Saal Digital Photobook Review

So today I am going to be reviewing a photo book from Saal Digital.  For transparency, the photo book itself was provided by Saal to my design, but I am not being paid to promote them.

I often use photobooks as engagement albums, family albums (as here) and various other uses where my fine art Folio albums are not appropriate.   They are robust & attractive, and the flexibility of design is almost limitless. But hey, have a look at them & we can talk about what I think afterwards…

So, first up the matt cover is gorgeous.  I have yet to find another maker of these books that includes both matte cover & matte paper as standard.  And I *love* matte.  The cover feels great & the colour reproduction (or in this case, greyscale dolphin) is good.  The binding feels secure & exceptionally neat.  So far so good.

Inside the pages are a little on the thin side for my taste, but they are stiffer than one I received from a very popular artisan book maker today, and still of good quality – you can definitely tell it is photographic paper.  Saal offer an extra thick page range which I would be interested in trying.  The colour reproduction is solid (I didn’t attempt to soft-proof this book, just worked in sRGB) and the colours have depth & detail in the grading.

Where it really excels is the lay-flat pages, meaning you can lie a design cross the full width without needing to worry about losing your image in the gutter.

I didn’t use Saal’s proprietary software to design the album, preferring to keep to my normal workflow & use SmartAlbums, but the PDF-to-book upload was very smooth & without incident.  The Pro-Zone within the website can give you detailed measurements & templates if needed.

Delivery was fast.  It was ordered on the 13th May, shipped on the 17th May & received on the 21st May – just over a week which is impressive considering it has come from Germany.

Find these and other books for sale at saal-digital.co.uk