One of the features I wanted to try during my Mac switch experiment was ordering a Photo Book. Apple's iPhoto makes it easy to design and edit your own books. Ordering the book is straight forward but prices can add up quickly - I created a 20 page book with 50 photographs for a total of $50, including shipping and handling. I am just not used to paying for having my photos developed anymore - I have been shooting digital photography exclusively since 1998.
Two days ago I received my first iPhoto book from Apple - a Crayon style, large, hard cover book filled with photos from a recent Australia trip.
The excitement of seeing a printed book with my photographs in it quickly faded once I realized that the quality of the photo printing left a lot to be desired.
The book cover, paper, binding, and printing is excellent, with a great overall aesthetic aspect to it. However, the picture quality is terrible - the photos look grainy and jagged, instead of crisp and sharp.
I know that the problem is not with the source images, as they are high quality, high resolution photos from a Canon 20D. Printing the photos directly to an Epson printer generates much higher quality than what is found in the photo book.
Either there is a setting somewhere that I missed or it looks like iPhoto can't be used for ordering photo books. Overall, I can't help feeling disappointed and frustrated at the picture quality of the photo book.
Technorati Tags: Cris Pierry, iPhoto
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