Photobooks are a popular way to present photographs in your own book.  In the past I’ve used photobox to make my books which I use as presents for family and fill them with pictures of my son over the past year.  These are fairly cheap but I’ve never been happy with the paper that they use

A quick internet search revealed a few companies that provide a DIY solution for the more concerning printer.  Hahnemuhle, Innova, permajet are the big name companies producing DIY print albums with the inkjetmarket also selling My photobook (which is the same system as the permajet).

Hahnemuhle make both standard and leather bound covers for A4 and a standard cover for A3.  Their system comes with 20 sheets of natural art duo 276gsm paper and interlaced paper too.  The standard books cost £25 and £45 for the A4 and A3 respectively with the leather bound A4 costing £57.

Permajet make a couple of variants, the fine art porfolio comes in textured and smooth 260gsm portfolio paper using a hole tag system (unlike the staple and glue system of the others) which means you can update and change the prints. These are priced at £35

The second system Permajet make is the bookart which is the standard staple and glue system (look at the video on the my photobook page above).  The bookart is avalable in double sided portfolio 200gsm, double sided matt 220gsm and double sided luster 285gsm.

 Innova Art make the opus album which is a hole tag system and is supplied soft textured natural white 200gsm or smooth cotton high white 225gsm paper.  These come in both A4 (£26) and A3 (£47).

The inkjetmarket sell My Photobook which is basically the same as the permajet double sided luster but comes with 15 sheets of double sided photopaper for £15 or comes without paper for £12.50.

I purchased the permajet system with the double sided luster as I wanted some of the paper but I used 10 sheets Harman FB AL gloss paper rather than the luster paper.  Next time I print one I will be buying the MyPhotobook without paper.  I purchased the my Harman paper from photooptix which had a BOGOFF offer on the trial packs.

Cover of the photobook.

To staple the paper together I used a large staple gun with the paper resting on a ripped up cardboard box.  This ment the staple had a soft target to enter once it went through the paper, I then bent the ends back with a pair of pliers.

make sure the front cover is lined up before you stick the ends to the book unlike me so my front pictures is slightly squewiff lol

My over all impression of the book is good although I’m not sure how long the bits you fold over and stick the cover will last so it may be worth while using some better glue.  For me the myphotobook cover only is the best option since it allows me to use what ever paper I like rather than what is currently on offer.  The book offers a great way to present a portfolio or just to make a coffee book table of your own where you have complete control over your printing.

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 8th, 2008 at 11:00 am and is filed under Paper review. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.