Apple iPhoto's book printing service

I know Apple also provides this service through Aperture, which I believe is higher res and certainly more user-configurable.

I used it 3 years ago and the IQ just wasn’t there, but I don’t want to condemn them for it because it was so long ago.

I was told sometime ago that the book service offered through iPhoto is actually provided by www.mypublisher.com – so, you might be best to go straight to the source and check them out. www.thomaspickard.com

I have used it a couple of times.
The results are… okay(ish).
The layout of the book in iPhoto doesn’t correspond accrately to how it will appear once printed: pictures clearly visible on the computer screen disappeared into the gutter of the book. (Lulu provides guides to avoid this kind of situation). Customer service is pretty ropey, slow, incomprehending and not very helpful. Most discussions I had (via email) contained the phrase ‘this is a consumer product’ which seemed to be a kind of universal get-out clause. I had to wait several days for inadequate replies. For this reason I suggest you don’t get involved with printing through Apple if you are in a hurry or as a service to your clients. The colours were a bit off and inconsistent from one printing to another of the same book and there was a considerable amount of banding. The black cloth cover marks easily and the paper isn’t very heavy…
That said, the little books are good gifts to keep in the camera bag and Stephen Shore has been touting the merits of iPhoto as a way of easily and independently producing ‘art books’.

I’ve used Aperture for photobooks a few times and have been pretty happy. Kenneth is right, they are higher res and more configureable than iPhoto. They also seem to be of heavier paper stock. Oddly though, there are fewer size options.

Thomas, I used mypublisher before switching back to mac from pc and didn’t notice any similarities in the two books (mypublisher v. Aperture). I suppose it’s possible that they are using the same machines just with different materials, but it doesn’t seem likely to me. Then again, you never know.

mypublisher is a separate entity from the iphoto book concern. However, iphoto books, mypublisher and Blurb all use the same digital printing technology, the HP indigo. Mypublisher uses either iphoto or their own app, blurb uses their Book Smart app. I received my first Blurb book this past week (a test book) and it was good enough to continue the experiment. I bought one book through my publisher (built with iphoto) last year and the color was flat (CMYK…)and quite a few pages were printed out of register.