Scrapbook Printing and Binding - Who do You Use and Why? - Digital Scrapbook Designer Professionals

Scrapbook Printing and Binding - Who do You Use and Why?

By PChip | Category: Reviews & Interviews |

I’m working on a project with a 40-page, 12×12 size album that needs to be professionally printed and bound. There are so many choices available these days and finding a company that fits within my business budget is only one of the criteria I consider when choosing the right folks to work with. Quality is my number one concern and customer service is a high priority for me as well. So as I start my quest to find the perfect company to meet my needs I’ve come across MyPicTales.

This is a new company that launched in 2007. I recently had an opportunity to talk with the owner of the company. I found Prathibha to be contagiously energetic and eager to meet her customer’s needs. She’s passionate about the quality of their products and has a high level of interest in working directly with professional photographers and scrapbookers. She’s open to feedback and suggestions from our market and this is the main reason why I’ve decided to give MyPicTales a go for this project I’m working on.

As I work my project, I’m going to provide input to our readers here at DSD-Pro as well as to Prathibha. I’ll tell you about my experience at the website, during the development and ordering process, and let you know what I think of the final product when it arrives at my door. I hope that you will find this information helpful to you as you consider who to choose for your printing and binding services too.

The Web Experience

To start my review let me tell you about what I found at their website. As I flip through the pages I found they offer many of the same type products/services other scrapbook print/binding places offer. The site has all the usual pages that include product descriptions, pricing, tutorials for working with their software, and guidelines for your specific products. They have a blog that they use mainly for announcing special events, contests, and coupon offers - basically for advertising purposes. I think it would be great if they added to their blog articles with tips and tricks for using their software product and services.

Helpful Software for the Basic Stuff

They offer downloadable software called Taleweaver that’s compatible with MAC and PC. It looks to me like when using their software you simply make a few page layout choices, click your digital photos into the templates and you’re ready to go. After saving the project you click the send button, place your order and pay. Then MyPicTales works their printing and binding magic and ships the order to your door in 3 - 4 business days. They appear to have a wide selection of templates to choose from. Ultimately, you could use their software and their services to run your own personalized digital scrapbook business, even without ever buying a single piece of digi-scrap art or graphic design software.

Options for Professionals

However, if you are like most professional digital scrapbook creators you prefer to use your own stash of digi-art goodies when creating your pages. Prathibha says that MyPicTales can accommodate your interests here as well. When this is your preferred method for creating your projects, simply bypass their software options and create your own pages using the graphics software products you are accustomed to. Then convert your layouts according to their instructions and send it in for printing.

Guidance Available

The MyPicTales resources page offers guidelines and tips to help you create perfect page sizes, deal with bleeds, and get answers to other frequently asked questions. It looks to be fairly complete guidance and easy enough for the average digi-scrap professional to follow. This is the route I will be taking for my project and I’ll let you know as I go if the instructions are truly thorough enough to get the job done. I have found in the past that the first go around is sometimes a bit slower and more difficult because there’s a learning curve to work through. I hope this one will be a easy curve to achieve.

Extra Goodies through April

If you’ve got a project all ready to go or could get one together in the next few weeks you might be interested in a contest they currently have going. Contest participants have the opportunity to win an iPod Touch, a Nikon digital camera, or American Express gift cards. The competition runs until April 30th. You can get contest details from the Win Prizes page on their website.

The inside scoop from MyPicTales

Okay here are three juicy pieces of info you can chew on for a bit. Prathibha tells me they are offering significant discounts to professional photographers and scrapbookers. I think it’s like 40% or something like that. It’s not advertised on her site, so you’ll need to use their contact form to get more info or better yet - how about I interview her here at DSD-Pro and see if she’ll give us more info on that. She also tells me they will be upgrading their software package sometime this spring as well. I also heard a little thing about her looking to get some background templates created by professionals. I’ll see if I can get some more info from her on that one too.

Stay tuned into DSD-Pro and I’ll let you know how things work out as I develop my pages to match with their instructions and order photo album. In the mean time let me know if you have an any questions you’d like me to get answers for in my interview with Prathebha. Take a moment to leave a comment here about what types of things you look for most in a printing/binding service to use! Who do you use for this service now - and why? I’d really like to hear from you. Please share your thoughts.

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Deborah Eilert April 1st, 2008 4:05 pm :
Wow I can help you out! Here is a print sale that you can’t find any better. Full edge to edge printing on photographic paper rated to last between 100 to 200 years!
12×12 for only $1.80
8×8 for only $1.50
Just to make it more enticing you can drop 2 8×8’s on a 8×16 blank for only $1.95 or do a 12×18 that will accept a 12×12 and 2- 6×6’s for the $1.95
We will even trim them apart for you!
For the love of your layouts print them!!!!! in full vivid color with sharp details!
Check us out at BellaScrapbook.com Download the free software and drop your layouts as jpg into the “blank” the size you would like printed. How is that for easy!!! Hey we will even throw in a free one with the promo code ” WaHoo ” (case sensitive) Shipping is just a flat $.95 per order! 85% of our customers so far have reordered more prints!!!! Why not be our next happy customer!
Tammy April 4th, 2008 7:56 am :
Hi Cindy,

Great stuff…

Have you promoted this blog on Fast Pitch!(www.fastpitchnetworking.com)? It’s an online business network that has as one of it’s features a way to promote your blog to their audience of small business owners. FP was actually just named Website of The Week by MSNBC’s ‘Your Business’ show for small business owners.

If you’re already on another network (LinkedIn, etc.) - no problem. Fast Pitch! takes a completely different approach. Compare Networks: http://www.fastpitchnetworking.com/comapre.cfm

Keep up the good work!

Tammy
Jenn White April 7th, 2008 3:19 pm :
I thought I should give you some feedback: based on the above post, I ordered from BellaScrapbook.com. The software was ok, but might be a little confusing to people who are not familiar with the ROES system. They had some really cute QPs by some familiar names, but I really just wanted to get a couple of 12×12s printed. They came today - just 5 days from the day I placed the order - and I chose the cheapest shipping method. That was the only catch - the post above says shipping is a flat $.95 per order, but I was charged $4.95. I emailed thru the ‘contact us’ button, but never got a response. I placed the order anyway, as the price for a 12×12 was very reasonable. Got the prints today - they ARE true photographic prints, though not on Kodak or any other branded paper. One corner was a little damaged, (bent) the packaging could have been a little beefier. In addition to the three 12×12s I ordered, they threw in a 6×6 magnet of one of the layouts. It was adorable, and would make a great grandma gift!
To sum up the review, I paid $13.30 for 3 12×12s for a net price of $ 3.32 a piece (inc shipping). That’s not a bad price, I could spend that on a paperscrap page pretty easily! If you could order more prints at one time, the shipping would be spread out over more units, and give you an even lower cost! If you like to print and slide into an album, AND if you want good quality archival prints, this isn’t a bad place to go!
Giant Panda April 11th, 2008 8:01 pm :
I think this is a review about http://www.MyPicTales.com. Has anyone tried their products? I ordered a few Calendars from them for Christmas last year to give to my clients and was very pleased with the service and product. All my clients were too. So I ended up re ordering twice. I bought a total of 80 calendars and the quality of the images was very smooth and vivid. I shot wild life. The price is very reasonable.
Carol Carter April 15th, 2008 10:54 am :
I have been using Mypublisher, and I think they do a good job for a VERY reasonable price. I tried the TaleWeaver software, and I actually like it better because it gives you so much freedom on page layouts… basically, you can lay-out your pages any way you want. But there are always “buy one get one free” coupons available from MyPublisher, and I just can’t see my way clear to try MyPicTales and pay more than twice as much. At that price, I would be extremely disappointed if their quality was not as good as MyPublisher.
Deborah Eilert April 16th, 2008 10:22 am :
Thanks for the review of BellaScrapbbok.com! Opps, sorry about the typo. The shipping should have said $4.95. It usally costs more than that to ship, but the more you order the more we don’t mind! Our photo paper is made by Noritsu and rated to last between 100 to 200 years. We try to ship prints out same day or the next morning for the night owls out there. Just to clarify the free magnet is 5×5, still looks great on the fridge!
The sale is still on too!
PChip April 17th, 2008 6:32 pm :
Thanks everyone for your input. I love seeing the chatter hear and learning about the different options that folks are using for the printing and binding needs.
primecath November 15th, 2008 11:55 pm :
Cindy, did you ever post the rest of your findings. How was the final product?
Frank Murphy June 2nd, 2009 5:45 pm :
Based on many previous reviews I placed an order with MyPicTales on May 3, 2009 … After the 4 to 7 business days passed with no status update — I inquiring about my order. I received an email on 15 May saying that they were having production problems and that everything should be cleared up in 24 to 48 hours … Two more emails following the 24-48 hour period asking for further details were never answered … Thinking that this non-response after an excuse was a red flag that the company was in some kind of trouble … According I asked the credit card company to put the charge in dispute fearing that I would end up losing my money … That was two days ago — still no response from the company … This company appeared to offer great potential but something is wrong … Be careful if you intend to order –
PChip June 6th, 2009 11:49 am :
Frank, Thank you for sharing your experience. I do hope that it’s one not too many others are experiencing! Would be interested in hearing how this plays out if you have time to mosey on back over here and give us an update when it gets resolved.

Best wishes to you with quicker resolution.
Annette Wegscheider June 30th, 2009 2:55 pm :
I had the same experience as Frank. Ordered my books on 31 May 2009. Have been going back and forth with MyPicTales since then and finally put a stop on the charge for the order because I have not gotten any responses to my last requests for information.
I have to say that I REALLY like the software and layout options it provides. It’s the only tool that lets me completely customize the layout of each page in the book. Not so with most of the other photo book sites (Picaboo, MyPublisher, Blurb, …)
Marcus January 8th, 2010 2:53 pm :
I have actually used mypictales for quite a long time. I also ran into the production issue they had in May, but I assure you that isn’t the norm. Another thing to note is that they always have coupon codes on their homepage. The lowest I have seen is 25% off (which they have currently), but I have received up to 50% off, which is huge. In regards to mypublisher, I have compared prices many times with them, always with their buy one, get one free, and mypictales has always come out to be cheaper (you have to figure in the percentage off), even with mypublisher’s buy one get one. Mypublisher does not offer hard-cover image wrap either, only a dust jacket. That is a deal breaker for me right there. Pictales’ imagewrap is the best I have seen. Not to mention, I have not seen any non-professional website that offers the 11×17 size, so that one is really beyond compare. I really like the fact they make doing two-page spreads so easy. Many sites you have to do those one page at a time. My two cents anyway.
PChip January 9th, 2010 11:00 am :
Awesome information! Thanks so much for sharing your experience and your opinion.