Iphoto book PDF Resolution

spiderman

I made an Iphoto book and I sent it to Apple to print. The book is 27 pages and the photos that make up the book total 351 MB. From what I know Apple convert the book pages into a PDF file, which can be located in Finder/Go/Go to Folder/tmp (just prior to upload). This PDF of my book weighed in at 15.2 MB, considerably less than the 351 MB that it started at. So therefore, some degree of compression is going on, thereby in theory, reducing the quality of my photos.



Other US services provide photo books, such as Sony Imagestation, MyPublisher and SnapfFish. Incidently Snapfish ship internationally and also use kodak. MyPublisher use archive quality ink and Sony Imagestation have a myriad of awesome page layouts and colours.



But to the point. Take Sony Imagestation for example. In order to produce a book you must upload all of your photos to their server and it can be done at very high resolution. Sony make the book from high resolution photos, ie, at the 351 MB that my photos totaled for my book. My question is, that if apple reduce the book to a 15.2 MB PDF, am I getting an inferior product?

imac david

Hi,



I posted a thread on this very subject a few days ago, without much response.



You've actually answered some of my questions, as the product I received with the iphoto book I ordered wasn't that impressive, image quality wise.



Does any one have any idea how the user can control the amount of compression going on?



FWIW, the best image printed was the image with the smallest starting filesize, of just over 500kb. It printed the same physical size as a file that started at around 900kb, but the image quality of the smaller file was far superior to the larger file.



Has anyone experimented with using photoshop to create smaller file sizes, then importing back to iPhoto, and then creating a book from these pictures? I would trust Photoshop compression far more than whatever is happening now.



Regards,



David

heathpitts

I had a book made for my girlfriend around 1.5 yrs ago. I had about 25 pics or so in there. All of these were taken with a 2 megapixel digicam. I thought the picture quality was great.

spiderman

I think that the reason that you did not get much response from your email David is that no-one really knows. I also forwarded this question to Icreate magazine to see if they can work it out. Although I must say that your file sizes initially seem pretty small-

Using my sony cybershot 4.0 megapixel camera, I have photos at 1.7 MB on average, and all my scanned images (TIFF) at 300 dpi or 600 dpi are 5 - 25 MB each. And so, although I do have an ADSL connection (256/64), to upload them onto a photo server such as Imagestation or Snapfish would take a considerable amount of time.

I haven't received my books back yet but I'll post a reply to let you know how they turned out.

For shear convenenience, the Apple software cannot be beaten, but the image quality is what we are talking about here...

imac david

Spiderman,



I looked at the alternatives you mentioned (snapfish etc), but either they are not Mac compatible, or they don't post internationally (I'm from the UK). I haven't found a alternative UK supplier, at a reasonable cost!



I've just ordered another book. I've experimented with downsizing some iages through Photoshop, so I'll see if that makes a difference. FYI, the book prior to uploading was 32MB, but only 7.2 when sent to Apple.



Cheers,



David

spiderman

>David



Thats a very small initial file size. Your pictures must not be of high resolution, and yet I have no clue as to what the efffect of making a PDF of it does. I bet your book size is around 14 pages.



But I would suggest that you check out the following link:



http://aletaart.com/iphoto_tutorial.html



Here, Aleta explains a great deal about her experience with Iphoto books and using the highest resolution possible.



She does not explain however, what the effect that making a PDF file does on the quality of the original photos. ie, the file that Apple uses to make the book.



And yes, I don't know any alternatives for these albums in the UK. You are right, Mypublisher and Snapfish use windows and Sony imagestation don't ship internationally.



Good luck...

imac david

Spiderman,



thanks for the link. I'll follow her steps, and see what she does differently.



My camera is an Olympus C4000, 4 megapixel. I'm sure the setting I have is the highest resolution, and each image is around 1MB. You were right, my last book was 17 pages, with most pages having 4 images per page, some pages only having a single image.



I just wish a few other people who've ordered books could say whether the image in the book was better/same/worse than when they printed the image themselves, same physical size, on their £130/$200 photo printer. I can't believe I'm the only person who's done that, and can see the difference. Obviously, in my case, it's far worse.



BTW, ofoto.co.uk will be having albums like this "soon". No details on how they are produced, layout etc, so I'll just have to keep an eye on that site.



Thanks for your help,



David

tacojohn

I ordered a iPhoto book a while back and I thought it turned out great!



Don't forget this is a CONSUMER app and a CONSUMER product- keeping that in mind I wouldn't expect to be able to get that everyone is expecting.



I was happy with the quality of the book that I gave to my parents for Christmas and so were they...

spiderman

Thanks for your reply tacojohn



Yes it is a consumer product. But this is a healthy discussion in the best consumer product and to establish what a PDF file does to the photos which make an Iphoto book.



And these Iphoto books are not cheap. I'm hoping that the resolution is as good as a photo book that you can cut out yourself- but I am told that photos from film are around 5 megapixels (equivalent).



So then this book, at $75 USD for 25 pages must offer more- and it does by delivering ease of use, and time saving benefits. But if the quality is crap and the ink is not archival, so that the book won't last ten years- are you going to keep shelling out $75 (then add state taxes and delivery) or GBP 50.00 (then add vat and delivery)?



No you would consider other products and the methods they use to make them. Or at least come up with an interesting discussion to post at AppleInsider!

imac david

tacojohn,



I agree that this is a consumer app - where I would expect a pro app to differe would be in having far more flexibility in page layout, the ability to put text exactly where you want it on the page, greater number of available fonts etc. I wouldn't expect there to be difference in the print quality of the photo itself.



FWIW, I followed the link spiderman posted above. I suspect that the answer to achieve the best output is to prepare the pictures outside of iPhoto, and then import them and create the book.



For example, if I have a photo who's natural print size is, say, 12*8, and I know that in the Iphoto book it will be only 4*3, then in Photoshop I should reduce the picture size, increase the resolution, and import back to iPhoto. Then, when I create the album, iPhoto doesn't have to change the picture size, and nor, hopfully, will it play with resolution.



Unfortunately, as spiderman points out, these books aren't cheap. Since I've just ordered another book without doing the above, it will be a month or more before I order another.



Also, when you say you were happy with the quality, can you be more explicit? Are you saying that in your case the print quality matched that of your home printer? Or that it wasn't as good but the whole album deal more than compensated?



Since I ordered another, it's obvious that I do think they are worth it - this thread is about trying to find ways to ensure the print quality is as good as it can be.



Cheers,



David

jared

It could also just be using the PDF as a reference to the actual images that are higher quality...

sport73

PDF compression is not necessarily 'lossy'; considering that the origin of a photo is pure bitmap there is plenty of room for size-savings. I use PDF's in my job for the printing of high-resolution files on color printers with little appreciable affect on image quality.



As with anything, your mileage may vary since the source file can dramatically impact the quality/ability to achieve a good compressed result.

spiderman

Thanks sport73



Thats the first piece of insight into PDF technology that we've seen posted. May I ask what it is you do for a living - you don't happen to print these books for Apple do you?



So we are back to the idea that for the PDF to be any good, we must use the best resolution photos possible.



And if PDF files are not lossy, like jpegs, then they are the perfect storage format. But are PDFs as good as TIFF files? (any sort of compression suggests otherwise). And are you able to print noticably better photos through a print service using full jpegs and TIFF files instead of a PDF? I'd like to hear from someone who has used a couple of services as a comparison, like say Apple and Sony Imagestaion. Or a (dare I say it) a windows user with mypublisher or snapfish.

mmmpie

I work on dynamic PDF generation of documents destined for printing and thence high end clients.



PDF is just a container format in this case. You can put any sort of image, at any resolution you want, into it. PDF doesnt place any limits on what is happening.



Any issues you are seeing are due to iPhoto resizing the image.



I can contribute some anecdotes on book creation with iPhoto. I havent printed one yet...



Ive got a whole heap of snaps that really benefit from a tight crop on the subject. The resulting image, however, is quite low resolution. These snaps are compositionally very nice after the crop, and have good content. So I want to use them in my books.



When I put them into a book iPhoto will tell me that they arent high enough resolution to print well, sometimes.



The little exclamation will appear, depending on the final printed image size. The odd thing is that for borderline images ( medium res ) they are acceptable for large prints, but when you put them into a small spot they get flagged as low res.



My deduction from this behaviour is that iPhoto scales the image depending on the placement size. Rather than just increasing its DPI.

If you used photoshop to just increase the dpi of the image, then it follows that it will look better than what iphoto does. An interesting experiment would be to see if iPhoto respects the dpi information that gets embedded in the file, and what value digital cameras put in there.

imac david

I've received my second book, and I think it's official - where iPhoto doesn't need to reduce in size the image, then the printed version is appreciably better than when it does.



As the latest book could be a present, I'm going to redo all 52 pictures in Photoshop, up the dpi, import back to iPhoto, and re-order the book.



Then I'll have to decide if I keep the good one, or give it away as the present ;-)



David

spiderman

I see what you mean David. I just received both of my books and the larger photo's do look quite a bit more impressive. I consider the overall resolution to be very good, but not as good as photo quality - ie what kodak print from film. The sharpness is not in the photos. And I believe that this is directly because Apple use a compressed PDF file to create it.





But the book is really impressive. A little small perhaps. And I used story book design for both, which does waste a lot of page space- I have just upgraded to Iphoto 4 and I will use collage next.





Having photos at angles adds an immense amount of class to the presentation. I don't know of any other hard cover book publisher that has this layout design. Well done Apple.