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Why are iPhoto Books Such Poor Quality?
Just got my iPhoto book
took ages and it's of a wedding I photo'd so I was quite excited - but wow! what a let down.
all the images look like they were taken with a cheap phone rather than my kit which cost a lot and takes 36mb images
the whole book was compressed down to 40mb before ordering and I was concerned that this seems small considering it was the biggest book they did, and consisted of 32 pages with around 75 images
anyone else with experience of ordering a book via iPhoto?
this is the first time I feel thoroughly let down by apple as I've been telling the bride and family that the book is going to look great and it's actually embarrassingly poor quality
surely all the books don't turn out so poor or the service would have been shut down by now?
I don't use iPhoto much as I'm a pro photographer using photo mechanic and photoshop and don't really have use for it myself - but I'm surprised that iPhoto, albeit aimed at consumers, downgrades the quality of images to the extent I sadly received
took ages and it's of a wedding I photo'd so I was quite excited - but wow! what a let down.
all the images look like they were taken with a cheap phone rather than my kit which cost a lot and takes 36mb images
the whole book was compressed down to 40mb before ordering and I was concerned that this seems small considering it was the biggest book they did, and consisted of 32 pages with around 75 images
anyone else with experience of ordering a book via iPhoto?
this is the first time I feel thoroughly let down by apple as I've been telling the bride and family that the book is going to look great and it's actually embarrassingly poor quality
surely all the books don't turn out so poor or the service would have been shut down by now?
I don't use iPhoto much as I'm a pro photographer using photo mechanic and photoshop and don't really have use for it myself - but I'm surprised that iPhoto, albeit aimed at consumers, downgrades the quality of images to the extent I sadly received
I’m dejected
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Inappropriate?Apple downsamples the images more for iPhoto than Aperture but the big problem is that it's extremely variable. The first book I ordered from Aperture sucked - vertical lines & noise. I called to complain and they sent a replacement which was much higher quality, which had to be entirely on their fulfillment side as they reused the original PDF I had uploaded.
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Thanks Chris,
Yeah I had feared that the downsampling would be greater for iPhoto than for Aperture - which is a sad way to behave - deliberately reducing the quality of a customer's images just because they're not using the pricier software.
Sadly my current Macs aren't capable of running Aperture and I'm not gonna spend thousands just for the rare instance of ordering a book.
I've just been, kindly, offered a full refund by Apple and also told than I can re-order at the usual price.
As you say, they keep the original PDF (for 40 days) but I'm not willing to waste more time and money on this - so I'll, sadly, be going elsewhere for a book.
Shame the quality of the printing doesn't live up to the (as per usual) high quality of Apple's software. -
Inappropriate?I recently bought a Mac, in large part for my photo collection. I ordered my first photo book from Apple just a couple of weeks ago. It was of a vacation out in the Pacific Northwest, and I was really looking forward to receiving it. When it arrived, I was also dejected. My photos had been of a very high quality -- 12 megapixels, sharp focus, taken on a new Cannon G9. Apple's photo book make the photos look poor quality. And the paper that it is printed on looks very cheap.
The advertising for the photo books is actually deceptive. When I bought my Mac they had a demo running that made it look like the photos would be of the same quality as on the screen.
I hope there are better options out there, as I love the concept. Perhaps Apple will improve this.
Milada
I’m dejected
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Yes I agree Milada,
the concept is very good and the iPhoto software is very well designed.
It's almost tragic that the whole process is then rendered worthless by down-sampling the images far too much.
I also think you should see the actual file about to be sent before having to click the buy button.
It was only after I clicked "Buy Book" that the whole thing was assembled and as the file transfer started, I saw the whole book was just 40mb
If I'd seen this before - I never would have gone through with the order as I was sure that compressing the entire 32 page large book to that extent would degrade the images too much for my liking
great shame as the book designing process is very well done by Apple and it's fun to do - but I won't be bothering with it any more given the low quality end results
