Every year I try to take the time to share my images with family, friends, and organizations I support. One of the more meaningful l ways I do this is by creating a personalized photo book of a vacation, special event or year in review. Printed images offer more meaningful memories especially when they are shared in a hard-bound book.
I have created dozens of individualized books and used a variety of services over the years trying to find the best fit for my stories. I look at the book quality, application ease of use and customization that offers me the most creative freedom. This has not always been easy to find. The best luck I had was books I first created with Apple several years ago. I have used several different services since Apple discontinued offer photo books and I’m now using Motif inside Apple Photos. Motif’s parent company, RR Donnelley, was one of the original printing partners when Apple was offer these services inside Photos and Aperture.
I like my books in a larger hard-bound format that is coffee table worthy and Motif offer several sizes including up to 13” x 10”. Not many other providers seem to the larger size options. Smaller books always seemed like a child’s reading book rather than the creative efforts of something so much more personal and important.
Motif is a plugin for Apple Photos and allows you to quickly assemble the book directly in the Photos application. This feels a lot more responsive and is easier to work with than online-only services. I keep my main photo library in Lightroom and end up exporting my JPEG images to a separate folder then back into Photos. This does take an extra few steps, but the speed at which you can create a book within Motif more than makes up for those initial extra steps.
The most appealing feature for Motif is how easily the templates can be modified. With almost any page you can fully control custom picture sizes, text blocks, and change fonts. I can back myself out of a layout if it doesn’t suit me anymore just as easily. Personally, I don’t like getting cornered. I just enjoy all the the control that Motif lets me wade into the deep end of the program. The auto flow and standard layouts work well if you are less experimental.
Sending the final book is simple and is priced about the same as other services. This November Motif finished my books in about three days and then was shipped it out promptly. I was very happy with the turnaround. The book arrived in a protective dust jacket and wrapped in a plastic sleeve. This packaging is ideal and makes it easy for me to gift wrap.
The quality of the book was by far the best I have gotten since the days when Apple provide these services. The paper was a premium stock and the color display of the images was perfect.
After many years of searching, I couldn’t be more pleased to share my photo album with the size and quality offered by Motif.