Canada – The Writing Life of a Tadpole

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I’m considering going with metal prints in Canada to hang some photos

June 14 2020

I’ve seen the ads for so-called “metal prints” on lots of sites, and I’ve always thought, “Why?”. And then a woman on one of the astronomy groups showed what she’s doing with them — basically noting that they are “ultra thin”, she can use the adhesive hangers, get rounded corners, and they don’t stick out from the walls.

She’s hanging her astro photos in high traffic areas and they almost sit flush to the wall. Plus no frames to buy or put them in. Hmm…maybe that’s worth considering, see if I like them.

It’s the era of Covid, so everyone is advocating buying local, whereas for photo books, I’ve pretty much stuck with Shutterfly. The prices for these prints is not cheap, so there’s definitely going to be a quality factor bisecting the price factor. Let’s see what’s out there somewhere around the 8×10 size.

PosterJack.ca ~ $37

Like almost all online sites, their initial prices go one of two ways. Often, if you “join”, you get initial discounts. Which are “okay” level discounts, but not exceptional usually. 15-20% is the norm. But if you make an order, you start getting regular offers in your email, and Shutterfly often runs offers of 40-50% plus free shipping. Anything else seems like a markup as opposed to a smaller discount, but I digress.

PosterJack lists an 8×8 HD metal print at $40 (all prices will be in Cdn unless otherwise noted). And just by hanging out on the site for 5 minutes, it gave me a pop-up for 20% off. So $32. Like I said, not exactly cheap when a paper one through a place like Costco can get that down to a few dollars and some simple frames through Michaels go on sale regularly. Call it $15 and I’m being generous. An 8×8″ Classic White matte print will drop it to $27. They also have a Classic Silver, and with the discount, it would bring it down to about the same price as the Classic White’s existing discount, so $27.

Shipping looks like $10 now, and they’re 100% Canadian. Well, Torontonian, but close enough. 😉

BestCanvas.ca ~$25

They have a deal right now on 8×8″ for $10. Great price, and shipping would be $15 for the first item, free after that in the same order. They’re not Canadian, even though they have a Canadian domain, everything is shipped from the US. Worth a consideration.

Vistaprint.ca ~$22 (foam)

They actually don’t have metal prints, but they do have foam board. It too is light and would be fairly flush to the wall without needing a frame. Not exactly what I’m looking for, but the price is decent (11×17″ runs $20 marked down to $14). And about $8 for shipping.

Blacks.ca ~$40

I know, you’re thinking, “Black’s is still in business?”. Yes, not the old Black’s with stores in malls per se, but you can order online for processing. It lists the HD gloss options for $34.99 with some sort of “promo” to be applied at checkout. Free shipping if you spend over $50, and the discount looks like up to 25%, so would likely cost you two prints to get it. But it is all Canadian. About $13 for shipping.

Canvasndecor.ca ~ $41

They have two options — HD Gloss and Brushed Aluminum. The woman who inspired me to consider this noted that on her prints, particularly her astrophotography prints, she finds anything except the gloss tends to dampen the colours too much, almost washing them out. And she doesn’t find too much “shine” on the gloss since they sit flush.

They’re based in London, Ontario, and so shipping is standard ground shipping costs from there. A 8×10″ portrait starts at $28.99, but that is without any discounts applied. With the order, you can get a free 8×8″ extra metal print though, so that’s attractive. Often places like Shutterfly will include a free option where they’ll print a new product, you pay the shipping, and you get to try it out with obviously the company hoping you’ll buy more in the future. The front page suggests they have free metal prints which LOOKED like a similar offer, but no, it’s as an add-on to an order. Probably about $13 for shipping.

PhotobookCanada.ca ~$25-$37 (cheaper with a membership)

PBC is a lot closer to the standard offerings when ordering from pure photo sites. Their list price for an 8×8″ is a whopping $54.99, but oh look, there’s a 45% off coupon to bring it down to $30, everyone else’s standard price. And you can get another 10% off if you’re a special member i.e down to about $25 but you also get free shipping (their special memberships are like Amazon Prime memberships). And if you act now, operators are standing by, for a limited time blah blah blah. Not quite, but it feels like that using some of these sites. Of course, if I was planning to print a whole bunch of photos, free shipping is a nice perk to offset the membership upgrade. Otherwise, an 8×8″ print is about $12-13 to ship (standard).

However, as an aside, one of the benefits of going with a true photo printing site is that they know you may have something in mind other than a standard 1 print/1 image layout. So PBC has a BUNCH of layouts, all designed to help you do layouts quickly and easily. So “gifts for Mom” are an obvious popular choice, and they have layouts for 2-5 prints that can be arranged in a perfectly aligned collage with some writing over it saluting Moms. Or just nice layouts without any text.

CanvasChamp.ca ~$30

An 8×8″ is $17.72, which seems easy enough, and then your world explodes. They have options for single prints, wall displays, collages, split designs, mosaics, lyrics, digital painting, something called a bus roll, or putting quotes on metal.

The single print is what you expect. Wall displays? They have 24 different layouts so you can choose 3-10 pieces that after printing will all align properly into say a rectangle on your wall and look like it is perfectly designed to do that. Because it is. Not cheap obviously, printing say 10 separate metal prints, but the only place I’ve seen it as an option.

The photo collages are just layouts for multiple images in the same print but they have decent options. Split metal are designed as panels that hang in parallel (quite common) but goes way beyond that with 2-8 layouts that come a lot closer to the “wall display” layouts, but slightly different, and generally designed for a single image shared over all the pieces.The photo mosaic also works with a single image and has up to 21 “tiles” in various layouts (3×7, 4×5, etc.).

For the lyrics on metal, it is touted mostly as a “first year anniversary” gift (why? I don’t know, first year is “paper” but sure). The examples are some sort of sheet music default or a separate image (like a wedding photo) and then printing the lyrics to the first dance song over top. Awwww…okay, it’s not a completely stupid idea, and if you’re a guy looking for a “sweet” gift, sure.

Digital painting was a weird title, and what it actually does is offer you a bunch of standard filters you see in a lot of picture processing apps. You can take a “real” photo and make it an oil painting; or apply a charcoal filter to it to make it look like a charcoal drawing; or some sort of “knife” drawing; or a comic character. Now, just to be clear, YOU aren’t doing it, they are. You submit the photo, they work their techno magic and creativity. It’s a customized work of art, presumably. Are they likely using the same techniques of PhotoShop? You make the call!

I had no idea what a “bus roll” is, and it wasn’t until I saw the templates that I saw what they mean. On old buses, there literally was a bunch of destinations printed one above the other — so the driver would “roll” through the list changing the sign. Most of that has gone digital now, of course. This is similar, but the default is basically five lines of text, fully justified, above each other. Often you see this with signs that people have in bars, family rooms. “Excuse the mess, my children are making memories” or their template “This family runs on LOVE, laughter, and strong coffee”. For the first one, memories is almost always the last line and it’s the largest font going the full width of the image; for the second, LOVE is the word that stands out. Often the image has slightly different fonts, not just sizes, or some words are italicized. Some are even custom tweaked within a line. This isn’t that fancy for the default, but some of the templates are decent and add a LOT more options / lines to work with. Cool options. I have no idea what I’d use it for, but a cool option. Maybe a list of the planets with pictures of them around it? I could see someone using it to make a list of all of someone’s grandchildren.

The last option, quotes on metal, is pretty straightforward. It takes the previous “limitations” and throws them out the window. You upload a background image, pick your size, enter text, change fonts, etc. I was actually quite disappointed with it because there are no sample templates. Such an obvious place where people could benefit from some assistance in design. I know, I have done a lot of quote memes, and finding the right format / layout can be challenging if you want the combo to have impact.

So I said it was the last option, but I was wrong. While they don’t list it on the first page of metal prints, when you’re in the tool, you also get a WORD ART option. If you don’t remember what those are, it’s where you insert a whole bunch of words and the computer generates a picture with those words turned every which way and adjusted for size so that when you’re done, it looks like a jumble. Often the words are all about a single theme, and you put that theme in much bigger prose. For the “image”, it is usually a simple shape. The tool here offers butterflies, diamonds, hearts, hexagons, home symbol, pentagon or round. It’s not the most sophisticated tool, but it will handle about 10 lines up to 20 characterr each line.

I have little use for most of the options, but nice to know they exist. Assume $13 or so for shipping on a basic order.

PrintPartner.ca ~ $41-$52

An 8×8″ runs $39 and the page says “If you order, we’ll give you 30% off next time”, standard practice. So let’s call it $28 for future orders. They have matte or gloss. Nice, clean, simple. Standard shipping costs.

PhotoHop.ca – $58

OMG, there’s a photo printing place that has a frog as a logo? And it’s Canadian. As a PolyWogg, I have to take that as a sign, right?????

They have brushed or white aluminum (as well as plexiglass, interesting). Put in all my options, $40. $18 for shipping. Ouch. That is one expensive frog theme.

Henry’s.ca – $?

I saw that they had ordering options, but it isn’t something I would normally choose with Henry’s. Hardware yes, beyond that? Not sure. Their price list was a bit odd. They listed aluminum “panels” and metallic paper. Hmm.

Loblaws.ca – $?

Loblaws has a photo processing studio, as does places like Shoppers Drug Mart (and shocker, even before Loblaws bought SDM, it was the SAME studio company behind the scenes). And they’re all closed for COVID apparently. Odd. Even for shipping and pickups?

Shutterfly.com ~ $49

I already mentioned that I use Shutterfly for my photobooks, and so I’m eligible for a range of regular promo codes. A friend who uses them won’t even consider ordering unless it’s 50% off, which is what she considers their REAL normal price. I’m not QUITE that harsh, but I tend to agree.

As I mentioned with PhotoBook Canada, going with a real photo site explodes the options. If I click on a simple 8″x10″, there are 51 different layouts I can choose from there, with multiple photos or multiple prints arranged on a wall to fit together. If I go with Glossy, it starts at $65 with an “up to” 40% code down to $48.74. Umm, yeah, probably no. 40% would drop it to $39, and even then…but it has free shipping right now, and it is good quality. Still no. Maybe if they have a metal print sale. They’ve eliminated brushed aluminum from their options right now too. Interesting.

Costco.ca ~$29

I saved Costco for last because I’m likely to go with them. Most of the printing places aren’t going to vary widely in their metallic printing (at least according to some more knowledgeable reviews online), I don’t have big needs, and one of the huge costs is shipping. But I can pick up CostCo products locally. And I’m already a paid member. Not quite a fair comparison, I know.

Their smallest size is 11×14″, a bit bigger potentially than I might want as a default, but even then, the price is only $29. Yeah, basically the same printing price as most of the other places but for a larger print and no shipping cost to add on.

They have 9 different layouts, including collages and some with some extra formatting over top (although usually you can remove that at the design stage).

It’s not as fancy as some of the other options, but it looks decent enough at an okay price, and free shipping. I need to pick a couple of astro photos to work with, and then I might try a couple of the above sites. Stay tuned!

Open Access – Global Open Access Portal and Canada

May 27 2018

Continuing down the Open Access rabbithole, I found the UNESCO-led site, the Global Open Access Portal. You can even narrow it down to just Canadian access sites. Which I did. And then went further down the rabbit hole with some of the following highlights:

Not just a rabbit hole, a full-size warren!

#50by50 #29 – Make a photobook – Update

May 16 2018

A little over three weeks ago, I blogged about doing a Year-in-Review book on Shutterfly and submitting, then waiting. The book arrived, and as with a previous book by them, there are some parts that underwhelm. There are a few places where I feel like the printer colour ran a bit. Not enough in this case to send it back (I had the previous one reprinted), just enough to mildly notice.

I was also looking to do a Trip Book for the family trip to B.C. back in 2010. These ones are similar in size to the Year in Review ones, I like the 8.5×11 inches size in landscape mode, but they didn’t have to be identical. And after checking out a bunch of sites, I decided at the end of the post to go with one of Shoppers / Loblaws / Uniprix (they have the same interface software).

Except then I didn’t. I tried loading Costco, just to try it, and this time it worked. Perfectly fine. It doesn’t have all the bells and whistles of Shutterfly, far fewer layouts and themes, or stickers, but still pretty solid. It was however a lot easier to see the full suite of what was available all at once than it is in Shutterfly, where the full list can quickly overwhelm you (20000 backgrounds????).

It is a bit harder to compare the books. The travel book is thinner than the Year ones, but overall, it turned out pretty well. I even found some of it simpler. I’m letting my wife figure out if there is a difference in quality before I do more. The timing with Costco is certainly far more controllable — printed in Canada, picked up in Canada, etc. I got it way faster than the Shutterfly book, and no printing glitches either. But I’d be hard pressed to say the quality of the covers is as solid. Nice, but not quite as good. I just don’t think I care about the difference enough to stay with Shutterfly. However, Shutterfly has some sweet deals regularly, and I don’t think Costco does. Not that I’ve seen so far, anyway.

But I’m happy with the Costco book, which is the bottom line.

#50by50 #29 – Make a photobook

April 26 2018

I like using our digital photos for different things — the website, a digital photo frame, some prints around the office, custom calendars, etc. And annual photobooks — a Year-In-Review style that goes month-by-month. Except I’m a bit behind on them, having only completed three or so of the last 13 years worth of organized digital photos that are in my digital gallery. So when I added “Make a Photobook” to my #50by50 list, it wasn’t a specific commitment like “Make a photobook of (someone’s) wedding” or “Make a photobook of a specific trip or year”, it was “knock one off the long list of photobooks you want to do” i.e. get back into making them.

Starting with a Year-In-Review book

Just over two years ago, I took a look at several websites that offer do-it-yourself photobooks, and I gave a bunch a try. Some of them failed for software limitations, others for their variable quality. I pretty much ended up going strictly with Shutterfly in the end. For my new YIR book, I thought I might as well start with Shutterfly again.

Shutterfly is a solid site overall, with all the basics plus some bells and whistles. They have regular coupon deals, established history, and I can reuse/copy old projects to incrementally improve each year while keeping some basic consistency. And lots of extra product possibilities like mousepads, notepads, notebooks, magnets, mugs, etc. I re-familiarized myself with the site and didn’t see any major changes in the functionality of the web design in the last two years, still no downloadable software to do it and then upload as one piece but rather still just all online, and the default templates for “years in review” are still not particularly attractive (only two main defaults from which to choose). Still, a solid choice. There are e-share options too, but I’m not particularly attracted to them nor do I need the option since I have my own photo gallery site with more content than would go in the books.

I bit the bullet. I put together a year in review (or actually a partial year in review) for the second half of 2010. In so doing though, I wanted to revisit the basic design of their template and see if I could create a new master template that I could reuse for future YIRs. Some of it was quite simple — adding background colours, putting in the months of the year, making sure every month has at least four pages to start with, etc. It took me most of a day to put the template in some form that I could call a “master” draft to build from for the future, but I only have to do it once and it probably took me longer as I was coming back “new” to the software/website. I then copied it over to a new project for a backup. And then used that to create “2010 – Book 2”.

Choosing the photos is a bit more of an iterative process than one might think. Here’s my general work-flow:

a. I copy all the photos from Andrea’s phone, the compact point-and-shoot camera, my phone, my tablet (rare), and the DSLR, plus any that others happened to send us of shared events into a set of photos by month;

b. I then sort them into days and events;

c. I pick the best ones for uploading, sending everything else into sub-folders called “extras”, keeping about one for every 2-3 that go in the extras folder (I don’t delete photos unless they’re blurry or technically wrong for some other eason…I’ve gone back too many times to a photo that was perhaps good for everyone, but in looking at the extras, I find one that is GREAT for a specific person, allowing me to crop it to just them);

d. For a Photobook, I start with the web choices, and weed it down to a smaller list of possibles, and then let Andrea weed even further.

I uploaded the weeded set to Shutterfly and the template worked almost perfectly. A couple of little tweaks here and there, but not enough to warrant changing the master, more tweaks for colouring with the photos I was laying out in the template. I added some prose, chose some photos for the covers and inside page, and bam! I submitted the book with a 50% off coupon. Sweet.

Now I just have to wait.

Considering a Trip Book

I’m willing to experiment with other sites, just to try them out, and I’m going with some trips as the theme. But which one to try?

a. MixBook

Last time I tried Mixbook, the software was a bit unwieldy. This time, I found 11 templates for “Year in Review” style books. The Minimalist style was a bit black and white, but cute; Linen / Vintage / Colourful YIR / A Year to Remember / Year in Review / My Year Magazine / Graduation Year in Review / Watercolour Year in Review are all more thematic or event-driven than I would like. The one called Family Yearbook would be an awesome style for people with multiple kids and I could see easy ways to adapt it. However, the Kraft Year in Review is outright awesome. Simple chronological design, exactly what I am looking for in YIR-style without weird or wonky titles for each month. My only complaint is it is a bit drab … most of the layouts could benefit from a bit more colour per page. The software seemed to work okay, and as with most, you do a lot better with everything pre-chosen before you start. Definitely a viable option, and an improvement over previous attempts.

b. Costco

Since the last time I tried, CostCo has updated their software and their book builder looks a little better, albeit somewhat slow to get it to click over to the “ready” stage. Or more specifically, it goes off to “prepare” the book for editing and never returns. Just sits and “spins” that it is doing something and never finishes. Maybe it doesn’t like Firefox, maybe the site is busy, I don’t know. Pass.

c. Shoppers Drug Mart

The software seems better this time than last, and I was able to navigate through a few choices to get to a reasonable option for a book. I chose their one and only Year in Review template, and it isn’t bad. The overall layout and control options are much more basic than other sites, but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing — some of the others are a bit overkill. Definitely a viable option I might consider.

d. Loblaws

If you go to the Loblaws site, you won’t find their photo book options because their photo service is separate — aka Photolab.ca. And it looks surprisingly familiar. Like with my previous review, Loblaws has the exact same software as Shoppers Drug Mart for their site, it just has a different name. But functionality, templates, etc are the same. So again, a viable option.

e. Uniprix

I wasn’t overly impressed the last time I tried the UniPrix site, but a friend suggested I give it another try, as he had good luck with it. So I gave it a go. Like SDM and Loblaws, it has some basic options, nothing extravagant. And while the opening interface is different, the final operations are almost identical for the software with Loblaws and SDM. A few differences, for sure, but functionally the same.

f. Blurb

PhotoBookGirl is an online reviewer of photobook designs, and she has a bunch of reviews of different photo sites (mainly in the U.S.), so I wanted to give a few of them a try too. Blurb was up first. Blurb has some amazing options to upload a PDF and to sell things onwards into Amazon, but that’s not my focus. When Blurb Bookify starts, you get to the editing options pretty quick but that’s because the main options of other sites — draft templates, layouts, etc. — are all missing. Pass.

g. Bookemon

Like Blurb, it has options to create a book for sale — including kids books, etc. But the templates that come with it, and the basic interface are a bit too menu driven and mechanical than designed to populate things for you. Pass.

h. Clark Color Labs

The software for CCL is pretty clean. I set up an account easily, uploaded some photos pretty fast, and wandered through their templates. I’m looking for Year In Review designs, and while there weren’t many (only 3), they were all quite vibrant in colour. A very different look and feel to the template than Shutterfly or even Mixbook. The only challenge was that some of the months were set for a single page, others were spread over two, with no rhyme or reason. Plus there didn’t seem to be a reason why in some months they chose to put the name of the month on the page and others just a symbol (St. Patrick’s Day images for March, for example). Where they make up for some of it though is in their easy to access clipart. On a lot of sites, it is hard to find good clip art to add to the layout, but they make it pretty easy, and it was easy to add the months of the year for example or change a background. Overall a pretty simple and direct option. I have no idea if the quality out the other end is any good, but it’s a pretty nice site.

i. Picaboo

The site has some power, no doubt, and if you want to start from a very minimalist book layout, it’s a great choice. There are only five main themes, variations on “white”, but no choice between a year in revew or a trip or graduation. You can add all that, but you start with a blank template. Not a problem, but why would I want to do all that extra work unless I was starting with a very unique project? Pass.

j. Snapfish

Upfront, Snapfish has some great opening choices in sizes. I’m mainly interested in the landscape 8 x 11 books, but there were quite a few other choices too. When I chose YIR, just because it is an easy way to decide if it’s viable or not, eight sample templates came up. Most of them are comparable to the Shutterfly and Mixbook options, so nothing to really sell me there. Clicking on “Travel” pulled up another 12 options. One of them was called Road Trip (which a lot of my trips are), and pre-organized around Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, etc. So a viable option again.

So that gives me a full dozen options, including the original Shutterfly.

I’ve passed on: Costco, Blurb, Bookemon, and Picaboo;
I’m considering: Mixbook, Shoppers/Loblaws/Uniprix, Clark Color Labs, and Snapfish.

However, there is one small feature I like about the Shoppers / Loblaws / Uniprix option. I can print it and pick it up. No shipping required. And while I can’t guarantee the quality until I try it, it’s also not likely being shipped off to the lowest common producer elsewhere. There is a bit of local production involved. I hope at least. So I’ll try one of those three first.

I’ll see how it goes and update later. In the meantime, I’m waiting for my YIR book for 2010.

Trip to Newfoundland

March 24 2018

I’ve been to Newfoundland three times in my life…once for an APEC meeting (1997), once for some HR recruitment meetings, and once for a larger vacation with my family. Back in ’07, it was the HR recruitment meetings, my second trip to the province. I was participating in some broader recruitment, and I volunteered to be the one to go to St. John’s in November. Andrea joined me for the short trip (free hotel room for her!), and we added a couple of days of vacation to the end. With only two days, we didn’t go too far from St. John’s.

We were staying at a nice hotel near the one end of the downtown, with a view of the harbour and Signal Hill in the distance.

The reverse view from Signal Hill is kind of cool too.

Of course, like all good little tourists, we had to go Cape Spear.

We then spent the rest of the day driving around the area south of Cape Spear.

On the second day, we headed north towards Bay de Verde, and then wrapped down around the peninsula towards Dildo.

We were driving a Pontiac Grand Am or Grand Prix rental, and I decided to go off-roading so-to-speak. Somewhere around Grate’s Cove at the northern tip, there was a road on our map showing a connection to Daniel’s Cove, etc. Basically, we wouldn’t have to backtrack and take the same main highway we had gone up to get there. So we followed the map. And yes, I do mean a paper map. The road started fine, a little dirt road, no big deal. About half-way to Daniel’s Cove, it disintegrated into an access road. A little bit further along, and it started to become an ATV trail. We kept joking it was the type of story that would be mocked for years about those damn people from away who stupidly took a rental car down a rut with no place to turn around, but it was nervous joking. We made it fine, in the end, but it was a trifle nerve-wrackng. Particularly when we came to a very large puddle with NO idea how deep it was. Stupid tourists.

When we finished our little tour, and we did the proper dinner at a fish and chip diner in western St. John’s, we agreed it was merely enough to whet our appetite. We definitely wanted to see more of the province.

The Writing Life of a Tadpole

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