CD Only Wedding Photography

nikkilou1984

Hi everyone,

Just wanted some thoughts on having a CD only package for wedding photographs?
Are you able to get all the photos printed for "real photo albums" and make online albums (ie photo books) too?

My fiance and I are currently trying to decide what to do about our wedding photography and have had a quote from a professional photographer who i know quite well. But not sure if its worth it or whether to spend the extra and get all the big albums etc!

So hard to decide the best option!

Thanks for any replies,
Nikki

74jax

it would depend if you had the copyright. If you had a Cd and no copyright, then no you wouldn't be able to get them printed.

Have you ever made photobooks before? I love doing them for holidays etc and so won't pay a photographer to do it, as it's something I will enjoy doing after the wedding. That said, we're just using friend's photos.

annie1975_2

My daughter has just had a photographer for her wedding,did a great job. But for them to make an album they wanted £700.
She is getting the CD and doing her own album online with Photobox at a fraction of the cost..Its very easy to do and enjoyable.

Disney_Pluto

We are having a cd and a album but only because he gave us a discount. But our photographer was really honest and said you can get just as nice ones cheaper on photo box if we wanted any extras for parents etc.

We have full rights and can do what we like with cd. I think CDs are the way forward and is what most people do. My friend who recommended our photographer got over 900 photos on her cd and then printed and made an album of her own.

If its a huge amount more for an album I wouldn't bother.

lisajane8482

Our photographer does CD only packages. You get copyright for the photos so you can print them any where. He will also do you as many copies as you like.

The package we went for also comes with an album as OH mum doesn't have a computer so we will give her that and print our own album at a later date. My mum and dad only want a copy of the cd so they can print what they want to.

Scotsbride

the advantages if you have the copyrights to the Photos on cd is you can do what you want with the photos also you generally get more phtos on a cd than you do on a album but that said if the cd is going to sit and phtos not get printed or looked at then an album might be a better opion.

continualdiamond

We got ours on a cd with copyright, sooo worth it as I have loved doing our wedding album, still doing it as I have captions etc on each page.

Doing two actually as then found an album that was all about you as a couple leading up to your wedding so has a hen party and stag do page etc etc.

It was perfect for us as I then copied photos my parents wanted and put them onto a cd and sent it to them in Australia, they were then free to print them in whatever size etc they wanted.

Idiophreak

Personally, I got a CD, but also had an album done.

I've done a few different photo books online and really enjoy it, so I can see what people are getting at here, but our professional wedding album is just a league ahead of what I could have done myself...

It's huge, it's got a beautiful metal cover and leather bindings, all of the pages are massively thick (1mm?) and fold perfectly flat, the layout/design of the pages is just beautiful - I guess when people do it for a living they get pretty good at it. Oh, and it's in its own brief case - I like that

I've no idea where you'd go to get such a thing printed personally (I know ours was printed and bound in Italy) - and even if I did, I'm sure it would not come cheap...

I did a blurb book for our honeymoon photos, which is really good, and I love it for what it is, but it's just not the same as the wedding album at all.

OP, I'd recommend you go and see a few professional photographers and ask to see examples of the albums they've put together and see what they're like...that's the only way you're going to be able to judge whether it's worth the investment or not.

[Deleted User]

We had an amazing deal from Sarah Elvin Photography as we were mid-week & last minute! We had DVD only, copyright free, and she also provided 2-3 versions of each pic (eg B&W & saturated colour). The pics were huge high quality jpgs

To print off enlargements & prints we used photobox. Very happy with the results!

My sister customised a gorgeous A3+ sized white leather album as our wedding gift, and the photos will look beautiful in it when mounted. I think a lovely album is better than a photobook personally.

nikkilou1984

Thanks for all your replies.

We've gone and booked the photographer i said about in the first post.

Got £200 off the package we want (cd only) so pretty MSE in my opinion!!

gadgeteer_2

What I usually say to people is there's absolutely nothing wrong with getting CD only for a couple of reasons.

1) Photographers will usually have a preferred supplier whom they get albums from. But there is just so much choice out there. With the CD with copyright/license, you can get the album you want rather than what the photographer can supply.

2) You can share photos with family, friends, stick them on facebook. People will often appreciate a nice photo of themselves with their loved ones.


Just bear in mind though that with a CD that what you actually see on screen is likely to vary from how it will look when you print it. A professional photographer will have his monitor calibrated and probably using a very good monitor. If your laptop/screen is quite a cheap one then the colours, contrast etc may well look a bit off.

Sometimes ditto with printing out. I've sent some photos off to a couple of online suppliers and the colours I got back were shocking. One of them are huge too which was a big disappointment.

Hope that helps