Bitsmith
08-06-2007, 09:56 AM
I just finished my first photo book yesterday and I'm anxiously awaiting it's delivery. I have the following enhancement recommendations which I thought I would share:
- Just to re-iterate what many other's have said. More layout options or custom layouts. I used the Travel layout and it's nice to be able to select the page layout and just drag and drop the pictures. To often, however, I didn't find the right combination of portrait/landscape place holders on the page or the layout I wanted didn't allow annotations. It would be nice to have more options and to be able to create my own when necessary.
- Better control of text. The text entry seemed a bit limited in the Travel template. In some areas (i.e.. postcard layout), the text didn't get small enough, in others, it was to small for a simple title.
- Confirmation when deleting photos which are included in a layout. I liked being able to move back and forth between the add photos, organize and make book modes. I was able to work on one day of our vacation at a time. however, I discovered that if you accidentally delete a photo in one of the other modes and it's in use on a page, it doesn't ask for confirmation. I may have disabled confirmations for deleting photos, but deleting a photo which is used in the book is important enough to always ask or at least have a separate confirmation option so it's not disabled with the normal delete of unused photos.
- Add an option to remove unused photos. As I took a lot of photos on this trip, I found it easiest to add all of the photos for a day, do my page layouts, then delete the photos that I didn't use. I would have been nice to be able to select all of the photos that weren't used and delete them.
- I was amazed that I was able to start working on book using my 500mhz personal laptop, but alas, as the book grew in size, it became unbearable. Anything you can do to improve performance for large books would be greatly appreciated.
- I ended up moving my project to my work laptop to complete it. It would have been nice to have had an export/import option to allow me to move the project so I didn't have to dig around the file system to find the files. I'm not sure that this would be so easy if I'd made several other books on my system.
All in all, I'm quite impressed so far. I look forward to receiving our first book and, assuming the quality of the book itself is as good as the creation experience, I will be using your services for many other photo projects. I'm not sure if I'll ever print individual photos again.
- Just to re-iterate what many other's have said. More layout options or custom layouts. I used the Travel layout and it's nice to be able to select the page layout and just drag and drop the pictures. To often, however, I didn't find the right combination of portrait/landscape place holders on the page or the layout I wanted didn't allow annotations. It would be nice to have more options and to be able to create my own when necessary.
- Better control of text. The text entry seemed a bit limited in the Travel template. In some areas (i.e.. postcard layout), the text didn't get small enough, in others, it was to small for a simple title.
- Confirmation when deleting photos which are included in a layout. I liked being able to move back and forth between the add photos, organize and make book modes. I was able to work on one day of our vacation at a time. however, I discovered that if you accidentally delete a photo in one of the other modes and it's in use on a page, it doesn't ask for confirmation. I may have disabled confirmations for deleting photos, but deleting a photo which is used in the book is important enough to always ask or at least have a separate confirmation option so it's not disabled with the normal delete of unused photos.
- Add an option to remove unused photos. As I took a lot of photos on this trip, I found it easiest to add all of the photos for a day, do my page layouts, then delete the photos that I didn't use. I would have been nice to be able to select all of the photos that weren't used and delete them.
- I was amazed that I was able to start working on book using my 500mhz personal laptop, but alas, as the book grew in size, it became unbearable. Anything you can do to improve performance for large books would be greatly appreciated.
- I ended up moving my project to my work laptop to complete it. It would have been nice to have had an export/import option to allow me to move the project so I didn't have to dig around the file system to find the files. I'm not sure that this would be so easy if I'd made several other books on my system.
All in all, I'm quite impressed so far. I look forward to receiving our first book and, assuming the quality of the book itself is as good as the creation experience, I will be using your services for many other photo projects. I'm not sure if I'll ever print individual photos again.