Picture Books in Manila Good Enough, But Not Quite…

Picture Books Logo

Picture Books in Manila is offering to print customers’ photos and turn them into personalized photo albums which resemble coffee table books. They also make picture calendars and picture cards that feature customer photos.

They have several branches in Metro Manila and by the looks of it, business seems to be going quite well. I happen to visit one of their branches and got to examine the products being offered. I looked at their picture books, calendars and cards and flipped through their pages.

Now, I’ve heard of, and written about Shutterfly, PhotoWorks, MyBook, Tabblo, and Kodak’s Photo Book and I’ve always imagined their quality to be similar to coffee table books: sharp pictures, glossy pages, and top quality paper. But I never really got to actually handle one.

Picture Books kiosk at MegaMall Manila

Seeing those products at Picture Books Manila made me wonder, are these the type of photo books we get when we order from these people? The quality I saw at Picture Books is what you might call “good enough,” but not quite the coffee table-quality that I expected. Maybe it’s the customer’s pictures, or maybe it’s how a photo translates onto the printed page. But I really suspect it is the paper quality and the printing quality that’s at fault here.

Have you ordered a photo book? From where? Does its quality satisfy you? I wish to know. The quality I find here in Manila makes me want to just keep my photos as they are and compile them in a photo album of my own creation.

A pity, since the concept of a photo book is a good one. We just have to do it right.

[Site: PictureBooks.com.ph]

Published by Chris Malinao

Chris teaches Lightroom as workflow software to photography students at the FPPF, Federation of Philippine Photographers Foundation. He also teaches smartphone photography.