The Result
The book arrived a little quicker than the website promised, in just over a week. Overall I was quite pleased. Picture quality was good and it is rather nice to see one’s work in a book format. Some of the arrangements of images worked particularly well I thought, and others didn’t quite make it.
Least happy with the text. For me the size of the text was too big on the page in most instances. I missed reformatting one of the pages to the font I wanted, so it had the standard font. These problems arose partially because of the shortcomings in the software I have flagged above. I also noted that the pages did not come numbered. Not something that I looked for in setting up the book but something that you do spot when looking at the finished article.
Summary
Overall, the experience was not too bad. The software was reasonably easy to use and the warning messages stopped me from making any disastrous mistakes. The quality of the book is fine. However, I did end up with the feeling that the software is aimed at those people who are content to print directly from their cameras. I would have felt happier if the software offered more of the printing experience you can get in the Adobe software. For example, if Fotobook provided a printer profile then at least it would be possible to soft proof and have some idea of the outcome. At the time of sending the book off there is a significant element of fingers crossed about the final result, at least for the first time. And at £30+ a go, that is an expensive trial set up.
Any other issues came about because of the challenges of designing a book. Although the provided software takes away much of the lower level design issues there is still the requirement that images on facing pages need to work well together to be really effective. Of course, images on the same page also need to support each other. These challenges are slightly different to my normal output considerations, such as single prints for club competitions or the occasional quick slideshow.
Brian’s notes
Brian Steptoe made some supplementary comments in an email which I have his permission to share:
Stuart,
A few comments on your article. I have not used Fotobook.
A normal book standard for a quality paper for photographs is 130gsm, so your 200gsm choice is very good, but likely to be more costly than needed.
I suggest step 3 should be to choose the book format and page size. That gives a guideline for the pixel size of images you will need. Your choice is ambitious for a first try. I would recommend a size of about 10x8 inches or A4 for a first time user.
I think that 300 dpi is the normal requirement. I suggest reviewing the sizes of the templates for 1, 2, 4 images per page and working out the approximate pixel sizes at 300dpi is the next step. Bear in mind that any images required to completely fill a page without any border should be 3mm oversize of the page.
Having done that, the next step is to prepare photos.
As you say, laying out a book requires thought over page spread layouts and general sequencing through the pages. There is also the issue of text - fonts, sizes, density, placement etc. I would suggest writing some introductory text for the start of the book, again probably before getting to choose the images, as one influences the other.
Hope this helps.
Brian
