Nearly every year I ask the same question -- does anyone have any experience with printing high quality large format (11"x14") photo books? I'm working on a project for a client - ~ 100 pages and quantity ~100. I'm currently considering Pikto. Any suggestions / experience would be greatly appreciated!
I won a photo album from KissBooks in a raffle.
https://www.kiss.us/They serve mainly the wedding market, but I made a "find art" photo book for myself. The book itself is beautiful. Like a quality hard cover published photography book.
The prints inside are not offset or inkjet, but photo chemical prints on Fuji Crystal Archive paper. The prints are glued back to back and bound to create the book. I think they use the photographic paper as all the prints are folded in half and the photo paper handles the fold/crease rather well. I would guess that coated inkjet paper will start to flake if you fold it like this. Also the photo/chemical prints are more hands friendly and durable. Not quite the color gamut of fine inkjet prints, but overall very nice. Each page opens to a flat spread with no bulge in the middle. Workmanship is perfection.
They require sRGB jpegs to print from, and I found the color accuracy very good. They supplied me with an output .icc profile for soft proofing.
All their books are square, but you can print across the middle crease if you don't mind the interruption of the image. I found it played quite nice, but I designed my layout with the crease in mind. The largest book is 12"x12".
My book is 26 spreads, and even though I chose the "thin" option, it's still quite heavy. 100 spreads, might be a bit much, but 50 spreads with photos facing each other would work.
Limitations aside, these are "original" photographic prints in a book. I am very pleased.
