Saturday, March 29, 2014

Artisan State Photo Album Review

Have you seen "Artisan State Photo Album" ad on Facebook?  I saw it all the time.  It said it is only $20 for a photo album, so I went to their website and checked them out.  Since I am very into photography recently, I want to have a nice flush mount photo album (not press photo album) for my pictures, but I can't afford to pay over $100 per album.  Artisan State Photo Album is very budget friendly.

Artisan State Photo Album Review


Here is what I found:

The $20 photo album called "Little Black Book" which is 5"x7" and 20 pages with black cover, if you want larger size, more pages, different cover style, it would cost extra.  The shipping is only $5, I think it is very reasonable, they didn't try to rip you off from shipping.

Artisan State also offers difficult styles of photo albums like Hard Cover, Leather Cover and Crystal Cover.  These are more expensive, they are from $35 and up with less pages.  But they offer 50% for sample album.  If you want the album for yourself, not for business, it is the way to go.  Coz you can get the bigger album and just a little bit more expensive than "Little Black Book".

I ordered 6"x8" Hard Cover with 22 pages and thin page.  With discount and shipping, I only paid $27.  It is Super Good Deal. 

About uploading pictures and designing album, Artisan State website is very intuitive, it is similar to most online photo lab websites. You can change background colors, add texts etc.  But there is no "theme" templates like shutterfly etc.  It is ok for me, coz I don't want to have any design or graphics on my album.

About the quality of Artisan State Photo book, here are some pics of my photo album.

You can see the texture of the Hard Cover

There is "Studio Sample, Not for Resale" printed on the back cover of Sample Cover.

The album itself is very nice, it is well made.  The pages are mounted nicely.  The one I ordered is thin page, but it is nice thickness, not really thin.

Binding

Binding

The binding is very well-build and sturdy.  It is very good quality.

The Artisan State Photo Album is very professional looking and beautiful.  However, I have problem with their colors.  The pictures turn out a little bit off, they are a lot darker than the original pictures. Even my monitor is not calibrated, so I ordered some prints from the other professional labs (like Miller's and WHCC) to test, the prints from the other labs are a lot brighter and vivid than Artisan State, so I am pretty sure that it isn't my monitor. 

Conclusion:

If you are not selling the photo album, it is for yourself, your family or friends, Artisan State Photo Album is good enough.  They are a lot better than Shutterfly or drugstore photo labs.  However, if you are professional photographers and selling the album to your clients, you really need to calibrate your monitor well and order sample first and test them out.

I think I will order from Artisan State again in the future, coz my parents and in-laws live very far away from us, they love to have photo album of my son, Artisan State is definitely suit my budget and good and beautiful enough .

I also ordered from "Printerpix", I will do the review soon. 


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