Pixart Photo Books

Reviewed by
Jeanne & Lyana

For those of us who regularly compile our own printed photo albums, we know the drill all too well. Browse through hundreds of photos, pick out the best ones, copy them onto a CD, drop them off at the nearest Fuji or Kodak photo processing outlet and collect them a couple of days later. Next comes many hours of arranging & rearranging many photos, cutting & pasting captions and embellishments, gluing the photos, etc…Putting together a photo album the good old-fashioned way, is a satisfying but definitely time consuming process.

Enter the online photo book service – a new and novel concept, promising us the convenience of putting together a beautifully arranged photo album from our computer desktops. No messy gluing of photos or clumsy cutting required. Just arrange your photos and captions on your computer screen, fill in your delivery details, pay online and presto! – the photo album is then printed, bound and delivered right to your doorstep. It’s really a promise of allowing your fingers to do all the walking. A familiar concept in the US, this sort of service is however very new to this part of the world.

Singaporemoms had the opportunity to “test-run” one such service that’s available in Singapore and Malaysia. Pixart touts itself as being able to “Transform your digital camera photos into a professionally-made photo book” with its freely downloadable software. You can create your own coffee table photo book “masterpiece” from those unforgettable occasions like birthdays, weddings, vacations, graduations, anniversaries or the birth of your baby.

Sometime last week, Lyana and I downloaded the free PhotoStylist software from www.pixart.com.my to see whether it's really that simple to use.

Here’s what we had to do-

With our broadband connections, downloading the software was a breeze. The installation process was simple – and the instructions were clear.

Step 1 – Get Photos

It was relatively simple to “insert” photos into the PhotoStylist software. For my trial photo book, I decided to have only photos of my boy Josh, so I picked as many of the best shots that I had on my computer. Now, for high quality prints, these photos would have had to be high-resolution photos. All of the photos which I used were at least 2 megapixels in size. Because the PhotoStylist software runs on your computer, inserting the photos is very fast and fuss-free, unlike some US web-based services that require you to upload your photos over the internet. Although it would have been nicer if we were able to select multiple photos all at once for insertion, the software was generally very easy to use, and flexible.

Step 2 – Create Pages

After uploading our photos, we had to create the pages of our photo book. Lyana and I each had a 20-page photo book. For each page, we chose a particular photo layout. There are many layouts for you to pick from – you can have just 1 large photo on your page, or as many as 5 or 6 photos of different sizes, creatively arranged to make your book look more exciting.

We could also select a background theme for the entire book. I picked the soothing khaki-colored “Story Teller – Freestyle 1” theme for my boy’s book. This “theme” concept is pretty neat, as it makes your book look much more exciting. You can pick a flowery pastel theme for a wedding album, or a scrapbook-look-alike theme for other events such as birthdays. Pixart regularly releases new themes, which you can download from their website. We actually tried installing one of those downloaded themes, and found the process easy and idiot-proof!

Another thing that I liked about the software, was that I could easily enter captions below every single photo, choosing the font type, size and color for each caption. The software also quite amazingly, allows you to add very cool effects (eg. shadows and borders) to your photos, and perform resizing and optimization (eg. sharpening) of your photos.

Step 3- Create Title Page

I personally took about an hour to create my book as I wanted lots of pictures in it. I could have saved a lot of time and finished the book in minutes, if I just used 1 picture for each of the twenty pages. But in typical “kiasu” Singaporean style, I chose to have lots and lots of pictures – I had over 60 pictures of my precious little darling inserted into my book. Lyana finished hers in about half an hour.

The final step before ordering your book, is to create a title page. On this page, I picked a nice portrait of my boy, and captioned it. I also put his name above the picture, using it as the title for the book.

Step 4 – Order

Once I finished putting my masterpiece together, I saved my photo book file and proceeded to order the book. All we had to do was fill in our delivery details, specify the color and type of material (fabric or synthetic leather) for the book cover, and then press a button to send the entire photo book file to Pixart over the internet. With my Starhub MaxOnline broadband connection, it took me about 20 minutes to send my very large book (with over 60 high resolution pictures) to Pixart.

I was very pleased with the fact that not once during the production or the sending of the photobook, did the PhotoSylist software hang on me. In my opinion, the PhotoStylist software is truly world-class – and in some ways, even better than what the likes of printer manufacturers like Canon and HP have been able to produce.

Lyana did however feel that the PhotoStylist software could be improved by indicating what are the permitted minimum and maximum number of photos that may be inserted into the photo book. Hopefully, Pixart will include this feature in the next version of their software.

To complete my order, I had to provide my credit card details online, and was pleased that Pixart uses a secure online payment processing service.

After completing our orders, we immediately received confirmation emails from Pixart’s customer service department, telling us that our orders had been processed, and that the processing of our books would be completed within 5 days, and then sent to our shipping addresses via courier from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (where Pixart’s office is located).

Needless to say, they were prompt and punctual. Mind you, I had ordered my book on a Wednesday, and despite loss of 2 working days over the weekend, Pixart still managed to complete the printing job. And in fact, the parcel arrived, neatly packed and protected in a custom-made cardboard sleeve on the 6th day.

The pages of the photo book were exactly as shown on the PhotoStylist software. There were no mistakes or blemishes in our books. The color reproduction was very accurate. I did notice that some of the pictures taken from my mobile phone camera appeared a little grainy in the printout. That’s definitely because I took those photos indoors without using a proper flash. Ah well, I will remember to take better photos for my book the next time round.

Pixart offers various packaged pricing for its books. The ones which Lyana and I ordered were the 20-page double sided printing photo books with a canvas cover, worth RM114 (including shipping and delivery). At a little more than S$50 per book, I’d say Pixart offers a pretty decent bargain. If I had to print 60 photos on my inkjet printer or at a photo processing center, the cost of the photos alone would be anywhere between S$20 - S$30. For a little extra, Pixart gave us a complete photo album, plus the ability to arrange all the photos in an interesting layout, choose a nice colored background for every single page, and add classy captions to every single photo.

The best thing about this product, was that us mums were able to put together the entire photo book on our computers over a lunch break, and days later, spend countless pleasurable hours flipping through those pretty pages without having to once step away from our desks. Quite an attractive proposition for busy Singapore moms!

If you have any enquiries about this product, you can contact Pixart at customerservice@pixart.com.my