Artifact Uprising Review | Hardcover Photo Book

When I discovered Artifact Uprising, I knew I wanted to make my next book with them. They make impressive custom photo books as well as other photography products. My friend Keanu actually recommended it to a while back when they had first started but I never had a project decent enough to use them. So after shooting Lauren & Alex's wedding, I finally had an opportunity to make a beautiful photo book with some amazing photos.

This is actually a surprise present for the couple and I'm so excited for them to see it - I'm giving it to them tonight!

Designing the book took a day or two to fill the book with 200 pages worth of photos (the maximum amount of pages you can design is 210). You design right in your browser using their website. It's not the most difficult thing to do but it does require patience, especially when you begin using more photos. There aren't too many templates to use and if you're adding images without it, there isn't a grid that you can use to position photos accurately (I just aligned photos next to pages with templates as reference for placing individual photos) 

Once you're finished, you just order the book and it's on its way. What's great is that you can reorder the same projects at a future time if you'd like. And the turn around time is really fast for a custom book. I finished designing the book on 6/30 and ordered it that day. It arrived 9 days later with two-day shipping on 7/9. EVEN WITH THE HOLIDAY WEEKEND. Impressive.

Before you start designing though, you have decide how big you want the book to be and what dust jacket and fabric color options you want. You're given plenty of choices for this. I've never seen a partial dust jacket before but it's the classiest thing about the photo book. The fabric provides a good tactile feel to the book as well - I'm really excited to get books in all the available colors and sizes one day.

If you haven't noticed already, the books produced by Artifact Uprising have an aesthetic that's very minimalist and fine-art. I really appreciate their lack of branding on their books - it's a sign of confidence when a company can let the quality of their products speak for themselves. As such, the templates and designs available seem very minimal as well. There's a lot of white space and although you can add text to your pages, for a fine art photography book, you really would want to keep that to a minimum.

You really have to feel the book in your hand to understand how great the quality really is. First of the paper they use is a Mohawk PC white with a matte finish and is 100% recycled. I've never known paper to feel so good. The pages have a nice thickness to it and the colors are really true to what you see on your computer monitor.

The print quality is very high - although you can see the dot printing and some magenta colored fringing around black text. I found that if you had zoomed in on a picture during editing, it won't turn out as sharp in the book. I'll know better to crop my photos before hand next time.

Artifact Uprising just introduced a new product - the Lay-Flat Photo Book. Like the day that this book shipped. Ugh. I would have considered ordering a Lay-Flat book - you just don't get as many pages. I may just stick with the traditional hardcover book for my wedding photos. But I'm definitely going to order a Lay-Flat book today to review and have for my own.

What I hope they do soon is offer the same foil lettering for the cover and spine in the Hardcover books as they do for the Lay-Flat books. That pink fabric and copper foil looks pretty awesome. I'm still considering whether or not to use it for any portfolio shoots but I'm definitely going to use it for personal albums.

Artifact Uprising is a great company. They really understand photographers and their work as art. They've created this great service that provides high quality products and I'm really excited to start using them for future projects. 

Even if they aren't wedding photos, if you have memorable photos you should put them in an album! I love being able to carry around a book or a magazine and showing off photos that way.

I swear I'm going to have a huge collection of photo books from Artifact Uprising and it's going to be great. 

EDIT:

Being the awesome company that they are, Artifact Uprising took the time to read my blog and responded to some of the things I pointed out:

• "We use a style of printing called press-printing. This is different from a traditional photographic print in that it is a series of tiny dots which may make the photo appear less sharp than a traditional photographic print. This is due to the chemicals used in producing a photographic print -- it is highly damaging to the environment, so we opted this method instead. We are really trying to be good stewards and produce an awesome product too.." Despite this, I think they've achieved a good balance of quality and eco-friendliness.

• "To avoid images looking blurry or showing visible dots, we recommend saving all of your images at least at 300DPI. In addition, if you zoom in on a photo within the editor, it is decreasing the DPI which could result in a more spotty print." So my assumptions were true regarding photo zooming in the editor - we'll just have to edit the photo before uploading into the template. A little more work but that's okay.

Again, I'm very impressed not only by the amazing quality of their products but the dedication and friendliness of their staff, known lovingly as the community team. I encourage any of you to check them out and support them!