Photobook recommendations?

AMc

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I have a ton of pictures I took in Japan in 2018
I haven't made the photobook I promised myself when I got back but now my work load is dropping off thanks to Corona so I've got time to devote to the project.

I've used Photobox in the past and while I've nothing to complain about, they haven't amazed me with the quality.
The price going up and down like a yo yo makes me wonder if they're good value at any point.
To cap it all I need to install Flash to use their book designer 🤮

Any other recommendations to look at before I upload a couple of hundred images and start cursing at Flash again?
 
I've only ever made one phonebook, and it was for our wedding so the budget was fairly generous!

We had quite a clear view of what we were looking for (leather bound, large prints, interleaves and custom layout) and after searching high and low found a place in London who made exactly what we wanted.


Lovely, high quality and very customisable. We started the process of arranging what we wanted, and the staff could not have been more helpful. Everything was going great. Until I asked to confirm the price (if you have to ask, right?). Turns out the £500 list was for a BLANK album - customisation and prints were additional cost. £200 for a box to house it in(!). Even though we loved their work, and they did what they could to help on cost it was just too far at a whisker over £1,000 all in.

In the end, the answer was right under our nose. Loxley Colour are a photo lab based just outside Glasgow. They are set up to serve professional photographers in the main, but were great at handling our comparative newish questions. We took a trip to see their lab/showroom. They've got a tool you can download that lets you build the entire job (layouts, products, paper types etc) and upload to the lab when you have it exactly how you want it - you can save jobs to work on later. We got an album for ourselves and a couple of mini albums for the in-laws. All were fantastic quality. I have used them a few times since then for other prints (including framed) and the quality has always been superb.

Have also had prints from WhiteWall who were OK - not as flexible, but more affordable and high quality output.

Also ran off a few prints from a booth in Boots when I needed something quickly. Safe to say I immediately sent those off to Loxley to do them properly - the instant prints were very poor (and have faded in only 3 months!).

Sorry for the ramble, hope you find what you're looking for!

On a related note, we were meant to be in Japan this week on holiday, that was cancelled a while back, and today we cancelled the holiday we rebooked for September. Hopefully the new booking for 2021 holds up, fingers crossed!
 
I've only ever made one phonebook, and it was for our wedding so the budget was fairly generous!
...
In the end, the answer was right under our nose. Loxley Colour are a photo lab based just outside Glasgow.
....
Have also had prints from WhiteWall who were OK - not as flexible, but more affordable and high quality output.
...
On a related note, we were meant to be in Japan this week on holiday, that was cancelled a while back, and today we cancelled the holiday we rebooked for September. Hopefully the new booking for 2021 holds up, fingers crossed!

Cheers! - the expected slump in work hasn't happened - April was my busiest month in ages so I've done nothing on this so far bar uploading a day of images to PB.

I'll look at Loxley - I did play with Blurb (?) ages ago which did everything locally but in the end it was taking so long I abandoned and went back to PB.

I really hope you get to go to Japan, the trip was amazing.
If you haven't already I'd have a read of this long thread as there's loads of good advice in there.

Seeing how Japan has dealt with COVID-19 I don't know which way it might go.
Their death rate is very low but then they might have strong quarantine in place for ages for that reason.

We were supposed to be going to Canada and the USA next month.
KLM have cancelled the outgoing leg already to Vancouver but not the return from NYC so we're in limbo. I think it's 99% certain we're not going but I'm not keen on rebooking anything right now. My Travel Insurance emailed as soon as lockdown started to say any travel cancelled due to COVID-19 wouldn't be covered if it was booked after March 18th :(
Small beer in the general scheme of things given how terrible things are for other people.

Don't worry about rambling - I'm a rambler too - isn't that what forums are for? :thumbsup:
 

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