Ta-Da! Happiness has arrived

Another one of my photography resolution for this year is to start printing my photos, canvas or photobook or facebook post or whatever as long as it's out of my computer. Almost all of my photos ended up in my computer or HDD and seen by no-one, not even Un. I'm on the right track to change that now.

I've printed 2 photobooks for Europe trip and India trip.  And I've also printed our wedding photobook. Yes, for the last 2 years since wedding, our wedding pic stayed on that DVD Lawrence gave us and never made it to any print or even picasa album. Now I'll have a photo book.

I've made 3 photobooks in less than a month and I'm on the roll.  They are burning my pocket too. THey are from MyPublisher because MyPublisher is always having big coupons and after comparing with Blurb and Costco, I save more. Still, they are pricey. But it's so worth it to see my photos out of my laptop. And it's fun to see other people looking at it.

Photobook prices

Pages  8.5x11 12x12 12x15

MyPublisher 20 $36+0.99 N/A $70+1.99   

Blurb 20 $32 $54 (or 13x11)

Costco 30 $25+0.78 $40+1.38 N/A

Since I've been seeing Walgreen prints and photobooks, I'm impressed with MyPublisher results. Europe and Inida  books cost $30 for 70 pages of 8.5x11 photocover book. That was like 65% off or something. Shipping is another ~$12, so ~$40/book.

Our wedding book is $107 for two copies of 12x15 photocover book, including shipping.

But I hate MyPublisher software. Hate it hate it hate it.  It crushed everytime I tried to swap pages. As soon as I dragged a page, it crashed. Every single time. The interface is a lot worse than Walgreens online tool. I never had any problem with Walgreens' tool, more capable and easier/faster to use. More flexible too.

I got so fed up on making my first book that I even want to just ignore that saving since the time it took due to crashes is totally not worth it.  I learned. For my second book forward, I made a spreadsheet mental layout plan of which pics I want at each place.  Very detail.  I have to do that or I will end up spending more time in just restarting the software every 2 min for like 100 times for a single book.
It works. Having a solid plan definitely helps. It's way easier to swap pages and change plans in my s/s than in their software.

Blurb is now integrated into Lightroom. How nice would it be to use Lightroom once and for all. Not only to send to Blurb, but also to keep a digital ebook, nicely arranged. Now if I want an ebook, I'd have to repeat the same layout in Lightroom. Still, I can't get myself to pay more for Blurb, knowing MyPublisher is a better value. So much so for going cheap.