OK. Disclaimer first, Saal Digital are makers and printers of quality photobooks, posters, cards, calendars etc. I first came across them a couple of years ago at the Photo Show in Birmingham and was impressed. I recently had the opportunity to try out their Professional Line Photobooks, and received a voucher which helped towards the cost, in return for an unbiased review once I had received the book.
Firstly the software was easy to download, and pretty intuitive once you got going with what you wanted to do. I am sure there were many features that I haven't fully tried out, but for importing pictures, dragging, resizing, changing backgrounds, adding text, re-ordering the pages adding/deleting pages etc it was all very straightforward There were handy line guides to help you line images up and when you resized an image the system told you whether the size of the file was good enough for the size it was going to be printed. Even though it was a Professional Range book I had ordered, I took the chance to finally stop being nagged and get a book done from our holiday in Italy in 2016. Once I had narrowed the image selection down, creating the book was quite quick and over a couple of nights I had it nailed down, I used about 150 images over around 60 pages. Once saved, the option to save and download a PDF gave a welcome chance to be reassured that all was well with the lining up of images and overall look. The actually completion of the order and subsequent upload was painless and smooth, and didn't take as long as I expected it to. Order confirmation emails and updates were regularly received and to be honest if I recall correctly the book was being despatched only about 4 days after upload, and was received another 2/3 days after that. I believe they are printed in Germany. Now, the quality. In a word, it is superb. The Pro Line comes with a hard acrylic cover and leather effect binding, and looks real quality. The images all printed very well, and the colours were as I see on my screen when preparing the order, so no dissapointment there, as I have had with other books in the past. The pages are all well bound, and the quality of printing is excellent, and exactly as per the PDF proof. I chose the gloss option for the images, as the photos were of Italy in the summer. In truth I am more of a 'lustre' kind of guy, and in hindsight I would perhaps have chosen that option. That said the paper is gorgeous and quality of printing is excellent, the pages were just a little bit high gloss for me. The risk with lustre of course is that it loses some of the brightness, maybe I will find out how the lustre does when I do my next book with Saal. The price of the Professional Line book is quite high relatively, it would have cost £120 for just short of 60 pages. Maybe expensive for holiday photo book but for a model shoot, wedding, special project or event, it is a fabulous way to remember and look back on the images. Despite advances in technology, you cannot beat thumbing through a book for reminiscing about the holiday and the memories the images bring back. Attached is a quick image of the cover, which shows the quality, and the reflection from the Acrylic cover. On my next post...I can't add multiple pics to this blog... I have put an image of one of the images I took inside St Peters Basilica in Rome, so you can view the quality for yourself. If you want to ask me any questions about the book and the process, please message me. I was really impressed with the book and the whole process and will be using them again...now where are the photos from Croatia 2018!
Have a look at their website and see what you think for yourself, at https://www.saal-digital.co.uk
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