Through tomorrow, you can snag a Groupon for a 20-page 8×8″ photobook from Shutterfly! SAVE 67%! Time to get those digital scrapbook pages printed! This looks like a nationwide deal today… and since it’s an online deal, it doesn’t matter what city you buy the Groupon from! How does Groupon work? You buy the deal from the Groupon website and then you’ll receive a PDF receipt with the details of the deal. The receipt will have a code that you then enter on the Shutterfly website! Easy peasy! You must use the code by November 22, 2010. (NOTE: Shipping is not included)

I was contacted by someone with Adoramapix with an exciting opportunity to try out one of their photo books. As my blog readers all know, I love trying out different printers - and I’ve got a number of other books to compare this one to!

AdoramaPix is a photo lab geared towards photographers, but anyone regardless of their photographic expertise can print with them. What I found most intriguing about their photo books is that THEY ARE NOT PRESS PRINTED! They create their books with Fuji Crystal Archive paper. *insert excitement here* If you’ve read my other reviews, you know that I love the sleek look of bound photo books, but always complain about the print quality and that I prefer the quality of real photographic prints. Could I really have the best of both worlds?

Apparently the answer is YES!

But before I tell you how much I love this book, let’s talk about a few other things first…

Options and pricing: They have many sizes of books to choose from. As a digital scrapper, I love that they offer 6×6 (that’d be an adorable gift), 8×8, 10×10, and 12×12. However, you are a little limited in the number of pages you can have in each book. You can choose from 14, 26, 38, 50, and 76 pages. Press printed books usually give you more flexibility with the number of pages, but these pages are MUCH thicker than cardstock pages, so I can understand why you can’t go above 76 pages. The books really aren’t as expensive as I was expecting… As of right now the 8×8″ 26-page book is on sale for $26.98 (I’m not sure what the usual price is on that, I’ll update this when I know). At Shutterfly (which I feel is overpriced), a 26-page press printed hard cover book would be $36.99 ($29.99 for 20 pages plus $1 for each additional page). In this instance, the Adoramapix book would be less expensive (and way better quality, in my opinion). If we compared a 26-page 12×12 book from both, the Adoramapix book would be $74.95 and the Shutterfly book would be $63.99. So, as you can see, the Adoramapix book would not always be less expensive. You can do the math yourself if price is your main concern - but I, for one, like to consider VALUE and I believe that despite the price, the Adoramapix book is a better value since it is a higher quality book and the pages won’t fade like in a press printed book (photographic prints have a longer life than press prints).

Uploading and online software: Their book maker is easy to use and self explanatory. You simply upload your pages/photos and then drag and drop them onto the pages in the book. They don’t automatically fit to the page, so I clicked “Fit to page” or “Fit to spread” along the upper toolbar. At times, however, the software was a little “buggy.” Every now and then the pages I was trying to add wouldn’t plop on the page and it wouldn’t work again until I exited and logged in again. That was a tad annoying… and it may have been a browser issue - I don’t know (I use Firefox).

The cover: As scrappers, most of us like to create a custom cover ourselves in Photoshop for our photo books. This always requires a template. I looked all over their site for a template and couldn’t find one, so I emailed them and they sent me the template over email. What I found interesting about the template is that it didn’t have guides along the edges for the portion of the image that would get wrapped around. So, I just made sure to keep my main design away from the edges to avoid any chopping or wrapping of important elements. When I got my book, I noticed that the cover is almost shimmery looking… like it was printed on pearl or metallic paper. GORGEOUS!

2-page spreads: I usually don’t do 2-page spreads - but may start doing so now! With a Shutterfly/Viovio/MyPicTales book, you have to be really careful when you do a 2-pager so you don’t put important stuff in the gutter because it will get bound into the book. When I saw that the spreads in the Adoramapix book lay flat and there is NO GUTTER, I decided to try a spread. I didn’t even bother cutting the image in half - I could just upload the 8×16 image and plop it in the book and click “fit to spread.” Resisting the urge to leave room for the gutter was very hard for me, since I’m usually really worried about stuff getting chopped off… but I was adventurous this time and even put text crossing from one page to the other. I like to walk on the wild side every now and then. :p

The spreads lay flat and there is no gutter! Love it! There’s just a fold at the center. I’m a fan of the lay flat spreads because I hate adjusting my pages for the gutter.

PLEASE NOTE: You should still leave about 1/4″ around the outside edges for bleed. You should keep important elements and journaling away from the very edge. A little of the outside edges were cut off to create full bleed prints.

The binding: Looks good!

Print quality: Oh my word. The printing and colors are SPOT ON compared to my calibrated monitor. I have absolutely no complaints about it. The colors are perfect, the brightness and clarity are perfect, the prints are beautiful. I LOOOOOOVE it! Seriously. The pages are super thick and seem durable. The prints have a beautiful finish. I LOVE IT! Did I tell you, I love this book? lol When I opened up my package I was very, very impressed. I sat there and flipped through the book like 5 times. haha! Please forgive my photos; I am not the best product photographer and I just got a gray card and I don’t know how to use it yet to set my white balance…now that I’m looking at my photos of my book, they’re too cool. The book is warmer than my photos… and matches my monitor’s output. It is really beautiful in person!

I do believe I have found the solution to my photo book dilemma! I highly recommend giving their books a try if you love the quality of photographic prints and want the finished look of a photo book! Two thumbs up from me!

I was contacted by Chari at Persnickety Prints to try their prints out. I remembered reading the review over at The Daily Digi and was super excited to try them out!

First off, I had absolutely no troubles uploading or ordering… I found their online ordering simple. I always like that. Second, their customer service is fantastic. Chari is wonderful to work with and super quick to respond to all your questions and concerns.

Their shipping is fast. Their prices are fantastic - some of the very best in the biz for scrapbook pages. 12×12’s are just $1.99 and 8×8’s are $0.99. That’s $1 cheaper than Costco for a 12×12… and I think their prints are better than Costco.

Now, onto the quality of the prints… Let me start this off by informing you that my monitor is currently properly calibrated using the Spyder3Elite calibration hardware. I think this bit of information is really important for you to know since I can now properly judge if a printer can reproduce the color I see on my calibrated monitor.

The prints:

The prints are really beautiful and I LOVE the matte finish on their matte prints. I never, ever order glossy… I’m a fan of matte. I think the finish looks more professional and it helps avoid fingerprints and glare. The pages are full bleed and I had NOTHING cut off. I always hated adjusting my pages for printing when I printed through Costco because I could lose 1/4″ of my edges… I didn’t have that problem at all with Persnickety Prints!

Brightness: I found that the prints were just ever so slightly brighter than my monitor… but it wasn’t a huge difference. I made sure to turn my monitor’s brightness down when I calibrated and it matches the pro lab I use for printing my pictures.

Color: The colors are nice and rich… although I did find the pinks to be a little less vibrant than what I see on my screen. The greens and blues seemed to be reproduced very well in their prints - I only noticed a difference in the pinks (and I do love me some PINK…hehe!). I would not have noticed this if I had not held the prints out next to me and compared them to my screen. It is not something I noticed when I looked at them right out of the box - which is pretty darn good!

So, there ya have it! I think their prints are great!

Would I order prints from them in the future? Definitely.

I ordered my first prints from Scrapping Simply last week and they are beautimous! If you’ve read my reviews about photobooks, I have always complained about the print quality… that they just aren’t quite as good as photo processed prints. While I thought Viovio was my fave of all the books I’d printed, I still recognized that the prints just weren’t quite as beautiful as I knew they could be. After spending so much time and effort on these pages, it would bother me to not see them exactly as I’d hoped they’d print. In my opinion, press printed pages do not look as beautiful or as rich as photo processed prints.

I used to be a die hard Costco fan for getting pages printed. But the last time I printed through them I think their calibrations were off because things did not print correctly and my prints were really dark (browns printed black… boooo).

Lately I have heard really fantastic things about Scrapping Simply. I decided to give them a try during their last sale, especially since their regular prices are lower than Costco’s ($1 cheaper for 12×12’s and $0.50 cheaper for 8×8’s). I mainly wanted to print a bunch of photos from our recent session with Ash Photography (she’s crazy talented… I adore her work), but I also decided to try and print a few pages.

I really wanted to print 10×10″ pages. I think it’s the PERFECT size. I think 8×8’s are too small and 12×12’s seem really big after seeing my pages in 600×600 px online all the time. lol But I have been completely unsuccessful at finding 10×10″ albums to put 10×10″ pages in. So, I went with 12×12″. If any of you find albums for 10×10’s, please let me know!

ANYWAYS…. I got my prints and they are really pretty (I chose the matte finish…I prefer it over glossy)! They did print a little darker than what I see on my screen… and the blues aren’t quite as blue. I’m not really sure if it’s my monitor calibration though. I’d have to view my pictures on a monitor that’s been properly calibrated to really know whether the colors and brightness are “on.” I didn’t really notice the difference until I brought my prints right next to my computer to compare.

One thing I LOVE about these prints is that I didn’t have to adjust or resize ANY of my pages. I journal along the edge of my pages a lot and nothing was cut off. I hate adjusting for bleed and cut off… and that can get really time consuming. With SS, I just saved my original layouts as 12×12 .jpegs and uploaded. I didn’t adjust them at all. Woot! I did have a problem with cut off at Costco, but not with SS. If you scrap in 12×12 but print 8×8, you don’t have to resize. Isn’t that nice?

Give them a try if you print pages off individually. Can’t beat that price for photo processed prints!

I’ve heard AMAZING things about Scrapping Simply lately. I think I’ve decided to start printing my pages individually instead of in in books because I simply do not have as much time to scrap anymore and I don’t want to wait two years to print any pages out… lol. Scrapping Simply will print your pages for a great price (reg. price for 8×8″ is 99 cents and for 12×12″ is $1.99)… but right now if you order $50 of prints, you’ll get $10 off your order (through Nov. 8th)! These are REAL photographic prints… not press printed prints on cardstock.  They are the sister site to Allen’s Camera, a printing company who caters to professional photographers… so I’m hoping their prints will be awesome! I’ll let you know how my prints come out when I get them. I ordered some scrap pages and a bunch of prints from our family’s session with a professional photographer.