After years of using Albelli, tried SAAL for the first time and (also) loved it!
For over 15 years I have been making my photo albums with Albelli as a product to print my photo books. The main reasons why I stayed with Albelli all these years are:
Albelli is not the cheapest, but all the advantages made me stay... so far.
SAAL asked me to try their software. They have a lot of productions and multiple foto book options, I tested the Professional Line. In this article I review the complete process, from using the software to the product itself.
Preparations
For my Professional Line photo book, I choose:
- Acrylic cover
- Wood optics banding
- Highend-print mat print
- 28 pages
- No gift box. (I feel that 50 euros for such a gift box is quite pricey.)
Now, with these settings the price is not cheap if you are used to your local printing service. I guess for professional products you pay professional prices. So if you used to average quality (and pricing) and are oke with that then this may not be the product for you.
Lets continue: you can immediately start designing, which also feels like the logical next step.
You have 3 options for your design
1. Blank document
2. OneMinutePhoto Book (recommendation from Saal?)
3. AutoLayout
Honestly, these choices confuse me.
Let me explain. This is called the Professional Line, so I can't imagine that any professional would go for presets. I think as a Professional you always want to be in total control of the result. So therefore I'm going for option 1. Blank Document.
Creating the photo album
The software interface is similar like any photo album creating software, what is a good thing.
Left the photo navigation. On top the functions available, these differ based on the item selected. It provides all the functions you need to manage your item. At the bottom you navigate, smoothly, through the pages.
The right side of the screen deserves some more explanation
. This has 4 menu items:
- Article, you can edit the settings for your photo book
- Layers, it shows all the items on the page
- Cliparts, all kinds of images you can add to spice up your page
- Layouts, provides all kind of templates for item placeholders on the page
Placing a photo
This works pretty straight forward. You can drag an image onto the page or first place image placeholder called object box. All the standard functions are available. If anything rotating isn't subtle, and therefore can be difficult to align. One thing that did annoy me was resizing. After resizing the object box the image needed zooming in/out to see the complete picture again.
Placing text
Of course you can add text boxes to your photo album. However, I have mixed feelings about this function. All the basic functions are there so that is good. But it is rather basic. I have two complaints. First, the available fonts are limited and I did not find an option to add fonts. The software does not take your operating system fonts. The second complaint is about font size. It stops at 160. This is big, but not big enough in all cases. So this limits your creativity a bit.
Fill box
This is a nice function to add a rectangle shape. You can edit this in a lot of ways to suit your wishes. For instance you can use a gradient filling based on two colors evenly divided. That is also again a limitation, why not more PowerPoint like functionality here? What I miss with this function, and what is available for photo's is the mirror function.
Other functions
Frame mask, this easily changes the item from rectangular to the mask you use. There are a lot of options there. Not as much as with Albelli and not available for backgrounds (tip: use fill box as background)
Shadow, works smooth and as expected on items.
Background, the two pages you have open are together the background. You can not change backgrounds for the left and right page separately.
Order your photo album
Placing an order follows several logical steps and is simple and fast. Works fine!
The actual Photo Album
I didn't get any target date when the product would be the delivered or any signal that it was on its way. Exactly one week after placing my order I got my photo album delivered at home.
First impression after taking the well protected photo album out of the box:
Really nice, looks fancy
There was a note to take the foil out of the cover. This was a challenge; I did not see any foil and I thought the cover already looked nice. After struggling a bit, I did find a foil and took it off. Second impression: WOW. That glassy cover looks amazing. Specially with the picture I selected for my cover 🤗
The cover
The cover is really thick and heavy, and the woody band I choose looks fantastic. Nice that the back is completely the wooden style.
The paper
The paper used feels great and is thick, not sure what the weight is. Not as thick as Albelli, but not sure if that is a good or bad thing. But if you want thicker paper SAAL also offers the XT line.
The print
The print is brilliant, and finally a photo album where it does show if you shoot with a high-end phone camera or a real camera. Just beware of that, quality of the image will be reflected in the print. The phone photos don't look bad, actually they look good. It's just that the camera photo's look great.
Looking at details of the shades, gradients and other things I added to the album, the just look great. If anything with one masking on a photo it seemed a bit blurry, but maybe that was intended by the mask I selected.
Conclusion
Preparations: Easy and clear
Creating the album: All the functions you want, easily presented and they work
The photo album: Really high-end photo album, that indeed looks and feels professional
Summing this up, yes I do think it is a really really good offer that Saal has with their software and the product itself. I even consider on switching to Saal after all those years being loyal to Albelli. The reason is simpel, the result is better.
So why doubt? Well price vs purpose. If the purpose is to have a great looking photo album of your vacation. Albelli delivers a really good photo album for a more decent price (with discounts all the time). But if you want to show off to your family and friends with SAAL you really do, but it is going to cost you quite a bit more. So is it worth it? That is up to you.
At SAAL I would like to ask if I can try out the Photo Book XT line, as this is in the price range of Albelli and see who will come out as a winner there.
Happy to hear your thoughts on this review.
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