Print and Album vendor

[eric_yu5]

<p>Hi, Everyone!<br>

I am still new to wedding photography, was wondering if you could share me with experience of finding photo album maker and photo print vendor. I generally provide only digital photo to my clients, but some of them suggest if I can provide photo album in hand, will help to save their time shopping around for prints and albums.<br>

Now I just moved to a new city, Houston TX, and work on marketing my business. I think a good printed portfolio and nice album will also help to close deals when I meet my clients. But I am not familiar with print and album making business. Don’t know where to find them, how to deal with them, and most importantly how much generally the price is for photographers vs. retail. So here I come to ask for help.<br>

What print shop do you usually use?<br>

What album vendor do you usually use?<br>

For those large prints up to 40x60 inches, where do you usually go to?<br>

How fast do they finish print /album?<br>

Do they offer discount to photographer/vendor? <br>

In term of profit margin and volume, what size of print you sell best? And what is the type of album you sell best?<br>

Thanks in advance….</p>

[aimee_pieters]

<p>Try H&H Color Lab at <a href="http://www.hhcolorlab.com">www.hhcolorlab.com</a><br>

They are an experienced ProLab that offers just about any service/product you'd ever want. They make beautiful albums and their customer service is top notch. CALL them and see what great customer service is like....-Aimee</p>

[silverdae]

<p>Burrell Colour Labs is great. It is a pro lab that offers prints, albums, and all kinds of extra add-on products. They offer full-service to self-service (you can have them help you with retouching, color ocrrection, etc, or just send them a file and they will print it). </p>

<p>I've also had a good experience with American Color Imaging. They offer prints on metal (something BCI) doesn't offer), so I've used them for that in the past. </p>

<p>Either place should have great customer service and be helpful as you make this transition. I think you'll find that offering prints and albums through a pro lab or vendor will be much more cost effective and have a higher quality than consumer grade products. </p>

<p>For albums, also look at Zook Books and Asuka Books. They service professionals, and the quality of each is pro quality.</p>

[aimee_pieters]

<p>H&H does everything mentioned above and it's all in one place. Certainly worth checking...-Aimee</p>

[sam_ellis]

<p>I use Smugmug which uses BayPhoto as their lab. I also use BayPhoto for my base albums and Zookbinders for my upgraded albums.<br>

The nice thing about Smugmug is that your online gallery is tied directly to the print lab, so it's all seamless. I can retouch images before they're printed or just send them straight to the lab and they ship to the customer. Smugmug doesn't offer 40x60, and I'm not sure if BayPhoto does or not.</p>

[jennifer_morisato]

<p>Hi Eric. The Digital Design Group can help, especially with getting you a set of albums to show your clients. Contact them at www.TheDigitalDesignGroup.com. Good luck getting established!</p>