Resizing Pics for uploading to a Photobook?

[bernie_eccle]

After seeing a friends Photobook at the weekend I quite fancy the idea myself. I have just signed up with Photobox as they are currently doing a half price one at £9.99 + p&p.
I'll probably want to upload 50-70 pics for the book but don't see much point in uploading the full 3.5MB files (3008 x 2000). I think the biggest print will be A4.
Can I just batch resize them using the XP power tool addon? If so what res do you recommend?

I have a few programs none of which I am sure how to batch process for resizing. I have Paintshop Pro 7, Photoshop Elements 2, MS Photo Centre & ACDSee 7. I am sure it's not that difficult to use any of these programs, but will it be any different from using the XP Power Tool?

Thanks

Stewart

[miniman]

Not sure what the settings used by the XP tool are - e.g. whether or not to resample, JPEG quality setting etc. I would use Photoshop Elements personally, or a decent third party tool with full control over the options, such as Irfanview) www.irfanview.com) which does a good batch job.

[VxDuncan]

I've made up five photobooks so far - all using yophoto. They are more expensive, though give you more pages and the tool for producing them is better, and offline. I tried photobox and hated the online interface. That said they all use the same licensed printing technology. Normal rule of thumb for print (magazines, brochures etc) is 300 dpi so for a 12" square (30x30cm) photobook you're looking at 3600x3600 if possible for a full page image. That said they don't seem to print anyway near that high res to save money. Maybe around 200dpi.

My advice would be to keep the images as high res as possible, use the levels (histogram) to get a feel for how dark the images are (unless you have a colour calibrated system) and use a company that doesn't have a nasty web interface. Bare in mind though that one of mine had 40? pages with lots full page images . Took 2 hrs to process and 2.5 hrs to upload on a 3GHz athlon 64 with 2gb of ram and broadband.

[stuart b]

Photobox pring 300 dpi. Unfortunately all the layouts in the photobooks use different sizes so you'll need to figure out your layout and then go back and re-size and/or crop your pics for the best result. They come out nice though.

Stuart

[road2ruin]

VxDuncan said:

I've made up five photobooks so far - all using yophoto. They are more expensive, though give you more pages and the tool for producing them is better, and offline. I tried photobox and hated the online interface. That said they all use the same licensed printing technology. Normal rule of thumb for print (magazines, brochures etc) is 300 dpi so for a 12" square (30x30cm) photobook you're looking at 3600x3600 if possible for a full page image. That said they don't seem to print anyway near that high res to save money. Maybe around 200dpi.

Think you are getting confused between dpi and ppi. Dpi is specific to the printing technique and has nothing to do with resolution of the image. An image of any size can be printed at 300dpi if desired but a minimum resolution would also be required to make the most of it. The ppi can be used to see how large an image can be sized from the orginal resolution and still be of reasonable quality. A ppi of around 250 would make an acceptable photo so 4MP photo of around 2500 x 1800 would produce a photo of 10" x 7". Increasing the size of the printed image will then slowly decrease the image quality although you could probably get away with an image size of 15" x 10" with no real loss. I even printed a 1.3MP image out at A4 once and iot looked ok.

[tog]

stuart b said:

Photobox pring 300 dpi. Unfortunately all the layouts in the photobooks use different sizes so you'll need to figure out your layout and then go back and re-size and/or crop your pics for the best result. They come out nice though.

Stuart

You can make up your own layouts if you want, and are handy with Photoshop. Simply create a new document in PS that is the size of the whole page in the Photobox book, and make up a layout with your own photos and text as you want them. Then flatten the layers, save as a jpeg and upload to Photobox. In the book layout interface online, you then have to choose the full-bleed option to make your layout, which is a single photo, fill the page and hey presto!

[bernie_eccle]

Thanks for the responses guys. I do like the idea of setting up my own layout in Photoshop, however, sounds a bit time consuming and I am not looking for anything too special this time round.
I may resize to about 66% to help with uploading time. When I tried it last night it appeared as if you can only upload a handful at a time so it is not like I could walk away and leave it uploading over night.
Cheers
Stewart

[tog]

bernie_eccle said:

Thanks for the responses guys. I do like the idea of setting up my own layout in Photoshop, however, sounds a bit time consuming and I am not looking for anything too special this time round.
I may resize to about 66% to help with uploading time. When I tried it last night it appeared as if you can only upload a handful at a time so it is not like I could walk away and leave it uploading over night.
Cheers
Stewart

You can upload by FTP instead of their java uploader, and then you can leave it running overnight. Obviously if you have Quark or a similar desktop publishing package you can do page layouts in that too, as long as you finsih up with a page-sized jpeg. But you're right - it is quite time consuming.

[chris.mapey]

Have a look at Colourmailer photobooks. You can download the compiler so do all the work offline (it rates the image quality for the size of photo as well.)

Prices OK, but not as cheap as photobox.

HTH

Chris

[daydreamer]

Anyone know how to find out the sizes (pixels wide by pixels high) of the various templates using the lastest version of the photobox fiddly tool. In the old version, you could drop a picture in and then click properties - this doesn't appear to be available any more.

I've asked Photobox, and they say that they don't know (wonder how their printers do then!!!!!).

I would just go elsewhere, but in a bit of a rush, and they have done a good job in the past

Rich

[bramley]

Personally I would just upload the full size images and leave it running all day or night if necessary. Why compromise image quality?

If the photobook I got from photobox recently was anything to go by you need to be giving them the best quality files you've got.

[chris.mapey]

May be worth a look at My Publisher - very easy to use downloadable software & also very reasonable prices and great quality!

HTH

Chris

[cirks]

chris.mapey said:

May be worth a look at My Publisher - very easy to use downloadable software & also very reasonable prices and great quality!HTH
Chris

and 20% off if you are a Costco member....

[chris.mapey]

cirks said:

chris.mapey said:

May be worth a look at My Publisher - very easy to use downloadable software & also very reasonable prices and great quality!HTH
Chris

and 20% off if you are a Costco member....

Every time I order from them I do a quick Google search for discount codes last one I found was a Two for One...

Chris