“Printing does more than just making an impression; It’s the natural conclusion of the photographic journey.” When you’re out with your camera, you collect reflected light. When you look at the image on a monitor its transmitted light. Its only when you look at the image on a piece of paper that it is once again reflected light. It’s the end of the journey. Paul Gallagher, Aspect2i
Last year while at the Birmingham Photography Show I came across this Polish book company Nphoto, and was suitably Impressed by their range of products. What did get my attention though was their sister company Artibo, with their range of photobooks, at that time they were not up and running yet so I guess they were generating interest.
Forward just over a year and I received an email from Artibo wanting to know if I was interested in reviewing one of their books as I had already expressed interest previously, naturally I said yes an so I started designing my book. They offer four types of books, softcover, hardcover, photo album and fine-art books, and the price ranges from the more affordable soft cover to the more expensive finart book , but by no means is the soft cover book a slouch.
So designing the book is super simple, its not rocket science, its as simple as drag and drop, you choose your layouts, upload your images and from there you can drag and drop you images into the book into your chosen layouts, Its that simple!!! In the soft cover book they offer two paper types, Arctic Matte 170g and the Mohawk 148g, you also have colour options for the cover and 20 characters for the name, I would have liked a little more latitude with that as the name I wanted to use could not fit within their character allocation and did not want to use a second row on the front cover.
Their system will let you know if the image is not suitable for print, which brings me to the next point, the preview images you see are not hi-res, so they appear low quality, do not be alarmed, all is well, if the images are not suitable you will be notified. The whole system is really very straight forward and not complicated at all, you can save your edit and come back later if you wish so you do not have to finish it once you have started.
Once you are done and ordered you book sit back and relax, it takes about 5 or so days to arrive, depending on where you are obviously. So the day arrives and the book got delivered and its always at this point that one gets to see if your images were any good, any image looks good on screen but the proof is always seeing it in print. The book arrives suitably packaged and easy to open, it has that new book smell, the texture feels good and it sure looks good. Print quality is perfect, it renders the images looking really beautiful on the Arctic white paper and its just as I remember it from last year.
I ordered a 60 page book but you can go right up to 120 pages. A 60 page book will cost you £40 a little pricey you may think, I think not, It is all relevant to the quality of book you are after, sure there are way cheaper alternatives but they will not have this attention to detail, paper type. The choice is yours. So if you are looking for a lovely elegant printed book with a lovely texture and print quality I can recommend this book for all the reasons above, if you just looking for a book to print photos you cannot go wrong, If however you want a more highly polished look then I would venture a look at their fine art book, I held one in my hand last year and I guarantee you, you will love the product, but for now take a stab at ordering yourself a book, picture’s should be printed and not just viewed on a screen.
