Facebook is a great way to keep in touch with family and friends, especially those who may reside in faraway parts of the world that are difficult or expensive to reach. But Facebook is also a big business, gathering astounding amounts of personal information on its users, and using that information to its advantage. Facebook knows of my interest in photography, as evidenced by the targeted ads inserted almost daily into my feed. I ignore most of them, but one that grabbed my attention offered an incredible $150 voucher towards a Professional Line Photo Book, by Saal Digital.
A photo book is a very impressive way of displaying your photographs, finely printed and bound in a traditional way, not common in this digital age. This is much better than viewing images on a computer or smartphone screen, but it takes considerable time and effort to create, based on previous books I made with the online photo service Shutterfly. Nevertheless, a $150 offer was too good to pass up, and it was a chance to try a different vendor. Also, I was curious to try out the Saal design software, surely different from Shutterfly’s, which is completely online. I responded to their ad, and was delighted when they sent me a voucher code with an expiration date a few weeks away.
My part of the deal? Create a photo book, and write about the experience on social media or blog posts like this.
What to put in the photo book? I have attended a summer camp every year for many years, most recently the 2019 Happy Healthy Retreat, a week-long event at Camp Sylvester near Yosemite in California, along with about a hundred other fun-loving participants of all ages. Camp is full of photogenic activities–lectures, cooking classes, yoga, Qigong, hiking, sports, children’s activities, variety show, campfires, spectacular outdoor scenery, and more–providing an abundance of opportunities to develop and practice your photographic skills. Over the years, the organizers have asked me to take photos at camp–each summer I pack my car trunk with photographic gear, spend the week photographing and enjoying camp with friends, and return with hundreds of photos of people having fun. A photo book would be an ideal way to showcase the 2019 camp, as I’ve done for a few previous camps.
Design Software for the Photo Book
I installed the Saal design software on my PC–all design work is done locally on your computer. (Shutterfly’s design software is online.) The left column is the source of images, the central area is the work area showing two adjacent pages, and the right column shows pre-built layouts. A layout is an arrangement of image and text blocks that you fill in: for an image block, you drag an image from the left column, and for a text block, you simply type in the desired text. You can select a pre-built layout from the right column, or you can create your own layout, placing image or text blocks anywhere you like.
When you select a block, the software gives the coordinates of the upper left corner, along with the width and height. It also offers automated methods of aligning and centering an individual block or groups of blocks. All of this makes it possible to lay out blocks very precisely and consistently, making it easy to create your own layouts.
The software offers many options including page background textures, page type (glossy or matte), binding color, and more, so you can customize the book exactly to your liking.
Saal provides instructional videos, which are introductory but don’t go very deep. If you have a particular question, you have to sit through the entire video hoping that your question will be answered–it might not. I looked for written documentation, but did not find much. Generally, I was able to figure out how to use the design software through trial and error, but it has features that I could not figure out, that might have been useful.
During the voucher period, I got several emails from Saal people offering to answer any questions. They responded promptly to the questions I submitted, and helped when I had trouble redeeming the voucher code, issuing me a new code with a time extension that I took full advantage of.
Presenting the Photographs
Most of the time and work in creating a photo book is in reviewing and grouping the available photos, and figuring out the best layout and presentation. Strong images can take up an entire page, or even spread over two pages (the book is designed so pages lay flat); other images might work better in groups of related images. A photo book is not just a method of displaying images, it’s an opportunity to tell a story visually and with impact.
Of course, when going through all the trouble of creating a printed photo book, you want the images to look as good as possible–I spent a lot of time tweaking them in Lightroom and Photoshop, doing more dodging and burning than I usually do. When grouping images, I often had to adjust images so the group had a consistent look.
After weeks of working on the project when I could, always conscious of the voucher expiration, I finally finished a 12″ x 8″ book with 86 pages and submitted it. The submission, handled automatically by the software after taking your payment information, includes uploading all image files used by the book, which took a while. Cost of the book was slightly more than $200; with the $150 voucher, cost to me was slightly more than $50.
The Book Arrives in One Week!
Just one week after submission, the finished photo book arrived at my front door in California, delivered by DHL.
The book has an unusual, transparent plexiglass cover about 1/8″ thick, with the cover page fused to the back edge of the plexiglass. The plexiglass comes with a protective film over it and a sticker with instructions to remove it. It took some searching before I eventually found a corner of the film that I could scrape off with my fingernail, in the lower left. It was on so tightly that it took considerable time and actual muscle effort to peel off.
The pages are printed on card stock, making the book slightly more than 1″ thick, and bound so that they lay flat, ideal for displaying images or layouts spread over two pages.
On the down side, while the color balance generally looked good, it was occasionally off slightly, noticeable on skin tones (lighting at camp varied a lot, including mixed incandescent and window, and was often challenging.) On the cover, the images were all slightly red. I noticed because I spent a lot of time on skin tones in post-processing, but these are details that the casual viewer would likely not.
Overall, the finished photo book is most impressive! I like the way the design software is set up for precision work (which appealed to the engineer in me), and am very pleased with how my Saal Professional Line Photo Book turned out. It took a lot of time but it was well worth the effort, and having done that, I know the quality and predictability of the results I can get by partnering with Saal Digital.