I have been looking through various options for printing an album for the wedding photo portfolio to showcase my and Armando’s work in that area. While both of us printed photo books before, we wanted to try a top-quality printing company for this project.
These days, there are so many online printing/binding companies that selecting the top one is quite difficult. My personal experience to date has been with the White House Custom Colour (not with books per se, but with gallery wrap prints). The quality was excellent, and one of the canvas prints hangs on our living room wall. I also ordered a couple of books through Apple, directly from iPhoto. I very much liked the result, and the workflow was very intuitive. However, I feel that a wedding portfolio calls for a more substantial binding.
Our top two choices were KISS and The Leather Craftsmen. Both companies came highly recommended by professional photographers in podcast interviews. Both websites have a registration process that involves verification of the user as a professional photographer. After my registration was approved (Yey! An external validation that I am a pro!), I was able to see the price lists. The prices of the albums from both companies are comparable, and they are significant – certainly not what we can afford to just try out by ordering a few different options. That is why it is a difficult choice.
We decided to go with The Leather Craftsmen because of the wider range of available formats. The KISS offers only square format, which is simple, but somewhat limiting for what we want to print. I am looking forward to trying the procedure for preparing the photos and designing the layout of the book and, of course, to seeing the final product.
