I was really excited about seeting this as I am a big purchaser of photo books as gifts. A number of things confuse me in creating the book:
1. Is there no ability to reposition a photo placed on the page. Even in the demo some of the pictures are cropped badly, and I could not figure out how to adjust them.
2. It states "It will be same price no matter how many pages or photos you have." -- is that "as long as you don't go over 120? So..The "Large" book is $1 per photo? How do you differentiate from other book makers that are much less expensive?
3. Is there no crop, rotate, rearrange or ANY kind of adjustment to the photos in the book? There is no way on earth I would pay $119 for a book that I couldn't tune. Your "automagic layout" didn't get it right for me at all.
4. How are the books bound? I don't know what lay-flat binding means. Are they glued, sewn? How do I know that in a year the pages aren't going to fall out?
I was lucky enough to be in the beta program and actually ordered the 8x8 version. $1 per photo is the wrong way to look at it. My 8x8 book is one hefty beast. If you are not familiar with layflat binding, it's the best possible bound you could get, usually reserved for premium wedding albums. The pages are stiff, almost like cardboard, and it's seamless across the spread. I can upload some shots of my book when I get home.
I recently took advantage of the Flickr 10 year (feels old man) anniversary to print a bunch of books and was disappointed with the quality of the pictures.
Hi, I work at the company, so I'll do my best to answer your questions:
> 1. Is there no ability to reposition a photo placed on the page. Even in the demo some of the pictures are cropped badly, and I could not figure out how to adjust them.
Yes, there are a few ways to reposition photos. If you click on a photo, you can pan and zoom it in the photo slot. If you don't like where the photo is, you can swap its position with another on the page by dragging it. If you don't like the layout, you can hit "Change Layout" and get a different layout.
As a side note, you can also add and remove a photo from a page. To remove, click on a photo on the page, there should be a red button in the top right of the photo slot. To add a photo, simply drag it from the photo tray to the "Add to Page" drop target.
> 2. It states "It will be same price no matter how many pages or photos you have." -- is that "as long as you don't go over 120? So..The "Large" book is $1 per photo? How do you differentiate from other book makers that are much less expensive?
Yes, Montage currently supports a maximum of 120 photos. This will yield a book that is roughly 50 pages. The closest products in the market may have layflat pages, but don't mirror Montage's unique design and quality materials, which was a massive R&D effort in and of itself. And even then, these competitors base prices start at 20 pages, only to increase once you get to checkout.
In short, when you compare apples to apples, Montage gives you a higher quality product in half the time for a similar price.
> 3. Is there no crop, rotate, rearrange or ANY kind of adjustment to the photos in the book? There is no way on earth I would pay $119 for a book that I couldn't tune. Your "automagic layout" didn't get it right for me at all.
See #1. Give the editor a shot in test drive mode and you'll see that you can actually control the magic. :)
> 4. How are the books bound? I don't know what lay-flat binding means. Are they glued, sewn? How do I know that in a year the pages aren't going to fall out?
All Montages are layflat which means there is no crease in the middle. This really allows your photos to shine. We use industrial strength glue to ensure the book will last for generations. We stand behind our product with a 90 day no question asked return policy.
AH! I see it now. Thanks for the feedback. I was trying to do the repositioning from the view that showed all the pages, I completely missed the little left-right arrows on the last step, I thought I could ONLY edit the cover there. Much clearer now that I see how it works.
I still really want to drag to arrange the page order on the "Change your theme page", and to click the page thumbnails to edit the page.
Good to know about the lay-flat. I used to use Blurb, but after a few years the pages fall out / come unglued.
1, 3 - you can crop and zoom the photos by clicking on them right on the page. You can also swap the photos by dragging them, and change layouts by clicking to the "Change Layout" button.
1. Is there no ability to reposition a photo placed on the page. Even in the demo some of the pictures are cropped badly, and I could not figure out how to adjust them.
2. It states "It will be same price no matter how many pages or photos you have." -- is that "as long as you don't go over 120? So..The "Large" book is $1 per photo? How do you differentiate from other book makers that are much less expensive?
3. Is there no crop, rotate, rearrange or ANY kind of adjustment to the photos in the book? There is no way on earth I would pay $119 for a book that I couldn't tune. Your "automagic layout" didn't get it right for me at all.
4. How are the books bound? I don't know what lay-flat binding means. Are they glued, sewn? How do I know that in a year the pages aren't going to fall out?