I'll have to go try a photo book out, any chance of a "try us out" sample size book :-} ?

when you click on a picture, the edit box comes up right in the middle of the layout. I think this should be in a fixed position, like a side bar. It is a hassle to move it every time I click on a picture.

Are there any photobook coupons out or are there going to be any. I need to order 2 and they are quite expensive.

Thanks!

This website would be a nice model for what forums, etc should be available.

http://www.michaelthementor.com/forum/

However, I would want to see larger attachments and a faster bulletin board..

Starting to work on my first photo book, 6X9 50 pgs. wihs me luck

My first attept at a photo book (just trying to get a feel for the basics) http://www.adoramapix.com/sportsdeal1/book/with-expression

Bob, Thanks for the link. Unforch, Zendesk does not support this kind of a threaded forum. For now, we are using this platform because it's linked to our Help Desk, but we hope to switch to a more traditional forum format at some point. 

Mustafa, nice book! How did you find the PixPublisher program? What features would you like to see? 

Staci, are you talking about the print ordering process or books? 

thanks for your feedback guys! Keep it coming! 

- Ingrid 

I made my own wedding book using your site. I absolutely LOVE the book - it is beautiful!! The one improvement that it really needs (I was actually a little bummed by this) is that the front cover has quite a few air bubbles near the top... I dont know if that is something that can be improved upon, but that was the only thing I could see that took away from the level of quality.

Thank you so much again!!

Hi Ingrid, I just wen t to the "photo book" button and clicked on it.

I'll let you know if I come up with any ideas or features. Going to make another book now.

The overall quality of the photobook I ordered was good, but there were some issues that bothered me that I've listed below.  I would like to order another copy but I'm a bit hesistant to pull the trigger because of these issues.

  1.  On a 2-page spread of a b/w picture with a black background that showed no border in the online photobook designer and preview, the actual book ended up having a border on the right side of the spread.  This was a huge disappointment for me.  Imagine a vertical white line in what should have been a black area.

 2.  There was a crease on all the pages at the same location of the book that looked like it occured when the pages folded/bent when being held.  I assume this happened during production of the book.

 3.  Two of the pages stuck together slightly. 

Regards,

soph

My second effort, http://www.adoramapix.com/sportsdeal1/book/shannyn/q08lv7vb2o have just a few more things to try and then I'll place an order to see the actual finished product

Ingrid,

I am talking about the photobook. I want to order 2 of the same book. One for me and one for my sister. It is her 40th birthday and we just took a trip to Spain. I spent countless hours on the book and did not realize they were so pricy.

Thanks!

Hi Ingrid,

After scrutinizing my photo book creations I noticed (in the prviews) that images thatspan both pages seem to have two different shades of color, the part on the left is noticably lighter than the part on the right. Is this only in the preview or does it print that way?

Thanks Al, that brings me to my first suggestion; if you dont have a spell checker in the program could one be added? You know for old geezers like myself who have learned to rely on microsoft office so much :-]

Thanks, I think I'm going to make 1 more photo book and then place and order to see the finished product.

Okay, this is my last creation before ordering a test book, http://www.adoramapix.com/sportsdeal1/book/versatility suggestions (as to which one) would be appreaciated.

I created a book about a year ago--I think not too long after you introduced them. At that time you offered a coupon for an 8x8 book to try it out. To be honest if I had paid for the book I would have requested my money back. While I think the photo quality was great and I loved the flexibility in layout, two things have kept me from ordering from you again.

1. This is the biggest reason--the first inside page and the last inside page had very large bubbles where they were attached to the cover. These bubbles ran all across both the top and the bottom of those pages. To me this is not at all acceptable. It made what could/should have been a beautiful professional looking book look like an amateur project. I am an amateur--but I love books to showcase my photos--bubbles don't do that. My husband and I are taking a long awaited trip to Alaska in 10 days and I would love have the quality paper and the flat layout for what I am hoping will be some beautiful photos. But the first impression that a very bubbled page makes would spoil the overall effect. I hope you have found a way to fix this.

2. I found the program for the book to be confusing and very time consuming to use. I believe you have made some improvements, but due to problem #1 I did not even want to try again. 

Because I liked the quality of the paper and the better quality of the photos compared to where I usually print my books (6-8 book per year) I am going to try again after our trip---IF you can tell me you have fixed the bubbles. Your books are not cheap and I need to know I will get a finished product that is polished.

I appreciate your asking for feedback and hope I can feel secure in trying again.

Okay, I couldn't wait so I ordered all three, I trust Adoramas quality to be the same as it always has been.

Question #1 I saw a box for entering a cupon code, where do we get the codes from?

Question #2 any chance for volume discount? I'm a founding member of a newly opened museum (July 3, 2010), and I may be able to sell books for a fund raiser if I can get a volume discount.

I'd love to see a full-blown, flush-mount album with all the trimmings (leather cover, gilded edges, cover stamping). I am planning to order my mother's copy of my wedding album from you, but I want something a little fancier than what you currently offer for my own book.  Any chance you'll offer such an album in the near future?

Staci, when you compare the quality of our books with others out there, our prices are actually quite competitive. 

Erica, we do have plans for leather covers, but would probably not do a flush mounted album as there are already many companies that do them. Our photo books on photo paper with the lay flat binding are really quite unique and we do them better than anyone! 

Mustafa, I believe this is only in the preview.

Soph and Marie, I see that you ordered your book some time ago when we first started offering them. We have made a lot of improvements to the process and ironed out many bugs in both the PixPublisher and the manual process of making the books themselves. 

Hi Ingrid,

I mentioned this in my original post, but wasnt sure if you saw - is there anything that is being done about the air bubbles that occur on the covers of the books?

I'm just curious as I'm really wanting to buy more, but just want to know if this should be expected in most of the books.

Thank you!!

Katie, are you referring to the place where the cover image is attached to the cover? There will be a slight ridge at this point, as with any book that is bound/covered in this way. If you had bubbles in your cover, that is something that has since been fixed. 

Okay good to know! Yes, the bubbles were like air bubbles near the top of the cover... I will go ahead and order another and hopefully it will be better! Thank you so much for your response - you guys have awesome customer service :)

Ingrid,

Thanks for the reply.  The 12x12 book was ordered at the end of June and was shipped mid-July which I consider pretty recent.  I thought the books were offered a lot longer than that.  I checked the book preview again the other day and the pages with the b/w picture I mentioned in my earlier post still doesn't show a white vertical line.  If I were to order the book again, would the white vertical line be printed as it did in the book I have now?  Remember, the preview, as well as, the designer tool didn't show the vertical line either when I orignally designed and ordered the book.  The book I ordered was going to be given to a client, so I don't want to take another loss by ordering again and the same occurs.  Can anything be done to help minimize my risk?

Thanks for the help and guidance Ingrid.

-soph

Ingrid,

Thanks for the information. I checked and I did order my book over a year ago--so I'm glad to hear you've ironed out some beginner wrinkles.  Hopefully after our Alaska trip I will be able to post how great my book turned out.

Marie

Could I suggest a litte more flexability with text, like curved or embossed.

"would the white vertical line be printed as it did in the book I have now?  Remember, the preview, as well as, the designer tool didn't show the vertical line either when I orignally designed and ordered the book." could this be witespace between two pictures? My last book http://www.adoramapix.com/sportsdeal1/book/flotown-spring-sports/ntxasuppzr is basicly a book of collage pages and I noticed when I did not overlap the images and left just a littlte bitof space between thm it appears as a thin white line but you won't notice it unless you look very carefully or enlarge the work space. Just a thought.

Metallic Paper option please

Greg, The metallic paper is currently too thick for use in the photo books we are making. The paper we use, Fujifilm Crystal Archive Album paper was developed by Fujifilm specifically for use in photo books, the paper has a thinner base and so can be glued together back to back and folded without becoming too thick and unwieldy. Hope this helps! 

- Ingrid 

Hey - Just stumbled upon this and thought I would give my 2 cents about the photobook I ordered a while ago. Here is the book which was mostly a collection of some of my photos at the time: http://www.adoramapix.com/andylibrande/book/outdoor-photos

Ordered a 8x10, 26 pager in November 2009 after having played with the book for a while on your software. Overall I think the book is by far the best one I have seen in the marketplace and I have physically tested it against Blurb and a few other ones from a while ago. I think the photo paper is excellent and even though I prefer metallic on most of my normal prints, the durability and vibrance of this paper is really nice. Also I like how it does a pretty decent job not showing finger prints or other stains.

Suggested Improvements:

- Software is really clunky in my opinion and while is decent I feel it can be improved upon; though it seems to work better now then when I remember it. 

- Measurement tools in the software would be nice as well as aligning certain items and understanding their physical printed size was a challenge. 

- Text editing was the worst experience in the interface. It was really hard to select text and then edit it. Most of the time I ended up accidently moving the text box and not selecting text which caused me to repeat work. My suggestion would be to have just a text editor mouse selector that I can click on any text and directly edit the text instead of double clicking in the text box, trying to select the text, then doing my changes. 

- The left side-bar is extremely annoying and mostly useless. Except for the images part the rest is just a waste of screen-space. Even on a large screen it is taking up unnecessary screen real estate and if it could be collapsed or minimized that would be a great improvement. 

- A .pdf upload option would be a great add if possible so I could design in other programs and upload for print in yours. 

Tips for Users: 

- Create photos with text on them in your own photo editing program and upload that way for custom effects. 

- 8x10 is a good size, anything smaller would not be worth it in my opinion. 

- Make photos big on your pages and don't have small photos. All of the pages that I have in small photos in the workbook are way too small and are skipped immediately by everyone that looks at the book. Remember even in a 8x10 book having four small photos with spacing makes them less then 2"x3" which is incredibly small and not worth wasting money on printing in such a quality book. 

- Use the lock button which I didn't find until recently and is a huge time-saver in the software. 

- Always over-lapped your images over the edge of the printable area in the book. This ensures not getting alignment issues later. Also preview and zoom in on all overlaps to examine the spacing. 

- Andy

I design all my photobook layouts offline in Fotofusion and Photoshop and simply want to upload them and print. However, there is insufficient information on the cover specifications to know how to do the offline layouts. Please answer the following questions. (And I would suggest adding the answers to a Help file available without having to be in PixPublisher.)

1. Cover Picture Size. What is the dimension (wxh) of the picture to completely fill the front or back cover? For example, on an 8x8 book is the cover picture 8x8? Apparently not. I created an 8x8 jpg at 300 dpi (2400x2400). However, when I import it and choose "Fit to Page," PixPublisher sizes it to 2400x2460 which equates to 8x8.2". This messed up my square geometric pattern design resulting in portions of one square cut off on one side - not good. However, if I force it to be a square image, then 0.2" is left over. What will go in those 0.2"?

2. Spine Size. What is the dimension of the spine? I need it for each different page count. I called and Virginia provided me this information, but it should be posted on your web site.

3. Cover Wrap Around Color. How do I set the wrap around color? The cover wrap around shows only the color green. Since the wrap around will be seen on the inside of both the front and back covers, how do I set the wrap around color so that it will complement the inside pictures? Also, the "Preview" should show exactly what the covers should like in terms of size and wrap around color. It should also show what the inside cover looks like with the wrap around color and the 1st page, and similarly for the back cover and the back cover inside page. Note that setting the background color on the covers and spine do NOT change the wrap around color (only the color behind the image), so there is no confirmation that what I have specified is actually being carried out. Since I can't see it in the editor or in the preview, I don't want to execute an order only to find out the wrap around color wasn't properly specified.

4. Wrap Around Size. What is the exact dimensions of the front/back covers and spine including the wrap around? If I design the front cover to wrap around to the inside cover I need to know the dimensions.

These next two items are comments about PixPublisher:

5. Preview Back Cover. The "Preview" displays the back cover less than 3 seconds before flipping to the front cover. This is way to short. It should display the back cover until I choose to flip the page. Also, clicking on the last page in the thumbnail section does not flip the page to the back cover. The only way to display the back cover is to mouse on the page itself.

6. False Border in Editor. The editor shows a green border around the entire 2 page spread. At first I thought this was a border and tried to get rid of it. However, the border was already set to 0. The Editor should be WYSIWYG. Get rid of this border, it is too confusing.

Thanks,
Stephen

Limited Editions...

a service where you can specify (from 10 to 1000) and then every book sold gets it's own edition number. 

either on a sticky label or as part of the book making software.

cheers

Sam

@Mustafa Abdullah

@Staci Cohen

There is a 25% off on 12*9 books right now -didn't you get the email?

;-)

@ sophornarak horn

@ Pako, Does this mean my books are finished? I'm dying to see them, as are most of the people in Florence. I'm ready to start three new projects but have to wait until I see the finished product first. Hopefully the sale on 9X12 books won't be over before then.

@ Ingrid, just now realise what you meant, the Pix Publisher is pretty good, I would like to see larger thumbnails (or a way to enlarge them individually for selection), I often shoot upwards of 500 pictures of an event and have images that are similar looking, when viewed as thumbnails they are hard to tell apart.

@Stephen Benz

Hello Stephen,

Just received my first book. I very much like the quality of the internal spreads. However I am concerned with the cover. I don't feel like the photographic paper will hold up over time at the spine creases. We have only had our album for a week and already the paper/fold at the crease of the spine is torn.

I'm not complaining, just want to know. Approximately how long does it take to produce a photobook? I placed an order on Aug 1, it went to the printer around Aug 4th and to the binder about Aug 9th. Is there another step after binding? I'm just so excited to see my first book so that I can get on to my next project

Hi Guys!

I have ordered several books now for my wedding clients and have been very happy with the quality.  A couple of things I would like to see:

Leather or upgraded covers with some variety and choices including photo covers and windows.

Presentation boxes for all of the album sizes.  I would pay extra for this.  I need a decent box in which to present my albums to my clients.  This is really important guys.  It is very hard to find the right size box anywhere online.  Having a box to give to clients makes the presentation way more professional.

I would be willing to pay you guys more for upgraded albums.  I think your quality is way better than most.  Maybe have a section for pros with different selections and pricing?  I have to say that your online album preview is one of the best.  My clients love it.

Thanks!

Sugestion: After completing my first 9X12 book I'd like to offer these suggestions;

 Ajustable ruler or guidlines for more percise image sizing. Even when fully zoomed it's often hard to tell exactly what the size of an image is with a staionary ruler and no moveable guidelines. I use a Coreldraw a lot when designing pages for print and love the ability to adjust the rulers "0" points (X & Y axis) and pull guidelines from the horozntal and verticle borders out to X &Y axis' of an image for presise measurement.

Snap to: and/ or incremental horzontal & vertical image movement (using the arrow keys). This would help greatly in precise image placement. Perhaps having a choice of "snap to ruler, object, gridline or guidelines, and the ability to move an image a specified number of pixels using the arrow keys.

More "Sports" stickers, being a sports photographer I really would like to see some stickes besides the baseball, football and golfer. Perhaps some clipart of people playing the sport (including but not limited to tennis, field hockey, track, soccer cheerleading and wrestling).

Dissapointed, I'm still waiting for my first order, I had to place another order without the benif of knowing just what my product will look like in order to take advantage of the special that ends today. I (finally) found an answer to how long it (supposedly) takes to print an order (we will require 5 business days from when you place your order before your product before it will ship out.) before it ships out. I placed my order 11 (working) days ago but according to the order look up it's still in the binding stage.  :-{

Order #702747_irqb  Submitted: August 02, 2010

Mustafa, there indeed is a "snap to" grid option. Look in the static toolbar at the top under "options." 

also, there is a ruler and gridlines available. In between the workspace and the thumbnails at the bottom of the screen on the left side there is an option for using the ruler or gridlines. Use the slider to specify how big you want the grid squares to be. 

Hope this helps! 

Hi Ingrid,

People are really excited about this photobook, I can't wait to acually have one to show them. I just made a 9X12 ( http://www.adoramapix.com/sportsdeal1/book/moo/2w8ah1aghq ) and the parents loved the preview but unfortunately since I don't have a book to show them the quality they are reluctant to spend $100+ for it.

Thanks for the info on the snap to grid, I know about the ruler & grid options but I was talking about the ability to move the rulers "0" position so that you could place it at the front edge of an image and with movabel guidelines (not gridlines) place a guide line at the back of the image to get an accurate measurement of the image. Add to this a snap to guide line / object feature and you have greater control over presice image placement. This is especially helpful when you want to either butt two images together (snap to object) or place a group of images on a line (snap to guideline). I don't know if any other graphic design program has these features but if you know anybody with Corel Draw you can get an idea of what I'm talking about, I use it todesign pages for flyers, cards and web pages where I need exact image and object placement. It's a great ease of use tool for those of us who are not so skilled in placing images using XY coordinates

Mustafa, your books should ship tomorrow. 

test

Thanks Ingrid, just to show you I'm not blowing smoke about people really liking it here is a copy of my Facebook page

• • 

    Jessica Fitzpatrick This is AWESOME! Do mom and dad know about this? They'll love it.

    22 hours ago · LikeUnlike ·
  • 

    Mustafa Abdullah Yeah, they orderd one

    22 hours ago · LikeUnlike ·
  • 

    Mustafa Abdullah you should do one of your trip to Mexico

    22 hours ago · LikeUnlike ·
  • 

    Jessica Fitzpatrick i am...haha!

    22 hours ago · LikeUnlike ·
  • 

    Mustafa Abdullah Y U laughing, U can do it

    21 hours ago · LikeUnlike ·
  • 

    Marybeth Fitzpatrick-Glen Matt that is beautiful! Ed and Ada must be so proud of her. What a great kid. have some

Hi Al,

I'm sure these additions will be as good as what Corel Draw uses, and I think they will be a great help to us in designing the best photobooks on the market.. Do you remember the book I did titled "Shannyn"? She did that photo shoot for a calendar for her husban's birthday but unfortunately she couldn't find a printing company that allowed her to arrange the pictures the way she wanted them (Snapfish ,Photoworks I didn't know about AdoramaPix at the time). I'm going to give her the book for her husban's birthday next month. Thanks for allowing me to be a part of developing this great tool

Can photobooks be added to long term storage? I want to make sample display albums to link to my website but I need for them to stay up longer than 60 days.

I'll make my 2 requests simple:  Presentation Boxes and Leather Covers!   I am very pleased with the quality product and great service already provided by Adorama; however, these two additions would be GREAT for business!

Thanks Al, thats great I just linked my albums to my website http://dynamicspectrumphotography.com/albumSam.html  I got my first three books to day and I must say I'm impressed. Very nice, I can't wait to take them around to the various fund raising meetings for our high school sports activities.

I tried using some stickers in my last album, the borders catagory dosen't load any images just the names and the the doves and fillagrees in the wedding catagory all have a black border around them, is that the way they are supposed to be?

Getting rave reviews from the three books I now have, our "Pit Club" (high school football team boosters) have decided togive ecah senior one at the end of year banquet. The new Roebling Museum wants to do one as a fund raiser. I can't wait to meet with the other fall sports teams for their reaction. Thanks Adorama!

Photobooks make a splash hit in Florence, Football, Cheerleaders and Field Hockey have decided to give them as end of season gifts to the seniors & coaches. I still have to to meet with boys & girls soccerand the marching band. Now if I could only lock in this sale price with prepaid it would really be sweet.

http://www.adoramapix.com/sportsdeal1/book/cheer-copy/gngiw778jz

Just ordered my first photobook, and was pleased with the application, although have not seen the final printed product.  As a computer professional, I was impressed with the speed of the flash web application, and did not encounter any problems.  I do think the application could use some improvement in the text handling, particularly for the Spine editing, where the text box should be presented horizontally and upon completion, would go back to the vertical orientation.  But the biggest area for improvement for me would be greater flexibiltiy in changing the layout.  As an amateur photog, I am usually trying to tell a story, and the pictures in the sequence I want them are important.  That means that I frequently need to change the layout.  To do that, you have the layout tab on the left, which you must then click (out of the images), find your layout, then drag it onto the page.  This is difficult, particularly if you have already pulled in images and have to redo them.  You should be able to right-click each page, and choose a layout (many applications do this, such as powerpoint).  Then of course you have to reclick into your images to get them back on the left panel.

I found myself wanting to change the layout on the thumbnails, which actually would be ideal also.  Just look at the thumbnails at the bottom, and right-click and change any layout page or why not any individual image size as well?

I think most people would want to get the coating option on any photo book that they want to keep for a long time and use, such as a wedding album.  This seems to add around 30-35% to the price though, and I didnt order that initially, in order to see the quality without it.  But judging from my experience with other printing, it is an option worth getting.  I suggest a future promo allowing some break in that price.

All-in-all, it was enjoyable and trouble-free creative experience, and hope to see some final results soon.  Thanks for the service and look forward to more!

I just got finished doing a 76 page Wedding Album.  Overall, I liked the program and thought it worked fairly well.  Here are a few things I would like to see implemented.

1)  Straight support for Aperture.  I would prefer making my layouts in Aperture.  I know you have a way to bring in PDF pages but for two page spreads that doesn't work very well last time I tried.  Instead of having to split up into 1 page segments let me import the whole book and have your program decode it an put it into format.

Barring that your book program needs the following

1) Ability to fix exposure and color balance.  I often bring in photos from multiple different cameras and shoots and then let the book make itself by telling a story.  Often this will required fixes to exposure and white balance.

2) Give the program the ability to snap a photo to another photo.  Your layouts were really good but I often had to make some changes for the pictures I shot.  It was incredibly difficult to line up the photos without a snap to feature.

3)  The program crashed on me numerous times causing me to lose work.  Please work on stability.  I use Safari.

Overall, I nice program and I am looking forward to see how my book turns out.

Brady

2 requests - (as someone who has ordered over 30 books from you)

1. Offer a upgraded feature for faster turnaround time. Other companies can have the project completed and shipped in 3 days. I would order so many more books if you offered this, as usually my clients need something by a deadline for a gift.

2. Offer leather covers.

Allie

@ Brady Fuller

[quote]1)  Straight support for Aperture.  I would prefer making my layouts in Aperture.  I know you have a way to bring in PDF pages but for two page spreads that doesn't work very well last time I tried.  Instead of having to split up into 1 page segments let me import the whole book and have your program decode it an put it into format. [/quote]

The pixbuilder doesn't support PDF, just export your pages as jpg and upload them. In other hand, we DO PREFER if you upload spreads and not pages, even if the pixbuilder is page and spread - friendly

[quote] 1) Ability to fix exposure and color balance.  I often bring in photos from multiple different cameras and shoots and then let the book make itself by telling a story.  Often this will required fixes to exposure and white balance. [/quote]

You have two choices; you can do it yourself on your preferred editing software (you can even download our printer profiles and soft-proof your images BEFORE you upload them) or you can trust our technicians for the color correction

Regards

Pako

Another vote for faster turn around, three days would be great but I'll be happy with five

Hi Ingrid 

I think the books are great. I also like others, who have suggested that we need presentation boxes and/or slip covers to make it even more professional. I would love this option and be willing to pay for this. Also leather cover options would be icing on the cake! Keep up the great work and your quality is great!

Ingrid - I am working on my very first book now and there are some things that I would love to see in addition to the already GREAT Features!

1) The option to crop within the book editing - sometimes I'm aligning pictures and realize that I just want to crop some off, but I can't

2) Auto align feature to the middle of the spread- It can currently auto align to the middle of a single page, but not across the two pages

3) Auto align objects that are next to each other - if you have a row of pictures and you want to align them to each other, I've just had to do this by hand and zoom in closely to see if they are straight

4) Improve the "Fit to Page" option - when I'm trying to size up a portrait picture, it will fit the picture horizontally, not vertical. Fit to Page should default to fitting portrait pictures vertically and fitting landscape pictures horizontally.

As it is,, though, it's still does a great job!

I really would really like to see the addition of an enlarged view of a thumbnail when you mouse over it. I do a lot of sc hool sports and want to make books of each team's season. This requires that I upload files from each game and some times I have trouble selecting one which resembles another one from a different game.

Just ordered my second book after building it over the weekend. A few things that I wanted to add now that I built a completely new book in the latest tools. 

- Text Boxes and Alignment: The hardest thing for me is aligning items across the pages especially when it is a small corner caption or something like that. Once I realized there were xyz coordinates if you hovered over pictures that saved me a lot of time. However on text boxes when you hover over it says "Double Click to Edit" and does not give you xyz coordinates until you physically move the text box. If you could add that below the "click to edit" that would make it an easy reference point. 

- Layouts: This new feature is AWESOME! As I really like a lot of you themes but I always want to change up a few pages or add a few of my favorite layouts. However what needs to change is to have Single Page Layout Options instead of the double page. 

• I used the Modern Portfolio and wanted to add a page where there were four photos on each page which was different from the theme page layouts, unfortunately I had to try to duplicate the photos and tried to align everything as closely as possible. It would have saved a significant amount of time if I had the option to change just one page with the layouts and not two pages. 
• Therefore my suggestion is to have the two page layouts and for the appropriate themes have single page layouts that you can copy. 

Thanks!

@ Andy "

- Layouts: This new feature is AWESOME! As I really like a lot of you themes but I always want to change up a few pages or add a few of my favorite layouts. However what needs to change is to have Single Page Layout Options instead of the double page."  I'm feeling you there. I like to do my own arrangements too but I just want a "blank Page" option on all the book ( I think they have it on one book). Now I have to delete each place holder first.

The grid + "snap to grid" funtion helps a little in alignment but not much. If they had movable guide lines with a snap to guide lines option it would be easy to line up items both verticle & horoziontal

1. There is an issue uploading pics. The last two days that I have tried to work on my albums, the pictures would not upload (through the upload from computer tab). I tried logging out and logging back in but was still unable to upload them. It stated that they did upload and it said done by each of the pictures but my pictures would never actually show up as downloaded. This never happened before and up to this point I have been able to successfully download all the pics.

2. Add more layouts to make it easier to create pages.

3. ** Offer fabric, leather, etc. album covers. I read that you do have plans for leather covers which is really exciting! Do you know when?

Thanks in advance!!

I love your books. I just order one last night - a 10x10 wedding album. http://www.adoramapix.com/perfectcapture/book/kathlyn-fine-art

I would love to see:

Leather covers

Align to center of spread

Ability to align and distribute several photos with one another

And I would also like the option to hide used images and see a larger preview of the images on the left when you hover over them. Of course it would be easier if I only imported the photos I want to use rather than a whole wedding or event.

@ Jimmy P "Of course it would be easier if I only imported the photos I want to use rather than a whole wedding or event." I sort mine to as seperate temp folder and then download the whole folder. That way I only have the images I want to use for the project. The problem is the thumbnails are to small to discern similar images. Image enlargement on mouse over is needed. Also, when using "sort by name" the file order should be numerical, that way you can rename the files with one name and order them by number and use the "auto import" to fill the pages. As it stands now, all the ones's load ie, 1,10, 11 etc. Then all the two's 2,22, 23

Align multipe objects, group objects and snap to object would help greatly. Last, but not least a layout of blank pages for each book style would be nice.

I made some books in the square format that waere on sale until Aug. 30, I made them available for purchase and added my nprofit margin. Whne the sale is over does the profit margin automaticly adjust with the book price? Also I noticed in the box for prepaid ordering it says; "prints & books". Can we prepay for books while they are on sale too?

Please pardon the typos, keyboarding is not my fortay and I'm treying to work three computers at one time to get more work done

I found the blank page book, if it had been a snake I would have been dead :-]

Comment to Andy L. on Layouts:

I agree with the need to better handle single page layouts, and also suggested that. But there is the ability to multi-select (with ctl-click) and delete  or copy element placeholders and drag or copy and paste them into the single page of a book.  But not from the Layout panel.  You would have to drag a whole page layout to a scratch page, multi-selct and delete the one page you dont want, and then multi-select and drag the layout from your scratch page to the target page.  Sounds more difficult than it is, and lots of people would not do that I guess. But I dont like taking the time or making slight lineup errors, so that works best for me.

I received an offer to try a photobok from a leading photopaper manufacturer's printing service (don't know it I should mention the name). The price was competative with yours and they offer linen & leather covers. I started to make a book for quality comparison but just did not like their pagemaker's  interface at all so I nixed them. Hopefully you guys will incorporate some cover options soon. As far as I can tell that is about the only thing that other services have over you.

I just bought a photo book and it was great, but something you should take into consideration is developing a software just like the one you guys have online except create one that contains more tools that you can work with. Also it would be quicker to create them and it would just be the same process to print them out.

I just bought a photo book and it was great, but something you should take into consideration is developing a software just like the one you guys have online except create one that contains more tools that you can work with. Also it would be quicker to create them and it would just be the same process to print them out.

I have not ordered any books because the pages are too thick. Any chance of making books with thinner pages?

MC

I've received my first photo book from you. I'm very happy with the overall quality and I love the binding; it allowed me to do a few BIG pictures across 2 pages in the 12x12 format. I've made some other books in other companies and nothing comes even close to having real photo paper. 

My suggestions for improvement are:

1. As some people commented before I would like to see more cover options, like linen or leather.

2. I would love to see direct shipping from you to other countries. Particularly to Mexico. Books doesn't pay import taxes into Mexico and in my case it would cut the extra cost of having to send the book to a US address and then having it forwarded to Mexico.

So far I have tried 4 other photobook creator layouts. Adorama's PixPublisher blows them all away. 

 "but something you should take into consideration is developing a software just like the one you guys have online except create one that contains more tools that you can work with."

This gets my vote, Id love to beable to do my layouts off line with a software program that was designed specificly for the the task. Or maybe a "plug in that would work with other disign software such as Corel & Adobe that would generat the exact page sizes you use along with an ftp for uploading.

Hi,

First I would like to second what most people are saying, the book quality is pretty impressive and my customers are happy with them. 

My first 2 books were done with Adorama's PixPublisher and they turned out as designed. 

First book, no major glitches except for the opacity on the brackground cover photo, came out little lighter than I wanted.  Understandable, that might be difference between PixPublisher translation and my computer.  

Second book, Since I edit my own photos I learned my lesson as not to choose photo corrections when ordering a book as my images will not end up like I want them to be since everyone has different correction judgements.  Had to returned it and re-order one without the corrections and it turned out as wanted.

For the third book I was looking for more design control of my layout (alignment and photo separation) so I decided to design it with Adobe Indesign.  For the first time it took longer as expect since I have to figure out AdoramaPix true book cover and sheet size.  I followed their pixel count highlighted by PixPublisher for an 8x12 sheet size which is suppose to be 2400x3600 and the book cover which is slightly different.  With InDesign I exported all my pages to individual 8x12 jpegs at 300dpi and sRGB.  Uploaded the images to PixPublisher and selected for each image to spread to fit page which should have worked perfectly.  Everything on PixPublisher looked great, no image clipping.  When I got the book the cover looked awesome, just as designed.  As I started to flip into the book that is when I was truly dissapointed, all my pages had extensive clipping.  The photos with drop shadows were placed on a white background.  From the photo edge to the book edge there was at least 1/4" to 1/2" space, several times that was trimmed off.  I am not sure what happend, probably the software they use enlarges the image.  That is a big mistake that the lab technician should have caught, but chose not too.  Aside from that major mishap the book looked great.  I measure their sheet size and they are not true 8x12 sheets, so I am guessing the error is from the difference in image size which is a true 8x12(2400x3600px) and the slightly smaller book sheet size 7-5/8" by 11-1/2" or something like that.  Fortunally the book was a gift and they did not notice or probably chose not to mentioned anything.  The funny thing is that something similar happened with some 4x6 promotional material I design using Illustrator, the border got mostly trimmed off.  That did not happen with another professional lab I also do business with.

That is something that as a professional I cannot offer to a client.  If someone can tell me the true pixel sheet size for the book sizes or that issue can be resolved that would be awesome.  It is easier, faster, and more customizable for me to design with my own software and then just drop it into PixPublisher.

I really want to continue using this great photo book service, but until I find a solution to that I will not feel at ease ordering another book. 

Thanks guys and hope to hear from you soon...

I sale the photobooks Like  a profesional  Wedding album, and every profesional album comes with a nice box to protect it. I think adorama should sale it with a nice Box. thank you.

Expedited Shipping options (UPS/FedEx) for Canadian Orders.

I would like to have the ability to make changes to completed books. My first four books were just tests to see the actual quality of the finished product. They were all excelent in quality but need adjustments in some text and image placement. I hate having to redo the whole book just to correct a few pages.

Mustafa, make a copy of the book, reopen it for editing and make your changes, then save it under another name. 

Hope this helps, 

-Ingrid

Ah Ingrid, I could luv ya 4ever it worked like a charm. I wonder why they didn't just tell me that instead of cancelling my order?

Mustafa, I'm sorry that no one told you about this option. 

Hi, I just came across this forum & thought I'd add a couple of comments on things I'd like to see in creating the photo books, but first I'd like to say that I LOVE your program and the quality of the printed product.  It is far better than any other I've used, and I've used a lot! 

• I would like to be able to copy pages from 2 different books into a separate book.  For example, I created a book for my niece of her children.  I also created one for her brother of his children.  I then wanted to create another book for my sister that included portions of both books, but had to recreate at least half the book since I could only rename one of the books to work with. Perhaps the ability to import pages from another book?; 
• Would like to see a background of various maps for travel photos, especialy the old antique style maps or globes, etc;
• Would like to see backgrounds for additional holidays (i.e. jewish holidays, easter, thanksgiving, etc.)
• would like to be able to move a backgroud.  When I tried to put the US flag as an option on the back cover, it only gave me the stripes.  If I put it on the front cover, I could see both stars and stripes.  Why would it limit the back cover?
• Can I change the opacity of the backgrounds?  I want to be able to write over the flag, but it's so prominent in color that the words are lost.
• I've used a backgroud I like, but can't seem to find it again.  There should be some way to see what it's called so that I can search for it. 
• On speech bubbles, would like the ability to manipulate the point to direct to a particular individual.  Rotating doesn't always work.  Sometime it needs to be longer & thinner so it doesn't cover someone else's face;
• Would LOVE to be able to double click on a photo in the left sidebar to enlarge it!  they're so small (especially if working on a laptop) that you have to keep dragging it into the book to see what photo it is and then undo if it's not what you want.
• Would also like the ability to delete a photo from the left side bar if you've decided you don't want to use it or acidentally uploaded two of the same photo.  It can be very cumbersome to scroll through all the photos to find the one you're looking for when you have a lot.
• Would also like it to rember the sort option I chose after I've signed out;

Thanks for asking for suggestions.  Hopefully, some of these are in the works!  It is a great program overall.

Hi Martha, The thickness of the pages of our photo books is because the pages are printed on genuine photo paper. We use Fujifilm Crystal Archive photo paper for the pages and the covers. Very, very few other companies offer REAL photo paper along with the unique lay-flat binding that we do. Some of the advantages of using real photo paper are increased longevity and more vibrant, truer and longer lasting color. Press books, with thinner pages, don't last as long, the colors can be printed incorrectly and are more prone to fading. The thickness of our pages is precisely the reason that so many people are fans of our books! I hope you will reconsider and give our books a try, for quality they are head and shoulders above all the other books out there! 

-Ingrid

Thank YOU for the wonderful program and requests for feedback.  ...wish I would have read that sticker info before I printed by book this morning!  Oh well...

While I was working on finishing up my book, I came across two more suggestions (although, it sounds like you may be covering one already), which was to have pre-designed layout options (your designs, not necessarily my own) in the layout tab of the "Build Your Own" books.  Sometimes I need inspiration! :)

The second suggestion is either more stickers of individual letters of the alphabet (not just the baby blocks) or the ability to enlarge the font even further.  I was trying to fill some 5 x 5 text blocks with individual letters, but the largest size font didn't even come close to filling the block.  I tried to get help at the store and showed a sample of what I wanted in one of your sample books, but was told that I'd have to create it in photoshop and upload them in the website.  Unfortunately, I'm not adept at photo- shop and was under a deadline to get the book completed for my husband's birthday, so had to go with the baby blocks, which was not the feel I really wanted for the page. 

Also, with regard to my previous suggestion for maps as travel backgrounds, some additional travel type options could be some vintage postcards or passport type stamps.  I've seen/used them in the past in other programs (which shall remain nameles...)  :)

Thanks again!