I Photo book - photo quality

To whom it concerns:
Back in December I ordered two books via iPhoto. They were for my mother about my father who had recently passed away. As I went through the process, I observed that two of the photos indicated low resolution. Rather than delete these two particular photos, I took a chance on them. Also, during the process I observed that a couple of the B & W photos appeared like "negatives", I switched them around or used smaller "frames" When I was done, only the two color photos indicated any problems. Turns out these turned out fine but some of the black and white photos printed like negatives even though they didn't appear like that on the screen after being adjusted. I am not one for returning things but I would like to know if there is any recourse, as this was not for me and it definitely has significant sentimental value.
Tom

All I can say is the books I've created as gifts to my children for their children were received with absolute joy and appreciation (each book chronicled in pictures the first year of each grandchild's life). Granted the sentimental factor had a lot to do with the recipient's enjoyment of the book but they were spetacular. The book with its glossy dust cover is a very impressinve way to present your photos.
As Larry has pointed out so many have posted here that they were very satisfried with their book and Apple is very good about correcting problems.
To make sure there are no errors in the book before you order preview the book as described in this Apple document: iPhoto '11: Preview a book, card, or calendar before you order or print it. If the PDF file shows no errors, either in text typos (my biggest problem) or in missing photos, etc., the printed book will be error free.
OT

Similar Messages

IPhoto photo book picture quality

I am hoping someone could answer my question.
I recently ceated a photo book through iphoto. A majority of the photos used had been edited to make them brighter.
I recieved the book today, only to find that the photos seemed to of been printed without the edits. meaning that the photos seem to
have remained dark. I know that screen resolution is diffrent to a printed picture, but these just seem way to diffrent from want I wanted.
Anyway, was wondering if anyone has an answer for this or could tell me who I should contact to complain.

What did your preview show - http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1040
What color profile do the photos have? People who have ignored the recommendation to use sRGB and used Adobe RGB instead often find the printed photos darker due to the color profile
And as a rule Apple's recommendation that you do minimal editing and do it using iPhoto rather than other programs appears to provide the best results. The is a high volume consumer product designed for optimum quality using point and shoot cameras and consumer level editing in iPhoto
Obviously since the order process sends a PDF it is impossible for the printer to use anything different from what you sent
Contact Apple support if you want to see what they will do
LN

Photo book print quality: large vs. medium (both softcover)

hello all,
I just wanted to share my experience about the difference in print quality between the medium softcover and large (in my case, softcover) books from iPhoto, something I wondered about before I took the plunge and ordered them.
I recently received copies of both, ordered a week apart, both using the 300 dpi hack, but unfortunately of diff't photos in each, so the comparison won't be too scientific.
First impressions: the photos in the large softcover seemed to me better than the medium. You can detect some very fine dots with the naked eye, in the places where a color shades into white. Overall, not objectionable at all, especially at a reasonable viewing distance. Akin to a decent/average inkjet photo. Meanwhile, the medium format struck me as having a worse print resolution, like a photo in a newspaper or cheaply printed magazine. The halftone pattern seemed more noticeable.
However, on closer inspection, side by side, I can see the halftone dots in each, and I wonder if they're actually printed at the same resolution. I think it was partly the bigger size of the average photo in the large book that convinced me it had a better resolution, and the smaller photos in a medium book can make the whole thing look bad. Also, I can definitely detect banding from the halftone pattern in the medium book that I don't notice in the large; but could this be due to the subject matter in the medium (blurred washes of muted color) more than a print resolution difference? Perhaps.
My conclusion: while it could be that the print resolution on the large is slightly better, I suspect my perception of the quality difference is based more on photo size and subject matter (sharp focus w/patterns, texture, moderate detail rather than empty color looks best). Still, despite my suspicion that the print resolution is the same, I can't shake the sense the large looks a little better.
Which is too bad in a way, as I think the medium has a lot going for it: it's cheaper than the large, and I actually much prefer to have a series of single, full-bleed images at 6x8 than two or three or more cluttered together on a bigger page for the same price. Plus I find the peek-a-boo cutout on the cover of the large book a bit cheesy.
So if you're going to go medium, I would definitely stay away from those six-photos-a-page layouts, especially if you have people in your small photos: their features will be degraded enough they start to look a little funny/unrecognizable. Bigger is better.
And if anyone has the same photo at the same size in two differently sized books to compare, that would settle things.
Also, I had a number of grayscale scans that I converted to rgb before adding to iPhoto, and the b&w photos printed in the book look great. While I would describe them as 'cool', I don't detect a noticeable color cast, and the blacks are decent.
Overall, as an amateur whose expectations were aimed a bit low, I'm pleased with both for the price, and will look to large for special occasions, medium for everyday photosets.

You're confusing two similar though technically different things.
You have the dpi (dot's per inch in the raster file) resolution of the images (assuming the image will not be reduced or enlarged) of 300 dpi - that is a static resolution and it one of two resolution settings that affect the quality of a printed image.
I was told the books are printed cmyk with screening so the other resolution that you have no control over is the "LPI" or "Lines per Inch" of the printing process. The CMYK separations are each printed at a different angle to achieve the full color effect.
The soft cover books appear to be printed at a lesser lpi than the hard cover books which would give the images a courser look to them.
I have not compared the books under a loop so this is going on what I was told.

Large photo book says $29.99,when I check out, it says $49.99.

Large photo book, start page says $29.99 without mentioning number of pages,when I finish and am ready to check out, it says $49.99 and I did not explicitly add pages. My book ended up with 40 pages.

The price is $29.99 plus $0.99 per page -- http://www.apple.com/ilife/print-products.html#photo-books
Photo books. Give your pictures an incredible shelf life.
Making gorgeous photo books starts with the new, dynamic Theme browser. As you flip through the browser, you can see how your photos look in each theme. Choose the theme you like and iPhoto places all your photos in the right spots and even makes sure photos of people are cropped and framed perfectly. You can change the background color, font, layout, and more with just a few clicks. Choose your favorite photo for the book cover. Add full-bleed, two-page spreads to really show off panoramic shots. Make books big enough for the coffee table or small enough to carry around, with hardcover, softcover, and wirebound options. And make many, many copies.
Hardcover Books
XL
L
Sizes
13x10 inches
11x8.5 inches
Pages
20 pages
20 pages
Price
$49.99
$29.99
Additional pages
$1.49, 100 max.
$0.99, 100 max.
Softcover Books
L
M
S
Sizes
11x8.5 inches
8x6 inches
3.5x2.6 inches
Pages
20 pages
20 pages
20 pages
3-pack only*
Price
$19.99
$9.99
$3.99
Additional pages
$0.69, 100 max.
$0.49, 100 max.
$0.29, 100 max.
LN

Photo Book Quality Questions

I'm currently working on an XL Photo Book using iPhoto 11.
I know iPhoto says I can create a max of 100 pages. I wonder, is this 50 pages double sided or actually 100 pages double sided?
Secondly, I read some older threads about image quality and OT recomending to bump up the DPI to 300 or 400. He mentiond Pref Setter and included links, however, the links no longer work. Where /how can I do this? In addition, am I too late in bumping up the DPI, or can I just continue to create my book and increase the DPI before I actually click "Buy Book"?
Thanks!

100 Pages is 50 double-sided.
The material about the DPI is no longer relevant in iPhoto 11.
Regards
TD

How can you tell photo quality is good for large photo books

I want to make a large photo book (13 X 10) and I have a good quality camera, but how do I tell the photos are good enough to blow up to that size.

I want to make a large photo book (13 X 10) and I have a good quality camera, but how do I tell the photos are good enough to blow up to that size
With a bit of arithmetic. Check the pixel size of your photos.
To print a good quality book you will need at least 200 pixels per inch to get the necessary dpi in the printout.
So your photos should have a pixel size of at least 13 x 200 by 10 x 200 = 2600 x 2000 pixels.
Check the Info panel for the pixel sizes of your selected photos.

Aperture photo book vs iPhoto quality

Hi, will photo books printed from Aperture give me better quality than photo books from iPhoto 6? This will help me decide if I should buy Aperture or not.
Is it true that Aperture prints books at 300 dpi and iPHoto at 150 dpi?
Any advantages to printing photo books in Aperture (what does Aperture photo books do that iPhoto doesn't)?
Thanks,

Recently I uploaded and had printed a hardbound book that had been designed within Aperture. Prior to this, I have used iPhoto to produce 10 such books starting back in 2002. I have always chosen the picture book format because it provided the largest images.
This time I used Aperture because it allows large images with small captions and a good deal or freedom of length and placement.I particularly appreciated the good snap placement between the pictures and other captions. The ease of producing 2 page spreads was impressive. The book ran 84 pages and the quality of the resulting was very good–on a par with my other Apple photo books.
On only one occasion have I had a problem with quality control of these books. In that case an a good high resolution image was pixelated. In that case, I was able to call Apple and speak to someone, who after hearing my description, asked me to send my copy back and issued a reprint order.
My only bit of consternation with this order is that I found no such contact information enclosed with the book.
Finally, I haven't seen any specific suggestions within this formum for third-party print houses that can produce good quality books. Just assertions that alternatives do exist. I would be willing to strip down the .pdf file of the book I have just created to some of the trickier images and see how these one of these print houses fare.
Here to an Aperture New Year!
Don O'Shea

Is the quality of my photo book normal?

Just picked up my first photo book today. I was surprised by the print quality. Print moire is so obvious everywhere. I used cell phone cam to take this picture and you can easily see the moire problem. Just wondering is it normal?

You do get such a warning if you're making a book/calendar whatever.

Very disappointed with photo book quality

I created and ordered a photo book using Aperture and am extremely disappointed with the quality. The opening page has a spot of red ink on it with vertical red banding through the center of the image. Many other pages also have the banding.
Most of the images are also very grainy. I know the source images are not at fault, they are very smooth and look nice on my monitor and when I print them. In fact I ordered a few prints through Aperture and they came out really nice. The grain pattern is the same for both full page prints and those that are sized down to about 2x3.
On top of that, the paper quality seems worse than previous books I have created using iPhoto. I was always happy with those books, and I assumed Aperture would be the same if not better.
The books I created with iPhoto were with jpeg images from the same camera, a rebel xt. The only difference this time was most of the images were shot as raw. There was also a small handful jpegs shot with a point and shoot and these have the same grainy pattern as the the raw images.
I sent an email to Apple support, but are others still having book quality issues with the latest version of Aperture 2? This is unacceptable, especially for the amount that is charged. Would it have been better if I exported the images as jpegs, imported them into iPhoto and created the book there?

Hi guys,
I got a real trouble with aperture book printing.
The cover is Ugly it looks like it's scratched over some miles. It's Mate. And it looks printed with a poor inkjet printer.
Inside the book the photos looks almost correct but in the skies we can see some vertical line. I'm fully unsatisfied I got better result with iphoto books !
Please Apple do something. I ordered this book from France. Ans I saw on different forums that they can get better quality than this outside France.
The paper looks very light.
I'm considering ordering books from blurb. And I feel sorry cause aperture tool to create a book is awsome.
Did any french photograph experienced this ?
Regards every one.
Bye.
PS : I printed the pdf and checked at 100% the photos looks great.

Hi, I want to know if the quality of a photo book with iphoto is the same that with aperture,

the photos have the same quality, because I used aperture to retouch it, but for me is easy make a photo book with iphoto, I only imported the photos form aperture to iphoto, and I made the photo book, I want to buy it, but before I want to know which one have more quality or if the method of impression, aperture and iphoto, are the same.
so have both the same quality of impression?
And if the answer is no, Can I export my photo book form iphoto to aperture? how?
Thanks a lot

Quality is a personal opinion - I assume (but no one here really knows for sure) that the same vendor does both -
- here are technical details on both - http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3412
in cany case you can not move a photo book from iPhoto to Aperature
And Apple does have a 100% satisfaction guarentee
LN

Compare quality and features between aperture3 and iPhoto 11 photo books

Are photo books created in either aperture3 or iPhoto 11 the same or does one software program produce a better end result?

I only discovered my problem AFTER I had uploaded my book for printing. i went back and tried to create a PDF to save and discovered my problem. It had looked fine on the screen and I never received any sort of error message during the upload. I contacted Apple and they looked at what had been uploaded and saw that it was corrupted like my PDF so they canceled the order. I then went thru the process of rebooting in safe mode and tried a preview before uploading the second time. I called Apple again and they said the uploaded file appeared to be fine this time -- I have not received the book yet, but I am hoping it looks alright after printing. I experimented last night with making a duplicate of the original book project, then changed the template on the duplicate to Large instead of XL (everything else was the same as far as template style and color), then I ran a preview of that duplicate -- there were no corrupted files in the preview. It appears to me that the problem is not with corrupted photo files in my library but has to do with the size selection -- no XL books. When converting from Large to XL, the photos and their pkacement were exactly as the original but the size and location of all the Text alterations I had made to the original had been changed in the duplicate and would require editing again. This was the only difference in the two. Until Apple resolves this issue with another update, I suggest you either create only Large books and avoid XL -OR- boot in "safe mode" to send the XL book to print. I hope Apple corrects this issue soon because the XL books really are beautiful and it seems ridiculous to have to reboot everytime you want to purchase a book. Hope this helps.

Quality of photo when creating a photo book from iphoto

i am in the process of creating a photo book however i am downloading pictures from facebook and i am not sure if the qulaity will be good enough for print, will i be told during this process as i havent been yet and dont want to pay for something that isnt right. thanks

There is another potential issue. While you may have enough pixels, the plain fact is that not all pixels are the same. When a photo is uploaded to Facebook they 'process' it - and in the course of that throw away about 90% of the data in the file. What that means is that a lot of the character and depth of the photo may be lost when printed. Unfortunately, this is not something that iPhoto can warn you about.
Regards
TD

Poor quality / dark photo books?

Hi
I created a photo book for a Christmas present and ordered 2 copies for over £50.
I hadn't ordered one for years and that one was superb but these are awful. Pics were shot with an ESO 400D and they look great on (calibrated) iMac and Formac screens but the books all look really under exposed. Backgrounds for example, which contains plant life etc have more or less just come out black.
What should I do ? (I know it's a little late after ordering them but have been busy) - should I send them back to be reprinted ?
thanks
Roger

Roger:
What is the color profile of those photos? Are they the Adobe RGB?
You might be able to get some compensation from apple. Contact them via the following link and explain in detail the issue. Waiting this long may work against you however but it's worth a try: http://www.apple.com/support/photoservices/returns/
TIP: For insurance against the iPhoto database corruption that many users have experienced I recommend making a backup copy of the Library6.iPhoto database file and keep it current. If problems crop up where iPhoto suddenly can't see any photos or thinks there are no photos in the library, replacing the working Library6.iPhoto file with the backup will often get the library back. By keeping it current I mean backup after each import and/or any serious editing or work on books, slideshows, calendars, cards, etc. That insures that if a problem pops up and you do need to replace the database file, you'll retain all those efforts. It doesn't take long to make the backup and it's good insurance.
I've created an Automator workflow application (requires Tiger), iPhoto dB File Backup, that will copy the selected Library6.iPhoto file from your iPhoto Library folder to the Pictures folder, replacing any previous version of it. It's compatible with iPhoto 08 libraries and Leopard. iPhoto does not have to be closed to run the application, just idle. You can download it at Toad's Cellar. Be sure to read the Read Me pdf file.

Follow up on photo book quetion

--When I then try to use these smaller photos in the photo book, I get the yellow warning that the photo "may print at too low quality". This is what concerns me.

Hello Shelly,
That behavior is described in the iPhoto help menu here: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=iPhoto/8.0/en/6314.html.
Review that link and it's suggestions as they may be of some assistance.
Basically that warning means the image you are using is low resolution. You really should not get that warning unless you are using relatively small images (like imports from a web site). Images imported from a camera should not give you that warning unless you have edited them (like cropping).
Hope that helps.

Photo Books - Crop and Color Issues from Kodak Gallery

I've been spending a good amount of time creating photo books and ordering them from Kodak using the built-in online ordering feature.
I've noticed several items that I was curious if others have any experience perspective on.
1. Cropping. For a flexible full bleed photo book, the page as it is represented in PSE3 is substantially cropped when Kodak processes the book. The difference between the two is almost 1/2 on either side and 1/4 inch on on the top a bottom. (These are approximate numbers) Have others seen this? It would be nice to have a border in the software showing where the page will be cropped since the Kodak service and PSE3 are so tightly integrated.
2. The colors come seem to come off a bit dark as compared to prints I have ordered and the images are all very slightly pixelated as compared to prints. Nothing awful, but not what you would want for your best photos.
I am hoping to learn if others have seen these issues and learned to live with them or are the other photo book providers that could turn a pdf into a higher quality book?
Thank you for your assistance.
Wes Gimbert
Cincinnati, OH

I haven't used the Kodak Gallery for photo books. I have been tempted a time or two, but so far I have ordered my books through Mypublisher.com. The product is about the same. And I saw one of their books last Christmas and was impressed with it. In reading through the instructions from Mypublisher, they warn that there will be some cropping on full-bleed images and advise to be sure to allow for that. I have not run into the color or brightness difference that you mentioned. There are those who will disagree with me, but I read an article awhile back that indicated that most of the online photo processors as well as many of the one-hour minilabs standardize their equipment to the sRGB color space. So that is what I have used when preparing my books, and I have been very pleased with the results.
As far as your pages are concerned, you might try what I did in my last project. The pictures didn't fit any of the templates provided by the publisher, so I created my own pages in Photoshop. I positioned the pictures where I wanted them and added my own text. Then I just created my book using those pages. It turned out very nicely. I have distributed 75 copies of the album so far and everyone has really liked it.
Mypublisher.com provides software that you download and create your album on your computer. Then when you are ready to order there is a menu item that connects you to the Web site. The only problem is, this is a Windows service only. There is no support for the Mac.

I Photo book - photo quality

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