I always enjoy seeing my photos printed, there’s something really satisfying about seeing your photo’s on paper, either in a book or on your wall. I’ve invested in a Cannon printer, so I can complete most of my wall printing myself, I have no way of printing a book.
Then I came across a post somewhere from Saal Digital offering a discount on their Photobooks in exchange for a fair review. It’s not something I usually do, but decided to reach out them. Within a few days they had kindly sent me a generous voucher code towards any of their photo book products.
So now I just needed to create the book. As it was December I decided that it would be filled with my personal favourite shots from the previous 12 months. I’d always wanted to start a yearly photo book project, and this has given me a great start.
Designing my book
The first thing I did was download the Saal Design Software on my MacBook. This at first seemed a little complex but within a few minutes I was happily dropping in my favorite shots from 2017.
There’s something really therapeutic of going through you own photographs selecting a limited number of your favorites, photos that appealed to me.
Within a few hours I put together a selection that I was happy with, I could have spent more time adding so text with locations and dates (next time!) but I was perhaps a little eager to hit the checkout button in the app.
The time from placing the order to actually receiving the photo book was super quick, within a couple of days. Also when the book did arrive it was safely packaged reducing the risk of postal damage. Very impressive.
The Book
Quality. It’s probably the best work to describe the books manufacture and printing. For the cover I used a wide shot of the Lake District with Bellamy the VW Campervan, actually taken by wife! It’s spread over the front and rear cover and looks great.
Opening up the book and flicking through the pages the quality continued. The pages are substantial, glossy and have great depth of colour. I was very pleased with the colour reproduction on every photo, to my untrained eye it looked spot on. They look as good as any that I have printed myself.
I did select glossy paper, however I might be tempted to try a more matt paper next time to see how that would look. Not that I dislike the glossy look, just interested to see it in matt paper.
Conclusion
Saal’s discount code was enough for me to put my 2017 book together for free, however I will be happily buying something similar from Saal in 2018. It was definitely higher quality compared to a similar product I created a few years ago. In fact based on the strength of the photo book I’m currently looking at some of their other products, their acrylic glass looks very interesting!
You can find more on the Saal digital website or Social media @SaalDigitaluk (Facebook) @saaldigital_uk (Instagram)
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