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 Hi
Scrapbook Friend,
Kathy and I just got our first
Shutterfly.com 12x12 Hardbound Scrapbook
delivered today. We uploaded it on Sunday, July 15th, 2007 and we had it delivered today,
Saturday, July 21st, 2007.
Not
bad, a one week turn-a-round!
While the overall book and quality is not up to the same quality you get
with
RealBooks-Scrapbooks, the overall quality is good and should last many
years to come if taken care of.
We did like the ease of creating the
Shutterfly Hardbound Scrapbook,
especially the ease of uploading the completed pages... Hi-Speed Internet is
a must here. There were only a few minor things that their detailed
instructions didn’t cover and that we had to figure out on our own. But,
we’ll talk more about that in just a few minutes.
First, let’s go over why we weren’t impressed with the book's over all
quality.
I
want to say right up front that the quality of the printed images and the
glossy custom cover were wonderful. We absolutely loved the look and feel
of the 12x12 hardbound book itself.
The images and colors were right on the mark and stunning!
But, the binding process they use probably won’t hold up well if the book is
viewed on a regular basis.
Here’s an example of what I mean…
 As
you can clearly see in this macro image I took, the
Shutterfly page binding
is only attached to the paper backing and is actually separated from the
spine. This is pretty common in most inexpensive book binding processes.
Eventually, the pages will come loose from wear and the entire binding can
come out of the cover completely. With proper care, this should be many,
many years from now though. Just don’t give the book to a young child to
look at unattended.
 On
the other hand, as you can clearly see, the
RealBooks-Scrapbooks page binding is securely bound to all the pages and
to the spine creating as strong a link as possible. You can actually take
the RealBooks-Scrapbooks hardbound scrapbook and open it until the two parts
of the cover actually touch one another and the binding will not separate or
be damaged. This process will last many times longer than the process used
by
Shutterfly. This is real archival quality.
You can click on any of the images above for the full size view if you need
it.
 What
we liked about
Shutterfly’s Hardbound Scrapbooks:
What we really liked, was the ease at which you are able to upload your
images to
Shutterfly’s server. Talk about easy…
Here’s the first of the things we had to figure out on our own though.
First, you need to set up an account. That’s not too hard and has many
advantages… such as sharing your photo’s with family and friends with easy
links.
Then, you need to create a new album to save the images in or choose one you
already have set up to add to. That wasn’t too hard either.
Now…
Just download a small module to install with your Internet Browser, browse
to where your images are, select all the ones you want to upload and press
the get photo’s button. Then, just sit there and watch as it grabs up to 3
images at a time and uploads them one-by-one to their server.
It’s
that easy.
Here's how
we start to set up our scrapbook project. You choose the
Shutterfly
Store option, then the products menu and finally the Photo Books option.
Now, you choose your size. In our case we chose the 12x12 Memory Book
option. So, we pressed the Go button under the 12x12 image and description.
Now came another of the have to figure it out on your own steps. Under the
big picture of all the changing books, there’s a small light green label
that says Choose an occasion. It’s defaulted to General. You need to
press the little down arrow and choose the “Print your digital scrapbook”
option.
Once
you select the new option, you’ll see the blank book and it will show you the prices. Currently:
$54.99 for the first 20 pages (more on what that includes in a minute) and $1.50 per page
over 20. Let’s talk about price and what you get in a few minutes, right now, let’s finish
getting our project ready for order.
We press the Get Started button…
This brings us to a style page that we don’t need to do anything with, as we
have no text to worry about. Everything is a part of our images, so we just
continue by pressing the “Next” button.
If you have taken too long to get there or have not signed in yet, it will
ask you to sign in. Otherwise, we end up at the title page.
This is where we found out we needed a title page as you cannot just start
with two page layouts. This is also were we found out we still had to
choose the images from one or more of our albums before we could start
placing images on pages.
One note: The instructions told us to turn off a couple of options for
doing a scrapbook. We never found out where to do that and assume that they
now have them set correctly when you choose the scrapbook option in the menu
to start. Shutterfly needs to update their instructions for the new process.
So,
we had to go get our images.
Just press the little blue Get pictures button and it takes you to your
albums. Choose an album and select the images that you want in your
hardbound scrapbook.
Don’t look in the images window or at the bottom for the button to actually
add them into your project. If you choose the return to edit pages option
before actually adding them via the button in the upper right, you’ll have
to come back and do it again. We found that one out the hard way too.
Now that you have added your photo’s to your project, you see them in the
bottom of the work area ready to use.
BUT, YOU'RE NOT READY TO ADD THEM TO YOUR SCRAPBOOK YET!
First, you have to select a background style for each page. If it doesn’t
say Drop Picture Here on the page, you can’t put the images on the page.
I
had to click on each page one at a time and press the “Full Page” option,
the one that is totally gray with no writing several times most of the time
to get it to take.
Use the dashed bar at the top or the forward/backward
arrows to move through the blank pages. Once you get to page 2 and 3 (your
first two page layout), the page options menu has more types to choose from and you’ll have to
scroll about half way down to find the full page style.
WARNING:
The gray ones at
the top have writing associated with them, so be careful. Also, the
menu option that says "Apply
to all pages" that you'll find at the bottom of the Page options menu once you get to
page 2 didn’t work for me. It didn't work in any of the projects I created using Windows
2000 or Windows XP. I had to select each page one at a time with lots of clicks
to get it to take.
The
good news:
Now that we have all our pages set up, all you do is to drag and drop your
images where you want them.
One other little nitpicky item… I had to click on some of the images to
enlarge them before placing them in the book as the thumbs don’t have labels
and sometimes were out of order. Shutterfly needs to add titles (file
names) to the thumbnail images so we know which page is which. Either
that or make the thumbnails bigger so we can see more detail.
To add a new page once you get to the end of the 20, you use the add button
on the Page options menu… also hard to find but easy to use once you do find
it.
If
you want all your two page layouts to show, you have to add at least one
more page (at $1.50 each) since the title page is mandatory and counts as
page one of your 20 allowed. Not very sporting in my book to end the
default book on the left hand page forcing most people to include at least
one extra page.
We continue...
After you have all your pages in place, you press the next button in the
upper right again and it takes you to the custom cover design.
Same as with the pages, you need to set up the full page styles first, then
just drop your back cover, front cover and spine graphics in place and
you’re ready for preview and order.
We used PaintShop Pro and the PhotoShop templates that
Shutterfly provided
to create the cover and spine images before we uploaded them. That way we
knew that they would be the right size and the images and text would all
show properly. We also used the template to check each of our pages,
although the standard 12x12 at 300 dpi saved to a high quality .jpg file was
all that was needed for the pages.
The covers were another story and without their templates, I’m not sure
things would have turned out as well as they did.
Shutterfly needs to create more template options as not all programs will
accept the PhotoShop versions. They do give you the measurements in
the instructions, so you can create your own template if you need to.
But, that's another story.
 So,
the books reviewed and we were ready to order. Let’s go into pricing
now.
As a review, we said that
Shutterfly was currently: $54.99 for the first 20
pages and $1.50 per page over 20 for the 12x12 book.
Then, just to compare,
RealBooks-Scrapbooks is $67.00 for the first 40 pages and currently 60
cents a page after the first 40 pages and the title page doesn’t count as
one of your 40 pages.
So, let’s see how that works out on a 40 page book (20 two page layouts,
custom cover and title page).
Shutterfly would charge $54.99 for the first 20 pages and they count the
title page as page one. So, that’s only 9.5 two page layouts. Then at
$1.50 per page for the rest of the 10.5 two page layouts or 21 pages, that
would be another $31.50 for a grand total of $86.49 plus tax and shipping.
RealBooks-Scrapbooks would charge $67.00 for the first 40 pages
including a separate title page and custom cover. That means that for the
same project at RealBooks-Scrapbooks, you will only pay the standard $67.00
plus tax (Colorado only), plus shipping. A savings of $19.49. And, at 60
cents per page verses $1.50 a page, the savings go up drastically from
there.
So,
let’s sum it all up…
Shutterfly has a very easy process that, while not totally intuitive, is
easy enough to figure out and once you’ve done one, you have the process
down pat. The images and photo quality is a 10 out of 10 and you can’t beat
the fast turn-around times.
On the other hand, they charge a premium price for less than a premium
binding process and I doubt that they’ll hold up under normal wear and
tear. You’ll really need to treat them like a true family treasure and be
careful when viewing the pages over time.
While
RealBooks-Scrapbooks process isn’t near as easy, although those of you
on dial-up will greatly appreciate the fact you can put your images on CD or
DVD and send it in with a printed order form to get it done… the
RealBooks
process does take a little more getting use to. It’s not hard, just
different.
But, the quality and price of a RealBooks-Scrapbooks hardbound scrapbook is
far superior to
Shutterfly. The bigger your books are, and you can go up to
200 pages… the more you’ll save over anyone else in the world. The best
part is the
RealBooks quality. The binding is the best in the industry and will
stand up to the normal wear and tear over generations to come.
Kathy and I would pay a good amount extra for the
RealBooks
Hardbound Scrapbook just so we know it will last. It’s just nice that we
also save money using them.
Final analysis:
If you are in a hurry and it doesn’t need to stand up to a lot of wear over
time… then you can pay extra at
Shutterfly to get it in a hurry. You’ll be
very pleased with the photo’s and colors.
If you need something that will stand up through generations of wear, if you
want to get the best price around and you don’t mind waiting a few days
more…
Then talk to the folks at
RealBooks-Scrapbooks.com. They’ll give you all the support you need and
you will end up with a book that is the best the industry has to offer at a
price you won’t beat anywhere.
Oh
yes... almost forgot. You'll love their colors and print quality as
well!
That’s how it goes… happy scrappin’
Kathy and Wes
PrincessCrafts
5505 Whipshaw Rd.
Peyton, CO 80831
(877) 751-6368
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