In short: I got an
offer for a massive discount on a photobook if I wrote an honest review for @saal.digital.uk.
Liked the software and simplicity of understanding what I would get for what
price, order and delivery process was good and the end product was good too. So
all in all, a great experience and I will definitely be using them again when I
am looking to print some of my photos to book.
In long: Who would
turn down an offer of a free (or at least greatly reduced) photobook in
exchange for posting an online review? – Exactly. So here are my experiences
from using the Saal Photobook software all the way to creating a photobook for
a first time.
Overall the software is easy to understand and mostly
intuitive (though some words which seem to have been poorly translated from the
German original). There are some nice layout pre-sets which can be individually
customised (though more would be nice – also an option to import only part of
the layout onto one of the two pages would be a great improvement). The menu
structure which helps you choose what photobook you want to create is well done
and it is very up front about the cost of each individual customisable item.
Great attention to detail can start at the very beginning of the project and
gives the feeling of a very solid effort at putting the customer first! Though
I mainly do landscape photography, I went for creating a wedding album, having
recently been given a very poor attempt at one, wanting to prove that better
can be done – I also thought being able to see both landscape and people in a
combination with pictures which were not all taken by me would give me a chance
to better evaluate the quality and see any potential differences in the final
product as well.
I really enjoyed using the software and found that even some
more advanced requests (re-shaping, changing angles and colouring of frames, ornaments
or background was intuitive), however there are also some critical points I
have to raise. My source folder with the photographs which I had gathered for
the pictures was not small (about 600 pictures) and the software seemed to
struggle a bit to display all the pictures – especially when scrolling down
through them. Even though there are sorting options, the software was not always
accurate as to which photos were already in the photobook (also I would have
appreciated being able to move a picture to another page without having to find
it in my folder and re-import it again). Trying to do some more advanced things
(image rotation within the matrix, only wanting to import one page of the
pre-set mask) did not work out as desired and saving a painstakingly created
pre-set mask only worked till I closed the program – though that might have also
been due my inability to fully understand how the software works, it was not
intuitive. Finally, a bear bug of mine is the generally fairly limited choice
of fonts in photobook software. I am guessing this is for reasons to do with
the printing process. There are a fair few fonts to choose from, however for my
project I still struggled to find one which I felt fitted perfectly (you can
activate additional computer fonts but that comes with a warning about loss of
quality which I was not wanting to risk).
Having completed the photobook it was time to order and
again the process was pleasantly easy to navigate – and even though I had quite
a poor and slow internet connection from rural France where I was at the time,
it was surprisingly fast to upload my completed photobook and receive my order
confirmation. At this point I have to raise another point of criticism in that
one can only have a completed photobook delivered to Germany or the UK – so if
I want to send it to friends anywhere else, even within Europe, I would first
have to have it sent to one of those two countries before forwarding it on. I
would guess that possibly contacting Saal directly once ordered one may be able
to change that, however it is something I would expect a good photobook
software to do at the order screen stage automatically. As a result I am
writing the first part of this review, looking out at the sunshine of Brittany,
having to wait for my return to the UK to see and evaluate the finished product
when I get back to Sunny Scotland …..
… Back home now I can report that the album print and
delivery was good. The book arrived well protected and within the specified (and
quite quick) timeframe promised when I ordered. So now for the most important
part: the finished product. I went for a glossy photobook in A4 landscape
(28x19) which has a special binding so that you can open the book flat (thus
you can put a full picture onto a double page without losing half of the image
in the shadow of the spine. Extra bonus points also need to be given for the
possibility of having an “unbranded” book printed (i.e. you can remove the barcode
for a little extra cost – but something that is not always an option).
The finished product is nice. The quality of the book feels
good and the overall appearance is good too. I really quite like it and the
people who I showed it to, were very impressed by how it looked and the quality
of the images.
This however would not be me without some critical remarks as well (this was me looking very closely, trying to find something to fault…) Some of the images appear different in terms of their colour reproduction and sharpness compared to what the finished product looked like on my 4k computer monitor – even though I had taken care to try and avoid this when creating the album (remember - not all pictures were taken by the same people and thus camera settings and image quality was not consistent). I don’t know if anything was done to enhance the images after ordering as is sometimes the case. I also find the feature of being able to open the book flat (and have an image spread across both pages very nice, however one needs to bear in mind that it still leaves a visual fold in the centre of the page – slightly off centre if you are not exactly at the half way point of the book. As a result, some page elements wrongly may appear to have been misaligned.
This however would not be me without some critical remarks as well (this was me looking very closely, trying to find something to fault…) Some of the images appear different in terms of their colour reproduction and sharpness compared to what the finished product looked like on my 4k computer monitor – even though I had taken care to try and avoid this when creating the album (remember - not all pictures were taken by the same people and thus camera settings and image quality was not consistent). I don’t know if anything was done to enhance the images after ordering as is sometimes the case. I also find the feature of being able to open the book flat (and have an image spread across both pages very nice, however one needs to bear in mind that it still leaves a visual fold in the centre of the page – slightly off centre if you are not exactly at the half way point of the book. As a result, some page elements wrongly may appear to have been misaligned.
My very precise and critical picking apart of the software
and photobook took quite a while longer than the process usually would but I feel
that in order to be true to me a close and critical look was necessary. Those
who know me well, know that I can be extremely critical and detailed about
these kind of things. This should however in no way detract from the very good
and appealing product that Saal have. In fact I am in the process of ordering
two additional copies of the photobook that I made. If you would like to judge
a completed book for yourself, feel free to have a look at my photobook via the
following link: Photobook link (a great feature to allow you to share your photobook with others but be aware
that this link only works for a limited amount of time) or try out one of their
offers with your own pictures. I am sure you will like it, and – just like me –
plan on coming back for more in the future.
Interested to find out more? Go to their website at www.saal-digital.co.uk. Alternatively
go to “@saal.digital.uk” (on Facebook) @saal_digital (Instagram) or #saaldigital
(Twitter) and try it out for yourself.
