Photobook

One other thing I bought from these groupon sites are vouchers from Photobook. I’ve really been wanting to have our photos printed in a photo book style. I’ve asked around for quotations from photo developing shops and other photobook publishing kiosks I see in the malls. So the deal from Metrodeal for a P1,000 voucher for a P4,000 worth of photobook was definitely tempting to me. So I bought several vouchers hehehe and I immediately knew what I wanted for each of those photobooks. I ordered one before Christmas as our Christmas gifts for my parents – basically a compilation of Miya’s photos with us, with them and Miya’s great grandparents. And then the others I waited after Miya’s birthday, so we have one for her birthday celebrations, another one for our HK trip. I also had one made as her baby book with her birth story and all her firsts and milestones during her first year. One last book I ordered is for our honeymoon. I never had any of our photos printed out so I thought this was the best way to remember these special moments in our lives. Miya’s baby book we decided, we wanted to give to her as  birthday gift when she turns 5 or 7.

Now for the technical side, you just need to download the special software of Photobooks from their website. I also downloaded their Readybooks. These ready books are life savers because you just simply drag and drop your photos and voila, you have an instant scrapbook! What I do is I sometimes change the arrangement of the pages of the ready books that I download depending on how I want the photobook to tell its story to the readers or how I want each page to hold a number of photos. After you finalize your layout, you can simply upload your order. You need internet connection when you upload your order because the software uploads it per page per photo. One time I had a problem with the laptop I’m using, so I thought of transferring the folder I have in my laptop to another computer. Unfortunately, I had to re-do everything, it doesn’t really save the entire photobook I made. So note that you have to do everything in one laptop/desktop from downloading the software, to doing the photobook, to uploading your order.

Their customer service is also superb. Whenever I have questions, I only leave a message on their FB page and I’m sure to get a reply within 24 hours. They also reply to messages left through their website. They send an email advice with a ticket number regarding your concern and then their customer support will email you. I experienced this because I had problems uploading my order one time.

For the waiting time, I think I never had to wait for more than 7 days from ordering to receiving the final finished product. Thank God, I haven't encountered any problemas with the finished photobook. My tip is always use clear photos. For some of our photobooks, I used photos that are sometimes not to bright or the lighting is not enough, the photos turned out to be dark when printed out. That's my fault and not their fault in the printing stage. And I don't really want to stress about sending it back to them to have it reprinted haha. 

So this is the finish product of Miya’s First Birthday Photobook.

The photobook is delivered by DHL from Malaysia and comes in this cardboard box. Et voila!

The left topmost photo is the cover of our photobook with the succeeding pages on its bottom and right side. Most readybooks are 40pages and more.

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