Digital photography has many benefits but one of the pitfalls is that most of the photos taken today do not leave the digital spaces and social media and websites can never show off our images in the best way.
There really is no substitute for a book to present a selection of our favourite images or to provide a record of a special event. So, when I was approached recently by Saal Books to try their Professional Line Photobooks with the incentive of a voucher for £100 I decided to try them out.
Software
In order to create your book you need to download the Saal Digital Design software from their website. The download process was quick and very straightforward and within a few minutes you are ready to start creating your photobook.
As with all photo books it’s best to prepare your images outside of the book software and then import. I used Lightroom to do this and was impressed with the soft proofing option from Saal where I downloaded the ICC profile for my chosen paper which replicates the way your pictures will look when printed allowing me to fine tune the image settings.
Once you have prepared your images, I used Lightroom, you can lay out your pictures choosing between an Auto Layout which automatically positions your pictures across the pages or Custom where you do it manually. I chose the Custom option and whilst it sounded daunting it was actually pretty straightforward with its drag and drop function. You can add or remove pages, edit and save your project so you can work on it again whenever you want. The only thing I would have liked was a centre guide on the page, you can select a grid overlay but a simple horizontal and vertical alignment guide would have been useful. Note, you can, if you wish, include an image on the inside front and back covers but I chose not to do that but you will get a warning telling you that you have unused pages.
When you are happy with the results you can place your order and pay, which is a very quick process.
Product Specification
There are various options to choose such as cover and paper type but these can be changed at any stage. However you do need to settle on a book size. There are a number of options including portrait, landscape and square books in different sizes and I chose a 30 x 21 cm Landscape version. I would have preferred a slightly larger size but the size up from this was too big. For the cover I chose acrylic and black leather which sounded intriguing and rather upmarket. The professional line of books are layflat which means that you can spread an image across two pages without having the normal binding in the middle.
Paper choices included Gloss, Matte or High End Matte which is more of an art paper. I chose standard Matte (actually Fuji Crystal Archive paper), though I would describe it as a lustre finish which is actually what I wanted. You can choose to have a gift box for an extra £45 which would be great for a wedding album but I didn’t select this option.
Product Quality
In short the quality was absolutely stunning. Despite some initial reservations about choosing an acrylic cover it looked fabulous. The leather on the binding and back cover give this book a premium quality feel. The paper is heavyweight, since the pages are glued back to back giving a 368gm thickness, and the lustre finish (they call it matte) was perfect. The printing was also excellent with great colour and contrast which other manufacturers can often struggle with. I must admit to being rather sceptical about the layflat concept thinking that it wouldn’t look as good as it sounded. But when I turned the page and saw it for real it looked fabulous, very impactful.
Customer Service & Delivery
I was very impressed with the communication from Saal. I had one or two issues, my fault, which were quickly dealt with. There are some very good help videos on their website and there is chat function available should you need it. My book arrived from Germany delivered by DHL well packaged within about a week, great service.
Overall
I have created several photo books previously but this is definitely the best one, though it was the Professional line with a price to match. That said there is a difference between expensive and value for money and if you’re looking to produce a book for a special event or to showcase your portfolio images then it is definitely worth it. Hand made with high quality products, excellent print quality and efficient customer service I have no hesitation in giving Saal a Highly Recommended rating.
My book was a 30 x 21cm, Professional Line lay flat book. 74 pages Matte paper with an acrylic and leather cover. The full price, excluding my voucher and postage (£4.99), was £128
