A while ago, friend of mine James who works in a marketing firm sent me an e-mail.
A client of his recently launched a brand new product and he’s eager to get the online community to do a review of it. It’s called Pixart Photobooks, a product started by Kuala Lumpur-based company Pixart Sdn Bhd.
It is basically an online photo-printing service that transforms your digital photos from soft copies to professionally-made hardbound photobooks. I think it’s a pretty nifty idea, because somewhere in the transition from film to digital cameras, we all lost that familiar feeling of holding onto a physical copy of a photo album.
Now, if you’re anything like me, you take literally THOUSANDS of digital photos every month. Back in those days of film-and-prints (yea, like during The Stone Age liddat), I can easily torture anyone who visits my house on Chinese New Year with albums after albums of my latest travel adventure. But nowadays with my photos on computer, I cannot do it anymore!
Pixart is set to make my photo-torture dream come true again.
Photobooks are a big thing in the US, with big players like Flickr, Kodak, Viovio and hundreds more all offering similar services. The trend has (unfortunately) yet to catch on in this part of the world. And justifiably so, because once you factor in shipping time and cost, your photobooks becomes an overpriced piece of old news by the time it arrived at your doorstep.
And that’s the benefit of having Pixart located in the Asia-Pacific region. It’s cheap and it’s quick, just like a bowl of Kuching kolo mee!
It all sounds fine and dandy. Pixart uses their proprietary Photostylist software to edit and organise your Photobook before you send it for printing. It comes with a variety of “themes” and tools to get you started. All you gotta know is how to drag & drop, double-click and type in your captions.
The software is so easy to use, even my pet dog can create a photobook for himself.
Therein also lies my qualms with the service. Photostylist can be quite sluggish at times even on a high-performance rig like mine. For a software that deals with large numbers of high-resolution photos, I reckon they could do a lot better.
RM89 for 20 pages of A4-size printings is reasonable but a little steep for most. Then again, Pixart is the first in Malaysia and one of the few in the region to offer this service. You pay for the speed and quality of your product.
Anyway, once you filled up your 20 odd glossy pages and submitted your credit card details, all you gotta do is wait for about 3 days for your very own photobook to be couriered right to your doorsteps. It’s convenient!
Pixart may be a little rough around the edges and I still see room of improvement, but you gotta admit that it’s a novel idea worth trying out.
Photobooks are great for preserving life’s precious little memories. Make your coffee table book featuring the growing up of your kids, your convocation, wedding anniversaries, scandals, or maybe the gigs of your band. The possibilities are endless. And with Christmas around the corner, they make excellent personalised gifts for your loved ones too!
I watched The Fog.
Don’t watch The Fog.
It fogging sucks.
Hey dude, still have the pink curtain…no wonder the last post 🙂
Cool! only a bit too ex for me.
I like this idea. But more and more people are switching to user-friendly editing software like PhotoShop and Picasa to make photo collages as well. They can just print it out at their nearest photo printing shop and after binding it.. tadaa!
But I guess the winning edge Pixart has is its nice designs for its Photobooks.. and home delivery 🙂
nice, but i don’t have the ca$h. pity me.
ew. shameless adverts. we dont come here to see these adverts which are constantly bombarding our senses.
and for C’s sake, please state it as adverts if u really wanna advertise it so people can skip it if they want to.
i know. u are not required to write as what people want to see but advertising in such a way is just a turn off. Thanks.
You’re so helpful to help your friend – James’s client to advertist and share about Pixart!!! 😛
c, no such thing as a free lunch.
It’s nice where you only pick and design your photos, then they get evything done for you. I like the idea but I saw somewhere, you need to have that particular software to use it…
its cool 🙂 its like apple’s iphoto books. Now at least we can get something like it locally.
kenny, do you know where is huai bin?. his blog site has not been accessible since last week.
wah! student like me how? no credit card leh…
Boo hoo…I’m on Mac. But it looks pretty interesting and am tempted to try…will probably have to be extra nice to my hubby to borrow his PC! =))
Kenny.. so nice hoh free advetisement on your blog… or did i assume wrong… how much did james owe ya for the advertisement??
yeah i agree.. there seems to be a future for the photo book thingy… its still new.. and a little too expensive..
that bowl of kolo mee definitely turns on my appetite, it’s been 7 years since I had a good bowl of kolo mee!!!!!
is that kolomee? arghhhh… MUST.GO.BACK!
With digital photos, it is a shear waste to get them printed and pass around. They reside in your hard disk to be shown as slides and made into VCD/DVD for presentation and as gifts.
I think it makes an excellent present for your loved one – your mum, dad, gf… Pricey, but, priceless.
I’m agree with “mwt” and I dunno about you guys, but my definition of digital is paperless. Unless I want it to stick on somewhere. Green peace, ;P
So will this contest be:
Complete the following in not more than 20 words
“Kenny’s balls are as big as….” ?
The contest prize will be a friendly date to a local Gay Bar, so that we can share memories through our picutre books!
Too many people with digicams think that they can safely store their shots in digital forever. In fact, some never even bother to transfer it out to their PC from the camera, much less burn a CD or DVD. The truth is, hard disks can break down all too easily, and plastic discs are fragile. The most long lasting media for pictures is still laminated paper. At the very least, you don’t lose a thousand of them in one go, as would be the case if all of it was stored on your PC.
well, if u want to take the personalisation a step further, u can try to take up scrapbooking and design an album yourself instead of having such default layouts. and if you find scrapbooking expensive and troublesome, you can always try digital scrapbooking. you can do it as long as you have adobe photoshop.
hee hee… sorry to advertising for scrapbooking here. u can try visiting http://www.thescrappersloft.com for more info about scrapbooking if anyone here is interested. 😀
nicely done advertorial! hope to see more good stuff around.
buddy,
I can’t believe pink curtains…Too feminine for me. No wonder doberman is dizzy and misoriented.
a great idea, but not worthwhile, personally
it’s cumbersome to upload the photos separately. I have all my photos in flickr, it would be good to have it printed from flickr directly. Pixart should work together with flickr!
“Kenny’s balls are as big as….” ?
DURIANBUTANS!
worth trying………….
Huh?
if i’m not wrong, tmnet itself do offer such kind of service too.. but i duno the detail though..
well, i do agree that we cant buy it without a credit card.. i do hope they offer other payment methods such as maybank services or etc..
they definitely have some improvement to make.. The SW is not really WYSIWYG.
It is not so expensive actually.
If u are to buy the real good glossy paper (water proof print), dye fast coating for long life printout and colors that dont fade especially for photo printing, it cost a bomb as well.
But then not sure what level of glossy paper pixart use.
Pixart – Photobooks for Your Family and Friends!
What they are basically doing is providing customised photobooks to order, you provide the pictures and some money, they give you a coffee table style book to keep!
Review: Pixart Photo Books
In December 2005, Pixart Sdn. Bhd. launched the first Photo Book service in Malaysia. It lets you creating your own personalized photo book at home.
…
Do the math. Go to a photo lab and get 10 8Rs printed. The good labs charge RM9 per print. 10 pieces x RM9 = RM90. Add a good album cover (RM50) and you have to ask where they are cutting corners. A friend of mine said the print quality is NOT the same as a photolab. I haven’t seen but got to ask what’s he using? An inkjet?
BTW iPhoto in the Mac can do the same job 😉
Just got a coffee table book done by this company. With the price I paid and the stuff I get, it is quite bad! Very dissapointed! Event photos were shot by pro, but quality of the print and paper is not as good as it is claimed on their web. Total dissapointment.
Is there a overview of such kind of service?
guys, try out photobook malaysia! www . photobook . com . my
i have printed with them, their papers and print quality is superb.
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