Print quality difference between iphoto and aperture...?

Question

when ordering books, is there a print quality difference between using iPhoto and Aperture? or are they sent to the same lab?
it's possible i may have some setting wrong, but when i order a book using iphoto, i never really feel the quality is that great. it's good, i just feel it could be a lot better. the print quality sort of reminds me of newsprint, albeit high quality newsprint. similar sized prints made at home on my basic 3-in-1 printer look better.
thanks...

Answer 1

Previews are what you view on your display. When you import a photo into Aperture (and I'm pretty sure iPhoto as well), your computer automatically generates a preview for quick viewing. The original images are stored in your library, but it is the preview that you see.
In Aperture, you are able to set the size and quality of these previews. When sharing photos between Aperture and iPhoto, the process is as follows:
Let's say that your images are stored in Aperture, but you also want to be able to view them in iPhoto without taking up too much room on your hard drive. Essentially, if you were to import the originals into iPhoto as well, you would be storing two exact, yet separate copies of the same image on your hard drive. As you are aware, with large images (whether JPEG's, and especially RAW) this would put quite a tax on your storage capacity after not too long.
So, you have your images in one or the other (in this case Aperture), but you want to play around with them in iPhoto. What you can do, is open iPhoto, go to the File menu and then select, Show Aperture Library. This will open a window with all of the contents of your Aperture Library. You can then drag any images you want into iPhoto . The only thing is, you are not dragging the original JPEG's, but rather, the previews of those images. If you have those previews set to a lower quality (again for capacity concerns), you will only have lower quality and lower detailed images in iPhoto. These images might not be ideal, or even suitable for printing high quality prints. The previews that you generate in Aperture though can be adjusted to be extremely high quality with no size limits.
My thinking was that since you mentioned Aperture, it sounded like you had experience with working with it and with ordering a photo book through Aperture. I guess you were saying that you ordered via iPhoto, weren't happy with the quality and were wondering if Aperture created books were better.
Anyway, if this is the case, I cannot answer that for you. I have never ordered a book through Aperture. If the quality of your images is good, you should be able to get a decent product no matter where you order it from. There is not doubt that the materials used and the print shop that does the work makes a difference, but if your images are good, you should still get a decent product through iPhoto. Perhaps iPhoto isn't the way to go though if you have had poor experiences with them.
If you haven't used Aperture yet, I would highly recommend it though aside from the photo book aspect of this thread. It is a stellar product.
I hope this helps.
Message was edited by: macorin