02/04/2018
Long post today - all about photobooks after I've created a new one recently. Get comfy and have a read :)
Digital photography has certainly changed the way we take images, but it's also changed the way we view them. I've got several photo albums from when I was younger filled with (admittedly pretty ropy) 6x4" prints, with captions and comments to remind me of what I did. It's still pleasing today to go and pull them off a dusty shelf and look through old memories - that's what photography is really all about, surely. Capturing a moment, and then being able to come back to it for future enjoyment.
Sadly, digital photography has probably made images too accessible. No longer is there any need for a print, as you can just fire up one of the many screens we all have in our lives and instantly access a vast library of images. This is undoubtedly convenient, but I also think it's a bit sad sometimes. There is something timeless about having a tangible product in your hand, something you can touch and feel the grain of the paper.
Happily, I'm not alone in thinking this, and after a relatively slow start, the last year or so has seen a massive increase in the number of manufacturers offering their own versions of digital photobooks.
Also, it'd be extremely incorrect of me not to note here that SAAL Digital did provide me with a discount token in exchange for writing about their product. I'm relatively happy to admit I sold my soul for a bit of corporate PR, because hey, free books! That said, I'd like to think my comments below are objective and not biased by this incentive.
SAAL Digital seems to be one of the newer kids on the block - at least, that's the impression I get from the flood of Facebook advertising that has been heading my way over the last six months or so. I knew very little about them, but with an extremely tempting introductory discount, it was worth a shot to see what they could do. I like Blurb, but if someone else can offer the same product for less money I have very little brand loyalty.
For my book, I picked SAAL's 19x19cm Portrait offering. I suppose their selling point is that all of their books are lie-flat so that a portrait book actually offers a nice wide letterbox format for images if you so desire. I was quite keen to experiment with this as I've not made a lie-flat book before, and it actually works very well. I've been finding that most of what I photograph (aviation, animals, landscape) work just as well, if not better, as a 2:1 crop rather than the native 3:2 out of the camera.
To really test out the quality of the book, I chose to use some of my images from the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower. These are nearly my favourite aviation images, but for a test, they contain a wide range of different colours and tonal ranges and should give a good idea at how SAAL can reproduce images on paper. They also all tend to work in the 2:1 ratio that naturally fits the lie-flat option from SAAL.
Like Blurb, SAAL has their own design software you can download, called SAALDesignSoftware (inventive, no?). It strikes a good balance between automation and free design choice, and as such will find a place with every type of book creator. I didn't go overboard with this and decided just to keep the book to full page lie-flat letterbox images. You can see a screenshot of the software in the images with this post.
I really appreciated that the software gave you pixel dimensions for each page so you could edit images to suit in PhotoShop - removing any potential for odd compression when the software sends your book to print.
The production time was incredible. I put through my order at 11:05 pm, and had an email the next morning at 10:30 am noting that not only had my order been received, it had already shipped! That was on a Thursday, and it was waiting for me when I got home on Monday evening. Not bad for economy delivery from Germany to England. The speed did make me a bit uneasy though - would it be at the expense of quality?
As soon as I opened the book I knew the answer was no. The printing was crisp and well coloured (a slight red colour cast was due to my editing choice rather than a printing issue - have a look at the comparison of the images with this post). There was no trimming that I could see to the edges of the pages - the detail in the photos which I'd deliberately placed near the edge of the bleed still had a healthy margin to the edges. The paper felt really nice, and a good thickness.
The most interesting part for me was the lie-flat design, which I've not had before. I was worried about the stability of the spine given how wide the book has to open, but this appears to be fine - the book opens out naturally and doesn't appear to unduly stress or wrinkle the spine. The centre of the double page spread does not lose any detail from the image, and it's easy to look at the picture without being distracted by the centre line. Overall, I was very impressed with this.
This does come at a cost though - for my 24 page 19 x 19cm book with padded hardcover, the retail cost would have been around £65 (including postage and packaging). The equivalent standard book from Blurb would come in cheaper - you certainly pay for the "novelty" of lie-flat. Is it worth it? Hard to judge. I think it really depends on what your images are and what your presentation goal is. Certainly, from a quality perspective, I didn't see much to differentiate between the two. I'll give a huge nod to SAAL though - their software provides a real-time assessment of the cost of a book, which changes as you add pages or amend sizes. This is great for anyone producing a book to a set budget to make sure you keep it!
A solid offering from SAAL, and I think I'll be using them in future - if not for my own books, then certainly books for clients if the motive of the photos is correct.
Saal Digital UK
