review: inkubook
Do you remember a few months back when Inkubook – a new print on demand photo book site, was offering free books as an introductory offer? well I got myself one – it arrived before christmas and is just gorgeous. The whole family was impressed.
The size I ordered was the biggest – square pages – the same size as those scrap booking papers you can buy – in fact it would be perfect for digital scrapbookers. There are plenty of other sizes and you can have as many or as few pages as you like. I chose a plain background – I feel that sets off the photos and lets them speak for themselves, but there is a whole range of colored and patterned backgrounds you can use if you like.
Basically what you do is download their free software onto your computer – upload all your photos to their site – and away you go. The photos do take a while to upload as you are uploading hi-res images for print quality. I set a whole bunch to upload overnight and it worked fine. The software was pretty easy to use – you choose from a bunch of different styles – backgrounds and layouts – add extra pages as you need them – drag and drop the photos from a gallery where you want them. There is an option for adding text, but I didn’t get to that and as I said I like to keep it simple.
I believe that since I last used inkubook they have made a bunch of improvements and now have calendar options too … I would use them again.
Here is my end result – pretty happy with it.
January 14th, 2009 at 8:34 pm
Darn it! I was so looking forward to making one of these books. Too bad their website requires Windows. I’m not booting into Windows for a free book. Not no way, not no how. :-)
January 14th, 2009 at 8:55 pm
I use a mac – and firefox and it worked fine for me…
January 15th, 2009 at 12:05 am
I was just saying, I mean JUST saying, I wanted to switch from albums to books like this one for our family. Thanks for your impeccable timing! You do that a lot. I will be thinking of something and up goes the tutorial… thanks so much! Your photos look stunning BTW and so does your layout.
January 15th, 2009 at 4:29 am
Hi Kath
That’s excellent. I am on a Mac and ordered some Mac books to send to relatives overseas and had to do all sorts of dodgy things to my details in the set up areas … for some bizarre reason they don’t ship outside the country you order from. This wil be great to send some books from us in Australia to my daughter’s grandparents in Chile.
I’d looked into Snapfish, but that took forever.
Pity the free book offer seems to be over. drat!
Thank you!
January 16th, 2009 at 12:12 am
Hi Kath, Do you have any idea how these compare to the iPhoto books you order via apple? I’ve done a couple of them and been really pleased. I haven’t tried to send them direct to a third person, so I haven’t had the same problem as E-Lo. I found the iPhoto ones easy to make and lovely when finished.
January 16th, 2009 at 8:39 am
This looks like just the thing I have been looking for – thanks!
January 19th, 2009 at 6:18 pm
Hi Sooz
I have not used the apple iphoto books, but if you love the result – there is probably no reason to change. I may do a comparison post on print on demand photo books in the coming weeks – so keep your eyes out for that.
January 19th, 2009 at 6:19 pm
Hi E-Lo
Yes pity the book offer is over – and I have tried snap fish and they are quite limited and slow – this is really quite quick and I was impressed with the ease of use of the software.
January 19th, 2009 at 6:21 pm
Hi Maya
Thank you so much – its funny because the kids get a little embarrassed looking at themselves in the book – but its much better than all those digital snaps lying around waiting for something to be done with them.