What Images are Best for Photobooks vs Prints?
- Photobooks vs Prints - Different Approaches to Viewing
- Photobooks vs Prints - A Photo Series
- Photobooks vs Prints - Outstanding Single Image
- Photobooks vs Prints - Use Both!
- Recommended Photography Gear
- What Is a Lay Flat Photo Book?
- How To Organize Printed Photos
- Custom Artwork Ideas for Your Photography
We have several options for how to best display our photographic images in a physical form. By physical form, I mean an actual item that you can hold in your hands, hang on a wall, or place on a desk as opposed to seeing or displaying your photos online, on social media, or on a computer monitor.
I’ll be looking at two of the methods today: making a photo print or a photography book. I’ll be using some examples from Photo Book Press, a premium photo printing company I use, to highlight how to choose photobooks vs prints for our images.
Photobooks vs prints: what will work best for your images? Let's find out!
Table of Contents:
Photobooks vs Prints - Different Approaches to Viewing
One of the main differences when considering whether to use photobooks vs prints for viewing your images is whether you are going to be looking at the images from a distance or up close.
Viewing photographs up close usually involves holding them in your hands. If you’re old enough to remember waiting for pics to come back from the photo developer kiosk or store, then you remember holding paper prints in either 4 x 6” or 3 ½ x 5 ¼” paper prints.
A photography book is similar to those experiences, a little bit better, actually. It’s better than thumbing through a bunch of single prints in that you can keep the images organized. They stay on each page, after all. You don’t lose any prints, and you don’t fold up or bend the prints. And you can text the prints since that’s part of the photography book design process.
Prints are best viewed as wall art or desktop displays, so we tend to make them a little bigger than those photo mat prints, and we also can use specialty finishes or methods of printing to make them stand out in a viewing, such as acrylic prints, canvas prints, or metal prints.
That’s the basics of how different they are in viewing photobooks vs prints. Let’s delve into what types of images work within these display options.
Photobooks vs Prints - A Photo Series
When considering what kinds of images to display, photobooks vs prints, one thing I’ve noticed is that a photography book works wonderfully with any type of photos that can be arranged into a series of images.
Among the most common photography books for a very specific purpose is a wedding album photobook. Layflat Photo Books give these series of images a beautiful forum for being seen.
Layflat Photo Books are special in that the binding is made so that there is no deep gutter in the middle of the pages. Also, by eliminating the gutter it also removes the problem of having those same pages curl up. Both of those issues detract from viewing enjoyment, so eliminating them increases the positive view of any images in the photography book.
But it’s not only wedding albums that work well in a photobook. Other series of images do as well. For example, a family portrait photoshoot presented in a photography book can become an heirloom piece for a family coffee table.
Other images that fit into the genre of this display option are landscape images, such as wide establishing shots leading into various close-up views of natural subjects and maybe even some rustic buildings. You get the idea.
Photobooks vs Prints - Outstanding Single Image
Deciding on photobooks vs prints for outstanding single images is another fairly simple job. If the image is so powerful that it can stand out all on its own, then you might want to have it displayed as Acrylic Photo Tiles.
Acrylic Photo Tiles are made with the highest quality materials and can be mounted on a wall or put in a stand on a desktop. The acrylic material is 3/16th of an inch thick, and the print is made with high resolution and deep, rich colors.
When displayed on its own, an acrylic print of a beautiful image is a wonderful thing to see. What kind of image will look great with this treatment? If it captures attention without any backstory needed, that’s a good solitary image.
That awesome and epic view of a mountain scene, a Rembrandt-style portrait, a romantic still life of flowers, if it grabs your eyes all by itself, it’ll grab hearts when displayed as Acrylic Photo Tiles. They can be made in sizes from 6 x 6 inches up to 20 x 24 inches.
Photobooks Vs Prints - Use Both!
One of the best aspects for me about choosing between photobooks vs prints is I can always do both. For example, for that wedding mentioned earlier, make a photo album photography book and then add a large photo print or two of the ceremony or the couple together.
The same idea works wonderfully with landscape and nature scenes. Displaying a large acrylic photo print can lead to showing a photography book of the entire trek or other similar images you’ve made on other outings.
The important thing is to get your digital images into people’s hands or heads by means of these fine printing options.
