Pinhole Press has really beautiful options as well. I love Ruby too!

My problem is that there are so many options out there, I'd love to hear feedback on which one do people love best. In particular, which ones are most true to your photo colors and which ones are the most affordable!

I use blurb for mine, as recommended by a professional photographer friend. She told me that many sites/companies actually gain the rights to your photos outside of your own personal orders, when you use their services.

For each of my girls, I posted a photo each day for the first year (often pre-loaded a handful at a time) on a private blog (available to friends and family). For the following Christmas, I make a "best of" the first year book and choose some of my favorite photos (only about 30 photos out of 365!). I make books for us and the grandparents, and they are always a hit. I LOVE LOVE flipping through them and do all the time. Although I have scores of photos on my blog and computer, there's something about a tangible book that makes such a difference.

P.S. I have used Shutterfly and Picaboo. I REALLY liked Picaboo - easy to use and always have great coupon codes.

I used MyPublisher for my daughters and it turned out better than expected. Plus, I got my second copy for free!

I used MyPublisher for my daughters and it turned out better than expected. Plus, I got my second copy for free!

I used blurb for my twins first year, turned out great, and we ordered a ton of copies (one for us, one for each of the kids to have when they grow up, for the grandparents, etc). Everyone loved them!

I had picked my favorites from each month as the year went on which made it a lot easier to make the book.

I use and recommend Blurb for photo books. It's not as convenient to use for books that are more text-heavy, though.

I used Blurb to convert the first year of my baby's blog into a book. It came out beautifully - high quality paper and photos. The problem was that it did not convert the blog easily - I literally had to go post by post and change the font and spacing. The biggest problem was that the photos transferred from the blog in little thumbnail size, so I had to re-import every single one. This took weeks.

Does anyone have a suggestion of a site that will more easily transfer a blog into a book?

I used Pinhole Press recently and was not impressed. Their prices were higher and resulted in what I thought to be an inferior product. Shipping took much longer as well. I won't be using them again. Back to Blurb or Picaboo for me!

I've done a photo book each year for us and the grandparents. It's a big hit and great gift. I usually use Shutterfly, although I might try MPix or Blurb next time. I also did a calendar this year of the best of 3 years, which was a huge hit.

I'm with rimoxie...any site recommendations to easily & nicely print a blog (blogspot.com) would be appreciated. Thank you!

I've used Blurb and Lulu for photo books... they were different, but comparable in terms of price, paper and print quality. The main difference was in the layout tools. I suspect novice designers would find Lulu's system much easier. Blurb had some extra nice bells & whistles, but I actually found them a bit frustrating since they fell short of design programs like InDesign. But I would gladly use either Lulu or Blurb again.

I used Shutterfly because it is cheap. I LOVED the quality of the photo books I gave to grandparents of my 8 month old for Christmas this year. BUT do not recommend ordering just plain prints from them, they tend to crop off heads a lot. I have complained, but they say it is part of their program that auto-crops (even if you already cropped it).

Want to try MPix this year, their accordian minis went over well at Christmas!

I care a lot about nice type with the photos. So far MyPublisher seems best in that regard. You can access most of the fonts on your own computer with their software. You can also lay out pages in InDesign and export the pages as hi-res jpegs, then upload to MyPublisher as full-bleed photos. Pretty good results so far, and their tech support is helpful (although the information they supply varies depending upon whom you talk to). I have not used Blurb yet, so I cannot compare these two. Shutterfly books have been pretty good, although some of their colors get a bit weird, and fewer font choices.

I've used snapfish. One thing bad about it is that they crop your photos weird if they don't match their specs. It's fast and the quality is okay, I just don't think it's that cheap after printing several times.

I just did this in November with Shutterfly for my son's first year (he's three and a half now... took a while). I love it, and Shutterfly has coupons often enough that I was able to go 50% off, so I got two. One for me and one for my son (or his future wife). =)

I used Blurb this past year to put together an album. I picked them because they have InDesign templates available. While all these services have their own layout programs, I wasn't thrilled with not being able to design it exactly the way I wanted.

The books came out great, too.

I am a serious hobbyist photographer, and I use My Publisher. Colors are accurate, pictures are sharp, and the paper is excellent quality. I have used Blurb and Shutterfly before and was not impressed - their color was off and the paper thin. I make annual photo books each year and also for special events or projects. One project I do is to photograph my family for a "a day in our life" each year. I am only 2 years in, but I love the idea of capturing and preserving my family's daily life over the years.

I recently ordered from Mixbook, and while it was okay for the use I needed, (a small book for my grandmother, who couldn't care less about "photo quality"), I wouldn't recommend it. I have also used them for greeting cards though and those were excellent.

In 2009 I went through and tested several of the different companies. My favorite was smilebooks.com. They offer printing on silver halide photo paper and at the time were one of the few who allowed complete customization of the page. I know shutterfly has changed a bit since then (much more flexibility) so I imagine some of the others have as well. Still, I did post my reviews here if anyone is interested: http://cmit2007.wordpress.com/photobook-companies/

Adorama! Great quality.

I use Blurb. I've been making an annual "yearbook" which always turns out great. I also make photo-books to commemorate special events (social, wedding). And I made a little one to gift to my friend's 2 year old boy that had pictures of the people in his life and their names.

I haven't used any other companies so I don't have anything to compare it to but I do believe it is one of the more popular options. It is very easy to use. You can look at other books that have been made on their website. You can change the colour/background of the page if you'd like. You can do photospreads. Add text. Create your own layouts on the page or use their own. They have many options to choose: book size; paper quality and colour; soft cover or hard cover; dust jacket or image wrap. Very customizable and easy to use. A+++++

Kendra

I don't have any children (yet) but am absolutely planning on capturing each year in a photo book. In the meantime, I have used Shutterfly to create a vacation book, a father's day gift and a look back at our relationship gift for the bf.
http://www.hogaroso.blogspot.com/2012/08/photobooks-my-new-favorite-way-to-share.html

Does anyone know which company offer best printing and binding quality? I'd like one that would lie flat when you open, yet doesn't crease the spine. Preferable sewn. (Glue will become dry, crack and fall apart in the future.)

I highly recommend adoramapix for lay flat printing. I made a wedding album with them and love the quality.

i've used blurb, mixbook and mypublisher. blurb was SO frustrating. the "slurping" doesn't work.
one tip for sites that don't offer customization is to create pages in another program (photoshop, microsoft publisher) according to the dimensions of the book you are ordering (12x12 etc.). save the page as a photo or pdf then select the largest photo option (i think all books offer a full page spread) and enter your own creation as if it were a photo. (that probably didn't make sense.)
also, get on their mailing lists. they ALWAYS offer discounts.

I use Blurb for the big project keepsakes (e.g. our wedding week images, our son's first year) and Shutterfly for random small gift books to send to family that does not live near us from time to time.

I did the same with blurb and really liked how it turned out. It was incredibly easy to use, and seemed like great quality to me. I had thought about Pinhole Press, b/c their books seem beautiful, but the layouts are really, really specific - both in amount of photos and orientation/size, so I couldn't go through the year chronologically with their service, couldn't get in as many photos as I wanted, and it was just a huge headache (and they are very pricey). Pinhole for small projects, Blurb or others for chronological photo books - that's my two cents.