I FINALLY found a good photobook printer!

M

Megan Turnidge

New member
After being VERY frustrated with Shutterfly, MyPicTales, and Artscow... I finally tried Viovio. Shutterfly has VERY grainy prints... MPT does too and prints rather dark and sometimes yellowish, and the Artscow books were washed out.

First, I want to show you the massive difference in prices. The SF, MPT, and AC books are 8x8 and the Viovio book is 8.5x8.5. You can view pricing specs for each company here: SF, MPT, AC, VV. I was a little confused when I checked out with my VV book because it was higher than I expected... this is because their pricing for different papers and binding options are on a different page on the website. The silk paper is an additional 15% on top of the price. If your get the other paper with the pro bound option (apparently the better binding), it's a flat $3.99 additional charge. Here is a price chart to compare the 8-inch books between the companies. I have chosen the pro bound book for the VV. Also, the custom photo cover does not come standard for MPT (it's extra) so to be fair I did pricing for a custom cover on all the books.

pricing.jpg


The bigger the book you do, the greater the savings with VV! Check out that 100 page book! I was amazed at their prices!

Okay, and on to my review. I am so happy with my Viovio book! Unlike my other books, the pictures on the pages aren't grainy. The colors are great!! The paper is more silky than SF paper but isn't too glossy. The cover is GORGEOUS! It isn't quite the quality of my individual Costco prints, but it's the closest I've gotten from a photobook printer! YAY!!! I didn't have any problems with trimmed edges, but I'm always super careful about my margins. ;)

On the downside, the website is crazy. It is hard to navigate and I had to use this online tutorial to upload my book. I also had the help of Sarah (Sarah8914).. THANKS SARAH!! :thumbup: I did contact customer service a few times and they were very quick to reply and were AWESOME!

Turnaround time is longer than SF. My book took a week and a half to get to me... it shipped earlier than their estimates, but I also chose the sloooowest shipping option they had. lol

I am so pleased and I have found my printer!! :wub: :w00t:

Okay, here are the pictures!!

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Thanks for that review! I have been trying to figure out who to print though! I will give them a try!
 
Your book looks Gorgeous... I think i might try getting one printed, I was thinking just doing indivual pages, because i wasnt sure how it would look to have all diffferent looking pages side by side, but yours looks GREAT!!

Thanks for the review!! :)
 
Megan, I really appreciate your review (+the ones you have done previously) and how thorough you are.. thanks for the price chart too!! Your book looks fabulous.. I adore the cover!! Do they do discounts like Shutterfly and the like? I haven't had a book made (my pages are so random) and would like to do one for myself in the coming months.
 
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*Kelly* said:
Megan, I really appreciate your review (+the ones you have done previously) and how thorough you are.. thanks for the price chart too!! Your book looks fabulous.. I adore the cover!! Do they do discounts like Shutterfly and the like? I haven't had a book made (my pages are so random) and would like to to one for myself in the coming months.
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No problem! :) They don't do discounts (that I know of) at Viovio, but if you just wanted to test them, you could do a small paper back book... they are very inexpensive. But even when books are on sale at SF and MPT, they won't come close to the low price of a larger book at VV. Hope that helps!

Oh and if ANYONE wants to try Viovio out adn gets stuck, feel free to ask me for help. :w00t:
 
Wow - Thanks for the review! I haven't printed a book out yet but have been going back and forth trying to decide between Shutterfly and MyPublisher. I think I'm going to give yours a try!!
 
Yay! I'm so glad you liked it and your pages look great!

Did you do pro-bound for your book? Or was that just for the price comparison? I'm still trying to figure out if I should do that or the "regular" method for my next book.

Definitely check out Viovio, I too am very pleased with them!
 
your book looks fab! thanks for the review! i've been thinking of trying out viovio.

Do you think I could just enlarge my shutterfly ready 8x8 pages to 8.5x8.5 and that would work? I guess I should check out the viovio website.
 
Sarah8914 said:
Yay! I'm so glad you liked it and your pages look great!

Did you do pro-bound for your book? Or was that just for the price comparison? I'm still trying to figure out if I should do that or the "regular" method for my next book.

Definitely check out Viovio, I too am very pleased with them!
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I didn't do the pro bound for my book, but will for my next book since it will be HUGE. ;)
 
meems said:
your book looks fab! thanks for the review! i've been thinking of trying out viovio.

Do you think I could just enlarge my shutterfly ready 8x8 pages to 8.5x8.5 and that would work? I guess I should check out the viovio website.
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8.5 is actually the trimmed page... you upload 8.75x8.75 pages.
 
aggiefamily said:
So would you take a layout and add a .25 inch white edge to it? I have a lot of journaling and items that go to the edge.
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Do you only have the jpegs? I resized my layered files so my paper went all the way to the edge. I wouldn't recommend adding white borders unless you wouldn't care if you had white edges in your book. Any place you print a book, you need to allow for bleed and binding. If you don't have the layered files anymore, you could take your eye dropper to sample your BG paper and then fill the canvas with that so at least it wasn't white.
 
When I take bleed into account, I add a .25 trim of my background color, so that if they don't cut them properly, you wont have white edges left.
 
Thanks for the review! Your book looks great. I just mentioned Viovio to my sister as a possibility for printing minibooks for her wedding. Glad to know I wasn't suggesting bad quality.
 
Great review Megan! I'm so glad that you found a book that you like! I was hoping for something close to Costco! I know where I'll be printing now!
 
hmm... i only print 8x8's for gifts, and 12x12's for personal, do they do 12x12's?

I really liked your cover, too, Megan, very impressive! (you make me want to start back up on the baby book I keep starting)
 
Voodoo_Bryn said:
hmm... i only print 8x8's for gifts, and 12x12's for personal, do they do 12x12's?

I really liked your cover, too, Megan, very impressive! (you make me want to start back up on the baby book I keep starting)
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Thanks! I was really happy with the cover too! :)

They do 12x12 books, but they don't have a large enough printer for a custom photo cover... it is die cut... like this: http://www.viovio.com/wiki/index.php?structure_id=470
 
Hi
I went to the VV site. So, do you upload pdfs of your page? If so, about what size files are your pdfs? I was just wondering what quality I should be converting my files to pdf. Press quality? Sorry for the q's. I have been wanting to do a book for a long time now and was in 'analysis paralysis' about what company to use! Thanks for the detailed review! Soooo appreciated!
 
CA Dreamer said:
Hi
I went to the VV site. So, do you upload pdfs of your page? If so, about what size files are your pdfs? I was just wondering what quality I should be converting my files to pdf. Press quality? Sorry for the q's. I have been wanting to do a book for a long time now and was in 'analysis paralysis' about what company to use! Thanks for the detailed review! Soooo appreciated!
Click to expand...

No, I uploaded my jpegs. You can actually upload them at 12x12 for any of the square books, but you just want to make sure you have the margins for the bleed (I personally uploaded 8.75x8.75 pages with important stuff 1/4 inch from every edge). The best way to upload your pages is to rename them in order with numbers in front of them (i.e. 01love, 02cuddlebug, 03daddysgirl, etc) so you don't ahve to worry about reordering the pages in their software and then zip them up into zip files. Check out this site, it will help TONS!
http://digiscrapinfo.com/wordpress/2007/11/15/creating-a-viovio-book-the-process/

And the templates for the covers are here:
http://www.viovio.com/wiki/index.php?structure_id=448
 
You're like the bff I always wanted.

I have the feeling if I lived near you I would never have a bad outfit cuz you'd just tell me straight up how to dress.

And I would always save money cuz you'd be tellin' me about the great deals you found.

And I would have the best shadows cuz you would be like, "uh-uhh, honey, that aint' workin'."

Have you ever considered a move to Malaysia?
 
hehehe! kellie, i totally see that too, i love informative people who actually know what the hay they are talking about! megan...so excited to try viovio! i am actually excited to do a book now!
 
Thank you SOOOO much Megan! I have only printed one photobook through Creative Memories and loved the quality but it was CRAZY expensive so I won't be doing that again. I was just about to try shutterfly when I found this thread. I can't tell you how much I appreciate this! Your book looks great!! Now I just have to figure out how to bookmark this thread so when I'm ready to print I can come back and find this info again!!! :)
 
This is great information Megan!! There are so many choices I was getting confused so I really appreaciate you putting it all in a chart! Thanks!!
 
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