Tuesday, September 28, 2004
MyPublisher: The Process, The Results
Posted by Jason Dunn in "ARTICLE" @ 09:00 AM
I used MyPublisher to create a coffee table hardcover book of photos - the first part of this Quick Look examines the act of creating the book, the second part looks at the end result (the book).
The first thing I had to do was download and install the software, called BookMaker. It's a fast 1 MB download, and the software installs easily. For manually intensive tasks such as this (creating a book), I'm in favour of client-side applications rather than doing it all in the browser. After installing the software, I imported my 200+ photos, and much to my delight it didn't mess with the order of the images. :D The interface of the program is quite good - although the images were in a rough order, I had to do about an hour of fine-tuning. The software tries to lay out the pages in the best way, but because my images were scans and unusual in resolution, I wasn't surprised to see that the software got a little confused. I tried it with some recent digital pictures, and it was nearly perfect.
The software allows you to do turn your images into B&W, or auto-adjust them, with a single click. There are also several different page layouts you can choose from - I found this particularly powerful, as it allowed me to put more emphasis on certain photos. Moving photos around is accomplished by dragging and dropping, and while the program felt a little sluggish at times, it was relatively fast and simple to create the page layouts I wanted.
Figure 1: The cover that could be better.
About two weeks after ordering the book, it arrived in the mail. On a scale of one to ten, I'd say my level of satisfaction is about an eight. The quality of the printing is superb - images look excellent. The binding is top quality, and the page layouts exactly match what I saw on the screen using their software. My own two criticisms are the thin pages - they feel cheap - and the cover. The cover looks cheesy compared to the quality of the rest of the book. You're only given a few choices for font style, and the layout options are practically nil. The cover is basically a piece of paper glued to the front. I would have preferred to have nothing on the cover at all compared to what I was offered, but that didn't seem to be an option. I'd prefer to see a cutaway cover that would show the photo on the first page, or perhaps a monogrammed cover. Pretty much anything other than what they have now. ;-)
Figure 2: The final result - impressive! Click the image above for a full-resolution image.
Those minor complaints aside, I'm pleased with the book and I know my grandmother will love it. It wasn't cheap at over $60 USD, but this is something my grandmother will treasure forever.
The first thing I had to do was download and install the software, called BookMaker. It's a fast 1 MB download, and the software installs easily. For manually intensive tasks such as this (creating a book), I'm in favour of client-side applications rather than doing it all in the browser. After installing the software, I imported my 200+ photos, and much to my delight it didn't mess with the order of the images. :D The interface of the program is quite good - although the images were in a rough order, I had to do about an hour of fine-tuning. The software tries to lay out the pages in the best way, but because my images were scans and unusual in resolution, I wasn't surprised to see that the software got a little confused. I tried it with some recent digital pictures, and it was nearly perfect.
The software allows you to do turn your images into B&W, or auto-adjust them, with a single click. There are also several different page layouts you can choose from - I found this particularly powerful, as it allowed me to put more emphasis on certain photos. Moving photos around is accomplished by dragging and dropping, and while the program felt a little sluggish at times, it was relatively fast and simple to create the page layouts I wanted.
Figure 1: The cover that could be better.
About two weeks after ordering the book, it arrived in the mail. On a scale of one to ten, I'd say my level of satisfaction is about an eight. The quality of the printing is superb - images look excellent. The binding is top quality, and the page layouts exactly match what I saw on the screen using their software. My own two criticisms are the thin pages - they feel cheap - and the cover. The cover looks cheesy compared to the quality of the rest of the book. You're only given a few choices for font style, and the layout options are practically nil. The cover is basically a piece of paper glued to the front. I would have preferred to have nothing on the cover at all compared to what I was offered, but that didn't seem to be an option. I'd prefer to see a cutaway cover that would show the photo on the first page, or perhaps a monogrammed cover. Pretty much anything other than what they have now. ;-)
Figure 2: The final result - impressive! Click the image above for a full-resolution image.
Those minor complaints aside, I'm pleased with the book and I know my grandmother will love it. It wasn't cheap at over $60 USD, but this is something my grandmother will treasure forever.
