This is the second of a two-part article about YoPhoto’s photo book printing service. Previously I wrote about the authoring software and the ordering experience. Here I will go into more detail about the finished product.

I placed the order on Saturday 8th March. The dispatch notice arrived at lunchtime on Tuesday 11th and the book arrived on the next day. After waiting two weeks for some of the previous photo books it is refreshing to have this one in my hands less than three working days after placing the order.

Of course getting the book quickly is no good if it is of poor quality. So what is it like?

It arrives in a brown card sleeve, with glue so strong that you practically have to destroy it to get in. Or maybe I’m just clumsy. Either way everything inside was in perfect condition.

Immediately inside the sleeve is the book carefully wrapped in tissue paper. First impressions are good. The linen binding feels good and the “black bean” colour is deep and attractive. The only external indication of what is inside is the small, silver “yophoto” branding on the back.

Opening it up you find white paper, vellum and then the book proper. The photographs generally look good and most of the comments that I have made on the other books appy here too. The images are very good, but at a lower resolution than normal photographic prints. The colour — which has varied considerably more than most other variables — is muted but accurate. As with any hard copy, the images sometimes show the imperfections of the original in ways that you can’t really see on-screen. Of course this is hardly a criticism of the printing process.

Speaking of on-screen representations, it turns out that their editing application did a great job of rendering the finished product. The book arrived with no surprises which, is just as I like it.

My sense is that all the vendors must be using very similar technologies as it’s very difficult to distinguish between them simply in the quality of the pictures. And the good news here is that they’re all very good; most people would be happy the final results from any of the companies that I have tried.

Then there are the little extras. I like the vellum sheet that YoPhoto (and MyPublisher) places before the first page; I appreciate the tidy folding of the tissue paper — it shows a commendable attention to detail; and I prefer the way that they include the delivery charge in their prices; but none of these things are likely to push you towards one supplier above another.

Given that the finished books are very similar, the two things that I think matter are the ordering process and the delivery times. YoPhoto do well on both counts. Their delivery was the quickest of all those that I have tested — a full ten days ahead of the slowest — and the ordering process was helped by a powerful yet fairly simple to use application.

My only hesitation in using them again is the fact that they do not offer a Mac version of their application. But the vast majority of people who are stuck in the Microsoft world should certainly consider them next time they want a photo book printing.