping, I'd suggest www.artscow.com. Very good quality.

 

[marchswallowbird]

I have used Shutterfly for three vacation photo books, and the quality is excellent. I am thinking of doing my own wedding album through them once I''m married.

In terms of printing single prints for framing, Shutterfly is also quite good but I''ve found that even better is Smugmug.com. I don''t know if you can upload and print just one or two prints from Smugmug; I have an annual account with them and I store all my photos online with them.

 

[WishfulThinking]

Thanks for the responses so far! I will check out all of those sites, for sure.

Looking at some potential layouts, mostly from shutterly because I am more familiar with their website, I am torn between having full page photos with no backgrounds, or having some sort of page layout format.. I would love to have more than one pic on some pages, but I worry some of the patterned backgrounds look "hokey" or just not elegant enough. I don''t want it to be boring, though! Maybe a combination of the two? Plain colored backgrounds for some?

What did you decide on for your own albums? I realize we are working with a low budget and our options might be more limited, which I totally accept, but I don''t want it to look like a wedding album, and not a super-cutesy for fun type thing... if that makes sense? I saw some pretty cheesy and imo tacky "examples" some places that are not how I''d like the final product to look visually, even if the *quality* was good.

Gosh, so many of you are so classy and have impeccable taste- it makes me wish you could put it together for me!

Any more ideas are welcome- thanks so much!

 

[oobiecoo]

I used Shutterfly and made 4 identical albums for us and our parents. Overall, I was VERY pleased with the book, especially for the price I paid.

Make sure you look out for coupons... I think I combined 3 different ones and got a pretty large discount.

I used the patterned background pages... I chose 2 different pages that had the same design but with contrasting colors. So when you turned the page, the green patterned sheet was always on the left and the white patterned sheet was always on the right. I think if you combined more than a couple of the patterns then it gets to be too much.

I have some photos that are full page but most are grouped in 2-4 pics per page to save money on printing. Also, their photo edited is pretty nice so I sued it for coloring and cropping a little.

Our albums have the leather cutout cover... I was a little dissapointed that the leather is shiny... I thought it would be more matte... but thats ok. Just something helpful to know though.

 

[basil]

I used Kolo.com digital album to make a honeymoon album for us. I will use it for our wedding pictures when we finally get them...

It is more $$ than shutterfly, blurb, etc (I think I paid ~$100 for 11x14 album), but it comes out looking more like an album and less like a book if that makes any sense. The pages are thicker - more like photo paper than book pages. And they make lots of coordinating scrapbooks, etc., so our albums match with our guestbook and the scrapbook that my mom is making.

 

[neatfreak]

We used Kodak Gallery to make our albums and it was very easy and affordable. Everyone who sees them comments on how nice they look. If you use them make sure to look for coupon codes online, there are almost always a few.

 

[marchswallowbird]

Wishful, in doing my photo books I chose a background that wasn''t too prominent. Truthfully, you dont really notice the background that much once the photos are in, especially if you choose a subdued one, not one that is colorful and "busy." I used at the most two pictures per page, and I used as many full-page ones as possible. It just looks much better -- the photos have so much more impact -- when you can run them big.

The BIGGEST piece of advice I have is make sure to proofread all your photo captions before you approve the thing for printing! There''s a way to view the captions enlarged; they''re really hard to see when you''re typing them in and looking at the overall page layouts. My first book ended up with several (embarassing) typos because I failed to proof it.

 

[WishfulThinking]

Thanks for the suggestions, oobiecoo, basil, and neatfreak! It''s nice there are so many options!

marchswallowbird, thanks for the input about the layouts. That makes perfect sense. I will be sure we proofread them all carefully- it would be annoying to mess it up like that! Thanks for the warning!

 

[mia1181]

I''m planning on using mpix.com to make my photo book the software is pretty bare bones but I like that I can use my own pics for the background.

Also have you seen the books Joseph makes? You can use those for inspiration for layout ideas.

 

[WishfulThinking]

Thanks for the info, mia! Joseph''s books are beautiful, and definitely good to use for inspiration! I wish we could afford them, but that is really a bad idea at this point, considering our budget.