Flickr printing: QOOP Photo books and Posters

QOOP is a printing service that has partnered with photo sharing sites like Flickr, Facebook, Photobucket and others, to offer inexpensive and easy-to-create Photo books and more. As a Flickr user I was interested in QOOP Photo Books because they are inexpensive, I don’t need to download any special software, and I don’t need to re-upload or re-annotate photos I have already shared online. Even if your Flickr photos are uploaded with “Private” access, they can still be printed through QOOP. The QOOP interface and integration with Flickr is easy to use even for non-technical users.

QOOP Photo Books are not fancy scrapbook style, highly customizable, ornately decorated Photo Books like you might find at Shutterfly or Blurb. Please check the Related Links at the bottom of this article for some links to more Photo Book printing options. QOOP books are designed to be inexpensive and easy enough to create, so that customers might order several to hand out to friends and family, or archive photos they’ve shared online in a physical, “offline” format. QOOP offers a variety of printing options, including a Poster option covered here as well. Please click individual photos in the slideshow below to view descriptions and annotations of each photo.

Disclaimer and order information

QOOP contacted me based on an article I wrote previously comparing SmugMug and Flickr, and offered to pay for my orders of some of their products. SmugMug does not offer integration with third-party printing services, one reason I looked elsewhere for photo sharing (to Flickr) so I wouldn’t have to duplicate the effort of uploading and annotating the photos I shared online. For my first order I created a 50-page (front and back) 8×10 inch Photo Book with 6 photos per page. Total cost was 18.74 USD plus around 5 dollars shipping and handling, an inexpensive way of printing around 300 photos. I also added a 13.5×19 inch Poster, that I added around 30 photos to. The Poster option can be used to print one-to-many photos, from a single photo enlargement size, down to thumbnails of dozens of photos. My poster was 7.49 USD, a flat rate regardless of how many photos are added to the poster. Both order items included a 25% Holiday discount that QOOP was running on their site.

From your Set page > Make Stuff > Create a QOOP book

Quality and Aesthetics

I was satisfied with the print quality of the Photo Book and Poster. I was not blown away by the quality, and think that printing individual photos on thermal printers at Target or Wal-Mart (for example) will yield higher quality prints, but the value for the price is very high, and fills the gap for “low quality high volume” photo books that I was looking for. QOOP Photo Books could also be a convenient way to print thumbnails that one or many people could use to select a subset of photos from, where each photo would be printed individually. For example, a photographer could distribute a half dozen Photo Books to customers or advertisers as “proof sheets” who could select a few they’d like for an advertising campaign. The photographer would have a minimal investment while being able to reach numerous potential clients. While the Photo Books are not specific to Flickr, the white background and black text match the look-and-feel of Flickr photos well. I was a little more impressed by the poster. The paper was heavier than I expected and the ability to add nearly any number of photos on one sheet opens up a lot of creative possibilities. One example would be to print photos tagged with the color “red” for display in a room with red painted walls.

Pop-up window lets you inspect a preview of each page

Options

There are not many options or customization points. QOOP Photo Books are not the ideal destination for your photos if you want to exercise your creativity. The most requested option I’ve gathered from friends that is missing as of this writing, is the ability to select the number of photos per page. Current options include 1, 2, 4, 6, or 20 photos per page. At 20 photos per page, QOOP will not pull your Flickr Description data because there is no room for it. Unfortunately the number of photos selected per page applies to all pages. In other words you can’t have 2 photos on one page, then 6 photos on the next page. The best option there would probably be to create separate books. If that does not meet your needs, you’ll want to look to another service.

You can select between 8×10 inch or 8.5×11 inch books. For me the prices were the same for either size, I’m not very clear on why QOOP offers these two sizes as the difference is so small I doubt it would make a difference. Unfortunately QOOP Photo Books don’t let you print on the binding of the book either (at least I can’t find it), although the sample Flickr QOOP Photo Book on the front page does show printing on the binding, so I am unclear why this option was not available in my testing.

My Photo Book suggestions

The following paragraphs are feature requests and options I’d like QOOP to consider adding to Photo Books.

While many users are not “tag savvy,” I spend a lot of time adding tag data to my photos. It would be nice if QOOP added a feature to print photos by tag. For example, I tag many photos with dominant colors. If I could query my Flickr photostream for all photos tagged “red,” I could print a book called “The Study of Red” or some other type of creative use for this feature. I also think that tags help describe the photos in a book, just like Title and Description fields do, so I’d love to have the option to query for the tags used in the photos I am printing in a book, then include them in some meaningful way in the book. There is a lot of “real estate” on the inside front and back covers, so perhaps the relevant tags that describe the photos in the book could be presented as a “tag cloud” in one of these locations.

I think a Flickr Set makes the most sense as content for a Photo Book. It would be nice of QOOP used the Flickr API to pull the Set Description data into the book to be displayed on the outside or inside front cover. Currently only two lines of text are available on the outside front cover.

QOOP could also pull the Set Name for the default “Main Title” and the username for the default “Sub-Title,” but still allow users to customize these fields. I chose to print the Image Titles and Image Descriptions, but I was not able to select the positioning of this information. For vertical pictures that are scaled and where multiple pictures are on the page, the Image Title field floats a little far to the left. It would be nice to be able to center Image Title and Description fields, when 6 photos per page or more are present, as the alignment of the text with the picture can be a little off.

If different bindings were used (would need to be thicker), it would be great to print on the binding. This way one could stack QOOP Photo Books on a bookshelf, then scan the bindings to find a specific book more easily. More expensive hardcover books from competing services offer the ability to print on the binding. The QOOP Photo Book example on the front page shows text on the binding.

This particular preview shows 20 photos per page

“Printing on demand” and Shipping

Shipping for me was via USPS Priority Mail. I ordered on Tuesday December 5 and received the order on Thursday December 14, 9 days total. Not bad considering this is “printing on demand.” I don’t know any details of the QOOP order fulfillment workflow, but I’ll imagine there is a steady stream of work to do (printing jobs) on various materials (photo paper, mugs, poster sheets, calendars, etc.) and so QOOP must keep all of those “raw” products in stock, as well as the printing supplies (inks and things), making the order fulfillment time pretty impressive.

Photo Books and Posters: Pros and Cons

Pros

• Cheap! (Photo Books under 20 USD including shipping)
• Fast! (Create a Photo Book of a annotated Flickr Set in about 5 minutes)
• No need to re-upload photos to create a Photo Book (or other printing options)
• International shipping is available (send pictures by snail mail across the ocean)
• Pulls Flickr Title and Description metadata
• Flickr contacts can print your photos using QOOP if permission is granted
• Can select number of photos per page of entire book
• No additional software to download (no preference between Windows or Mac)
• 13.5×19 inch Posters for 9.99 USD can be used as inexpensive enlargements or photo “grids” capturing a theme

Cons

• Can’t change number of photos on a page-by-page basis for Photo Books
• Can’t print the book title on the binding
• Does not pull Flickr Set description (for book cover) or Tags to be included in Photo Book
• Not “professional” quality, but acceptable for most users
• Can’t print by Flickr tag, limited to Sets or date range (Flickr Set is probably the most common printed grouping of photos)
• No hardcover or dust flap offered (more expensive services offer these options)
• Limited customization

Related links and competing services

• If you are an Apple iPhoto user, Apple books available in hardcover and softcover, look great. I haven’t purchased one myself, but I’d like to try one with iPhoto in the future. Hardcover books start around 30 USD. Small books are available as well.
• Shutterfly has a ton of Photo Book options from 4×4 “brag books” (14.99 USD) up to 12×12 Memory Books (54.99 USD). Check out the hardcover book options if you are looking for something customizable and colorful. There is no software to download here, which means you’ll need to upload your photos and add metadata on Shutterfly servers not on your local machine.
• Blurb looks like another very interesting service. This service takes a different approach and has users download software onto their Mac or PC computer, assemble their books there (where it is “drag-and-drop easy,” and “no internet fast”) then upload their book to Blurb once they’ve customized it to their desire. Prices range from 30-80 USD for hardcover books.

• Lulu is a little different still in that it is a complete “on demand” printing service with a huge variety of book printing options. Lulu lets you sell your content if you’d like to, providing e-commerce and marketing services for anyone. There are FREE and FEE services. Lulu assumes you will create your book in software you have on your own machine then upload it to Lulu services as a PDF document. Check out the Lulu Basics help page for more information.

• MacWorld Roundup article comparing some services above and more: binding your own photos and creating greeting cards

Please share your experiences with QOOP or other Photo Books in the comments.