Photobooks: CeWe

Carrigman

I ordered a 58 page, extra large (30x30cm) photobook from www.cewe-photobook.co.uk (€75) and I must say that the results are top class. The photographs have been re-produced with great faithfulness to the originals.

The downloadable software is the most user friendly of any such photobook service that I've come across. There is a great variety of lay-outs available (such as a double page spread from a single photo).

All in all, very impressive and a service I would highly recommend. I have a couple of weddings coming up later in the year and I will be getting the photobooks done by them.

Regards,

John

mikeanywhere

Thanks for that John,

Will give them a try as I am looking for something similar myself.

GristlyEnd

Excellent John. I'm printing a book later in the year and will give these a try.

quilmore

thanks
same software, layouts and backgrounds as Lidl's
which was the only good from them (poor quality, horrendous customer assistance, etc...)

Carrigman

quilmore wrote: »

thanks
same software, layouts and backgrounds as Lidl's
which was the only good from them (poor quality, horrendous customer assistance, etc...)

Interesting, as the website has a "Lidl" look about it and the parent company is German. Still, the quality is top class and they came out tops in a recent round-up of photobook sites by Digital Photo magazine.

One point to note: I included a few double page spreads of single photos. Those taken with my Canon 20D and 400D were of lower quality than those taken with the 5D. Or, to put it another way, the 5D shots didn't even break a sweat at that enlargement size whereas the smaller sensor shots were reaching their limits resolution wise. Which is not of course surprising. My advice therefore is not to go for the double page spreads unless you are using a 5D.

quilmore

I ordered them last night
something that catched my attention was the total of my almost 100 pictures is over 400 megs and it took 10 minutes to upload on my 256 kbps upload connection
so, it's either magic or it uses a lot of compression
I wonder if your double page picture wasn't that good to start with or it end up reduced beyond the minimum quality required for a 60x30 as you printed?
I wen't for the same format as the lidl's I made last year (A4)
it end up even a tad cheaper than last year so another thumbs up for this people

ladgie353

Another vote for them here, I tried a few other providers but none of them matched Cewe in quality and layout flexibility.

Jenka

Hi Ladje,
Can you tell me which other products you tried that were not a patch on Cewe so I don;t waste my time on using them. I had a thread before on boards and have ordered one on mypublisher and expecting it any day now. Can only currently compare it with Apple Books

ladgie353

I tried Photobook.be a couple of years ago and I was less than impressed by the print quality of the book.
I aslo used foto.com, which is better but still not up to Cewe.

Fajitas!

I was involved in a book on fashion a while back. The first copies were made on Blurb. Damn, I was impressed.

Covey

As a matter of interest do you upload full size files (i.e. 40-50MB per photo) or how does it work?

Jenka

Thanks for that. I will give them a go and will also try blurb.
I used mypublisher but they do not allow uploads from Mac, so I had to transfer to PC. Waiting on those.
I want to include them as options for weddings, a nice effective present for bridesmaids, or honeymoon photos etc.

quilmore

Covey wrote: »

As a matter of interest do you upload full size files (i.e. 40-50MB per photo) or how does it work?

you don't have an option
it will "process" and upload everything on its own
there is no control over resizing or compression rates

and I can assure you that my pictures got reduced a lot, I couldn't have uploaded them as they are in my folder in such a short time on my BB connection