Digital Home Thoughts: Photobook Canada's Big and Bold Square Photo Book: Some Strategy Required for Success

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Thursday, September 2, 2010

Photobook Canada's Big and Bold Square Photo Book: Some Strategy Required for Success

Posted by Jason Dunn in "Digital Home Printing" @ 07:00 AM

When the Waiting Was Over...

Figure 2: The cover of my book. Beautiful, right? [Click image above for a larger photo]

When it arrived, I excitedly ripped open the package and had a big smile on my face as I saw the cover - this photo was one of my favourite from Japan, and the smooth cover looked and felt great. I loved how the photo covered the entire front of the book. Visually stunning. I flipped it around to look at the spine, eager to see spine printing from Photobook Canada for the first time.

Figure 3: Egads! What are those images doing in the spine area? [Click image above for a larger photo]

My elation quickly turned to disappointment when I saw that the both the front and back images ran over into the spine area. It looked horrible! Anyone looking at the book would immediately see that it wasn't supposed to be that way. Click the image to see the larger view and you'll see it's more obvious than the image above.

Figure 4: Alignment? Forget about it. [Click image above for a larger photo]

The back cover not only intruded into the spine area, but it was completely mis-aligned on the back. I had matched up the image to exactly touch the fold lines on all sides, so the image should have filled the entire back cover, with no black showing. Instead, I had a thick black border around the entire cover, but not an even one; there was more black showing on the bottom than on the top. I was extremely disappointed that this was how the outside looked - but what about the inside?

Figure 5: The inside looked fantastic! [Click image above for a larger photo]

Flipping through the pages, I went back to being impressed with Photobook Canada - all of my images looked beautiful; the pages were exactly as I'd designed them, with nothing cut off or trimmed improperly. The inside of the book looked stunning, and the upgraded 216gsm Premium Silk/Gloss paper was so thick it felt like cardboard (but in a good way). This book would have looked incredible as a lay-flat book, but I didn't want to be limited by length (AdoramPix) or pay a fortune for it (Picaboo).

But what about the awful covers? I contacted the PR person at Photobook Canada that I'd dealt with for the baby book review, and she said they'd reprint it for me at no added cost. We discussed several approaches on the cover, and basically it came down to this: the accuracy of the software does not necessarily line up to the final printed product, so I needed to come up with a layout that was more forgiving. I didn't verify this, but from the appearance of the cover on the book they shipped me, I'd guess that Photobook Canada doesn't do any sort of visual verification that the final product matches the software layout. I think that's a real shame - if a customer is spending hundreds of dollars on a photo book, someone should be looking at it to make sure it's correct before it goes out the customer. I adjusted the front and back covers, and ordered the re-print.

I'd contacted tech support immediately after submitting my book, asking them to take a look and ensure that it would print without issue. By the time someone responded a few days later, however, the book was already off to the printer and it was too late to do anything about it. Rather unfortunate!


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