Forums | MacLife

I've never used Apple's photo book service, nor do I intend to. I've picked up the hobby of making my own photo books like this one. But I'm a professional designer, and I have a pretty good idea of what I'm doing, particularly in terms of preparing digital photos for print. I also know that there is a world of difference between what you see on a screen and what you get in print... you can even see huge differences in color hue and contrast between various printers. What you saw on your Epson obviously was very different than what came out of the printer at Apple. There are also going to be variances depending on what type of camera is used, if someone uses something like Photoshop to do color correction, adjustments, etc., and of course what the settings on the monitor are. There are so many variables involved in getting just the right print that I'm amazed Apple would even offer such a service. The percentages of people who are actually pleased with their photo books can't be all that good. Add in whatever process Apple does to the photos (conversion to pdf or whatever else they do) and you're looking at a recipe for printing disaster.

I know this probably doesn't help you much, but I can certainly see how it is easy for Apple to produce a book that the buyer is unhappy with. There is just too much that can go wrong in a process like this.

Why not take it to the same Apple store you saw the Photo book you loved so much and have them convert your photos to .PDF format.

Then check to see that everything looks good (they should have correctly calabrated monitors).  Then if your final results are not good you can go back to the store with some recoarse.

Personally I think that the store would be more than willing to help you, since this is one of the features that they use to sell computers, and it should be good advertising to all the other customers around you.

I know that my monitor is not perfectly calabrated, but I don't need it to be.  However if I was to print a book out, I would definatly make sure that the colors I see are the same as the ones I will get in the final.

The sample books were ful of beautiful models in fashonable clothing. All my friends are fat and ugly and wear toughskins jeans. And my iPhoto book looks bad because of it.

Seriously though, I think Apple should have given some suggestions how to get the best color from his computer screen to their book. If they convert them from .jpg to pdf then Angry At Apple should be able to see the color cast by doing the conversion himself. If I don't do any color correction on my digital camera my printer puts it out very similar my camera monitor.

If you give a neg to a photo lab and you don't like the color of the print, they reprint it at no extra charge. Part of their cost is built in to do some reprints.

I know angry_at_apple is upset, but I don't think we need two posts in two different areas on the same subject...

You can see my reply in a_a_a's other thread.

I'm sorry but this is your own fault. I've ordered pictures via iPhoto and I can say without a doubt that they are the best photos I have ever had printed. They are beautiful.

Of course, I'm smart enough to take them at my camera's full resolution.

How large did you get the pictures printed? Were there any on the full page? Did you get the resolution warning on any of them? You started out with a 2megapixel camera and then decided to use medium resolution??? I wouldn't use medium resolution on a 2megapixel camera for anything more than displaying on a computer screen.

Later, Frank

I had no problems with my first book and my color pics that I had Kodak print for me with thier service through Apple were great. My 2nd book had a few resolution problems and file incompatibities so Apple didn't print or charge me. I think the service is great and you should check your pictures before you send if there is a yellow triangle with a exclaimation mark in it it means poor quality of some sort or other. I must admit though all of my Photo's were scanned in then retouched and made ready with Photoshop. To keep the record straight I didn't check the file formats of some of the pictures in my 2nd book and there is where they were not compatible. You might try Graphic converter to see what your pictures really look like and professional services would either print your pictures with the same poor results or tell you that your color calibration was off. Another thing is that I use plenty of Black and white shots and I think a couple were in doutone and Apple cannot print doutones throu quadtones.