Creating your own wedding album

tain

We've just received our wedding photos from our photographer, and he's told us that albums are £350+ each. We were planning on getting a few of them, so as you can imagine, spending £1000+ on photos seems ridiculous.


I did see this thread posted before, but just saying 'Vista Print' or 'check the internet' isn't really what we're looking for. I'm well versed in lmgtfy.com


I'm fairly apt at CAD and have photoshop, so was more looking for how photographers print their albums then get them bound.


Would anyone know where to begin? Any ex-photographers out there willing to share trade secrets? Anyone get this kind of small-time printing done for commercial products?

gadgeteer_2

Ultimately it depends on the level of quality you want. A professional photographer will (hopefully) be using Italian Storybook style albums with the rigid pages and options like acrylic covers. These are amazing quality and will stand the test of time. They are also very expensive to buy and I've known certain companies to charge more than the £350 you've been quoted as a cost price.

There are a lot of cheaper alternatives out there who will happily sell direct to public as well as photographers at the cheaper end of the market. Google "Bobs Books", Vanilla Books to name but two. The quality won't be as much as say a Graphistudio or a Loxley but then the price reflects that.

Ultimately it boils down to what you want. A Bobs/Vanila book will be fine for a few years but it's never going to be a family heirloom that is passed down to your grandchildren to look at. And lord knows by then I bet the USB/disk will be long gone.

What you might want to do is negotiate with the photographer and ask if he can offer a discount for volume. He may not make as much per unit but it's better than you going elsewhere and him making £0.

Hope that helps

tain

gadgeteer wrote: »

Ultimately it depends on the level of quality you want. A professional photographer will (hopefully) be using Italian Storybook style albums with the rigid pages and options like acrylic covers. These are amazing quality and will stand the test of time. They are also very expensive to buy and I've known certain companies to charge more than the £350 you've been quoted as a cost price.

There are a lot of cheaper alternatives out there who will happily sell direct to public as well as photographers at the cheaper end of the market. Google "Bobs Books", Vanilla Books to name but two. The quality won't be as much as say a Graphistudio or a Loxley but then the price reflects that.

Ultimately it boils down to what you want. A Bobs/Vanila book will be fine for a few years but it's never going to be a family heirloom that is passed down to your grandchildren to look at. And lord knows by then I bet the USB/disk will be long gone.

What you might want to do is negotiate with the photographer and ask if he can offer a discount for volume. He may not make as much per unit but it's better than you going elsewhere and him making £0.

Hope that helps

Thanks, we'll look at both of them. We're not too worried about having amazing quality as we feel anything above just 'very decent quality' is simply for show, and our money can be better spent elsewhere.


I was considering asking the photographer if he does a cheaper option, but wasn't sure if the bulk of his quote was for his time, and I don't overly like squeezing people on the money they make for their hard work.

Magpied

My husband insisted that he was going to make our wedding album himself, after seeing the quality and price of our photographers books he said he could do better, being a fussy perfectionist.... Hasn't happened and it's been 4 years...

jinky9

Try My Publisher- American company. If you are a Costco member you get a discount and they always ahve new user discounts. You can do your own to a more limited design or have them do it for you with more features. Not seen the latter but used the first type for some of my own clients * on a tight budget" before I retired as a photographer.