Roughly 15 years ago, I was rummaging through a pile of photo scrapbooks. None were the same size, some had photos sticking out of the top, and they frankly looked unsightly on our family room bookshelf. That’s when I came up with this ahead-of-its-time idea: Someone should start a printing service in which they scanned all of your snapshots at high resolution and then printed them in a large-format, bound coffee table book. That would look a helluva lot better than what I had, and it would probably preserve the photos a lot longer than a standard photo would last. And of course, because the photos were printed directly on the book’s pages -- as opposed to taped on -- the book would be loads thinner and take up exponentially less space on the shelf.
Apparently, plenty of other people had dreamt up a similar concept: Several years later, Apple started this type of service for photos from any iPhone. The books were smaller in size, but the concept was similar to mine. And the end product was beautiful. Then, as tends to happen with many good products in life, Costco began offering something similar at a much more reasonable price. And as you probably know, there have been countless other companies with a like service.
I finally decided to try one of them, Chatbooks, which makes the concept incredibly affordable -- its photo books start at just $8 for a 60-page book full of 6-inch by 6-inch photos. The Chatbooks app -- available for iPhone, on the Google Play store or through a web-based version -- is super simple to use. It defaults by lifting images from Instagram and Facebook. That said, you can remove any images you don’t want to print and insert photos from your phone’s photo libraries or Google Photos or wherever you can access them from your smartphone. What I especially like is that it defaults your images into chronological order. You can add captions and such, and can pay an extra $5 for a library-bound hardcover instead of the default perfect-bound soft cover. Archival pages and inks mean photos won’t fade. Plus you can choose whatever image you want for the cover. The interface makes layout easy, as well. Standard shipping is free and the books come with a money-back guarantee.
Standard orders take three-to-five business days to arrive. Mine showed up in just less than a week. And it surpassed my expectations by leaps and bounds. It was a hardcover book -- the cover is smooth with a soft, luxurious feel to it. The photos came out with perfectly rich colors in true hues and saturation. And the paper quality is outstanding -- each page is neither too thin nor thick. Each photo is date-stamped, which was a pleasant surprise -- the date subtly appearing just above the photo. And any comment or hashtag I had posted in Instagram to label a photo appears just below the image. When my family and guests each looked through it, every one of them was awed by its quality. Then when I told them it cost just $13, they were in shock. One person said she’d easily pay $25 for it.
I hope Chatbooks continues to do well. There should be more friendly services like this at a reasonable cost.
