How Large of Files Can Picaboo Upload
Picaboo is certainly a contender amongst the many services that permit yous create and order a custom photo book online. The company is generally focused on photo books, but also offers journals, notebooks, calendars, and fifty-fifty mouse pad printing services.
We found its web editor meliorate than Shutterfly'southward cheers to a multifariousness of charming options and features. That said, because of occasional crashing and general lethargy, the Picaboo editor wasn't as smooth as Mixbook's. What'southward more, the Picaboo volume itself suffered some photo consistency bug, and the final printed product wasn't as striking as we hoped for.
Picaboo has an array of book formats to choose from: Classic (starting at $19.99), the ultra-portable Minibook (starting at $19.99), the Seamless Layflat (starting at $64.99), the leather-wrapped Madison (starting at $199.99), and the double-thick, leather-leap Affluent Mount (starting at $399.99). In that location are seven dissimilar sizes in total and 2 options for each type of volume, except for landscape which only has an xi×ix-inch option.
For this review, we made a 21-page xi×nine-inch Seamless Layflat volume which came to $81.74 excluding aircraft. Our theme: a yearbook of PCWorld's "The Full Nerd" YouTube testify.
Editor's note: This review is part of our best photo book roundup . Go there for details almost competing products and how we tested them
Creating the photograph volume
Picaboo has a newly designed editor with a overnice gear up of features and a mod look, and overall information technology distinguishes itself from the contest. Sadly, though, this "new" editor too froze and crashed multiple times while running in Chrome. We didn't test it with other browsers, but Chrome is the well-nigh pop browser, and the web editor should've been coded with full Chrome compatibility.
Then, to be on the safe side, we recommend using the "former" editor since you lot're given the choice to do so when you start your project. Fortunately, any changes you brand to the book are immediately saved to forestall losing progress in either editor.
Dieter Holger/IDG Picaboo'due south beta editor had impressive features but crashed mode too ofttimes.
Nosotros establish adding and editing text somewhat painful in Picaboo, but this is mostly the instance amongst photograph volume services, save for standouts like Mixbook and AdoramaPix. Aligning captions was hard because the alignment lines didn't ever appear when positioning text under photos. This made it difficult to ensure captions were consistently placed beyond different pages. Of grade, if you're planning on making every page different, this won't present a trouble.
To avoid having to format our text over and over again to consistent specifications, nosotros copied previous captions onto new pages. This was very ho-hum, and nosotros had to be careful when adjusting the text because the formatting didn't fully comport over. (Tip: Don't blazon after the text yous re-create over. Instead, type before it to retain your formatting.)
Dieter Holger/IDG Picaboo's photo editing tab.
Navigating throughout the projection was far from seamless. Hitting Pages at the bottom brings upwards a small scroller that lets yous move from page to page and drag them around. Oddly, though, yous can't movement the image y'all select for the front cover onto other pages. We also felt like it took too long to load pages when moving betwixt them.
But not everything was problematic. The editor includes some exceptional features like the ability to add text to the spine. There'south likewise a huge selection of graphics nether Stickers, and a ton of easily editable templates nether Layouts. The templates are piece of cake to work with, making it a cakewalk to select text and photo placeholders for deletion, rotation, or resizing.
Some other handy feature is Picaboo's photo-editing tab. When yous select a photo and hit the Edit Photo tab in the top left, y'all'll be presented with a range of tools to make quick adjustments. Yous can fifty-fifty turn photos into shapes like hearts and stars. It also lets you use a drop shadow outcome to all the photos in the book at once.
Overall, the software is impressive if you can wait past the "new" version'due south crashing, and occasional slowness.
The final printed production
The photo book came packaged in a cardboard box when information technology arrived, which isn't the most flattering presentation. (Picaboo didn't appear to accept any gift box options.) On the plus side, the cardboard definitely kept the book protected in transit.
When it comes to shipping, Picaboo prices vary depending on the size of the book yous order. For instance, the 4 to 6 business mean solar day economy aircraft for the 11×nine book we ordered was $8.99. Economy shipping for the Classic book is $4.99. Priority blitz shipping, which gets you the book within a calendar week, is also available. (See Picaboo's shipping prices and options here.)
But the most of import thing nigh a photo book service is the terminal printed volume, and nosotros weren't displeased with the last product. We ordered the 11×9-inch Seamless Layflat book, and nosotros tin happily report that it did lay flat when opened.
Dieter Holger/IDG Picaboo's photos did indeed lay flat.
The pages of the book were thick and felt high quality, only weren't as thick every bit Mixbook'due south stock. Each page brutal squarely on the previous one so the book continued to lay flat. The bounden of the book and its contents were all intact and seemed sturdy. The encompass image too wrapped effectually the spine of the book, which isn't something all services offer.
But when it came to the photos, we weren't super impressed with reproduction. The pages had too much sheen and the colors just didn't popular. The images were much darker than they appeared in the editor, and occasionally ruddy. Nosotros could've lightened the photos in the spider web editor to compensate for the print job, but there was no style to know this would be necessary.
Dieter Holger/IDG Some of Picaboo'southward photos were discolored, dark, or ruddy.
Quality wasn't particularly consistent across all the photos, either. Picaboo warns yous if it suspects your images lack sufficient resolution for the sizes you've chosen, just in that location were no such warnings for any of the photos nosotros placed in the editor. And then, while we thought nosotros were safe, some images came out looking a bit low-res. Every bit disappointing, some images printed noticeably warmer than the original files.
That's not to say all of the photos were bad. Many did reproduce very nicely, merely consistency is primal when it comes to a photograph book and Picaboo didn't deliver.
Lesser line
For the 11×nine-inch Seamless Layflat book, the total with economic system shipping came to $91.73. This is generally in line with other services such as Mixbook, Shutterfly, and Amazon Impress. Shutterfly can be less than Picaboo even for larger eleven×fourteen-inch books, simply the service nickels and dimes you to remove things like the logo and add features to get a production that'southward like to what Picaboo offers at checkout. Overall, Picaboo isn't a bad deal, simply there are stronger photo book services to consider.
Editor's notation: Because online services are often iterative, gaining new features and performance improvements over time, this review is subject to change in club to accurately reverberate the current state of the service. Any changes to text or our terminal review verdict volition exist noted at the top of this article.
Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/403032/picaboo-photo-book-review-decent-overall-but-photo-reproduction-is-inconsistent.html
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