Saal Digital Photobook Review
My first book (courtesy of Saal Digital)
I was offered a voucher for a free Professional Line Photobook from Saal Digital in exchange for an honest review. Of course receiving such an offer left a positive impression on me but I tried my best to give a fair an honest review of the product and ordering process.
Who they are?
Saal Digital is a high end print lab located in Germany. Though outside the US they ship DHL at similar rates to the US as a domestic source would charge and the timing is similar as well.
What makes their photo books unique?
To me what stands out is the quality. It truly looks and feels like a photo lab print just many of them in book form, calling it a book of prints is a fitting description. The quality is higher than anything you could buy on a typical photo gift site and even superior to a professional book would find for sale at Barnes & Nobles in terms of print quality, paper quality as well as cover materials.
For example check out the front and back cover…
For the front cover: I selected the Acrylic Cover front (only way to have an image on the front side).
For the back cover: I selected their Wood Look Slate Leather
The acrylic front is truly unique and overall I am delighted with both choices. Size option is 12” x 12” square.
Print Quality
Each inside page has the look and feel of a high quality lab print on professional paper. I selected the glossy paper choice, as I usually print on either glossy or semi-gloss surfaces. The paper is very thick, again not like a typical book more like a quality paper print.
Below are some examples of the pages inside which I designed using their Software.
You may notice a huge feature of their books based on the photos above, the pages are lay flat pages so you can place your images across the binding without fear. This is why after some thought I went with the 12” x 12” square formatted book, as my standard 3:2 ratio photos could be printed right to the page edge at a generous 18” wide as shown above. Leaving a little room on one side for copy.
And I was also able to fit 2:3 vertical photos ; 3 similar across as shown above.
But the best overall look is for an 2:1 pano images they can print 24” wide with complete bleed over the full open page for a truly jaw-dropping look:
Overall Impressions / Verdict
For my intended purpose I would give this photo book a 10 out of 10 rating.
To clarify I decided I would use this book as a showcase/portfolio of my work. I designed it with that ultimate goal of using in person at events as a sales tool. Ideally I could have this book out for clients to view, page through and select a print to purchase from. I would not be selling the book itself, the book would serve as a catalog of my images/prints.
Given that usage this book is perfect, the print quality and paper choice make the pages look very similar to my actual print offerings. I am not aware of any other product on the market that could have delivered as well on my goal.
The exact book I received could work well as a wedding album or really high end coffee table book.
For a more casual travel/trip type book, I think this book may be overkill and Saal Digital does have a standard line of photo books that I would look first at for that type of purpose.
Cost? This style book with the Acrylic Cover, 12” x 12” size and approx. 40 pages is currently approx. $160.00 with shipping to US included. They do have a smaller 8” square option as well as other size options, see price list link below:
With my preferred layout of only 1 image spanning 2 inside pages, it roughly equates to 20 images inside a 40 page book at a cost of $8 per image.
I think the price places it outside the realm of the casual photo book purchaser but for special purposes as I describe above is a reasonable price for the level of quality. Furthermore seeing the finished product in hand, it has the impression of a bespoke book that costs hundreds of dollars.
Any Negatives?
Well other than cost for which there are alternative product offerings, the only negatives I have are quite minor but involve the cover and page selections I choose…
The Acrylic Cover is fragile, easy to scratch and I am worried about people handing it in the field. It also makes the book quite heavy. I am not sure I would prefer the all leather cover as you have no image on the front, so I would prefer something in between where an image would still be visible but more practical.
Being really nit picky… I choose glossy pages which I think works great for the imagery on the inside. I left the inside front cover and inside back cover without images (chose a textured pattern) ; unfortunately these areas without images with the gloss coating do not look great. Guess there is nothing that could have been done differently but would be nice to be able to choose a non-gloss option for the inside cover areas if you elect to not put images there.
The Design/Ordering Process
Now if you have made it this far, I assume you are interested in ordering a book for yourself so below serves as my design tips.
If you are picky about colors like me, I highly recommend downloading the ICC profiles from Saal Digital’s website and prepare your images accordingly. (soft proof in LR or PS). Be aware the front cover if using the Acrylic has a different ICC profile than the inside pages. I definitely adjusted each image after soft proofing and very glad I did. In my opinion if even a couple of images were off the whole book would not be usable for me. I would say this takes some prior experience to get perfect but the Saal Digital website instructions is very detailed on the exact settings to use with their ICC profiles. Of course this implies you have a calibrated monitor, controlled light viewing environment if not you may not benefit from using ICC profiles.
I designed all of the images in LR/PS but then used the Saal Digital app to make the actual design. You could do the entire project in Photoshop or other programs with a plug-in Saal Digital provides but I think that would be more of a headache dealing with huge file sizes than the easy to use drag and place software app.
When deciding on a page layout, keep in mind with the lay flat pages anything on the same 2 page open spread needs to be cohesive. That is part of the reason I decided to go large with only 1 image across on most pages. If you do place multiple images per page, make sure they follow the same theme/look and adjust the spacing between each image larger if you are unsure how well they go together..
Other tip I touched on above is to leave the inside front cover side and inside back cover side free of imagery. I think a solid color background in this location is the way to go though solid white would also look fine. I choose a textured grey which I think looks pleasing but is a little odd with the gloss finish. I probably would have preferred a solid black or solid white as a result.
Below is a screenshot of the my book layout on the application. In order to create the banner across the front I had to design that page in PS, the rest of the text on all pages I used the software to design.
I found the front cover took a little trial and error as the dimension provided for the cover does not account properly for the part of the leather edge that wraps to the front side. Fortunately the rest of the pages went fairly quickly.
Another tip is if you have a specific font that you use, the Saal software allows you to import any Adobe fonts into the system, a feature I was very pleased to see as I do have a font I primarily use that is not very common.
Also be aware the default page layout options on the right side will size your images out of their proportions. This is a nice feature, but you do need to be careful. I would prefer if there was a checkbox to tell the system to lock the image proportions or not. In items of best appearance there were definitely some images/cases where the book would have looked better with the image covering the full pages (2:1 ratio in the case of the square book) ; but since the original image and the prints I am selling are at a 3:2 ratio, I did not want to alter that.
The system was otherwise fairly straight forward and the finished book looks exactly as I hoped. As you add pages, the pricing will accurately reflect at the bottom.
Despite the huge file size with all of the high resolution images inside the book, the software never lagged and uploaded quickly once I was finished.
Once I submitted the order, it took approx. 1 week before I had a tracking number and 3 days after that until the book was delivered by DHL to my door.
One last word of advise, if you have a voucher for a specific amount you cannot use any sales pricing or promotions in addition to the voucher.
In Conclusion
Based on my experience with the ordering process, print quality and finished product ; Saal Digital would be my first choice for any future photo book needs. I highly recommend them and look forward to seeing what new products they come out with in the future.
If you have any questions, let me know in the comments below and I will respond.