This ArtsCow review comes at a good time, as this printer is becoming more and more well-known for their inexpensive books that allow you to order books with more than 80 pages for a very reasonable price.

Creating a Photo Book

One function I like at Artscow is the ability to copy another book. If you like a book in the ArtsCow gallery there is a function to "Create a book like this". This is limited to frames, backgrounds and elements. If you have created your own scrap pages, other members are not able to copy that book, but will go to a blank book when they press the button.

Also offered are Scrapbook Kits. Called "Create your own designer kit", there are almost 400 scrapbook pages to choose from. Some are free and others can be purchased. The price range of the Kits is 49 cents to $1.49.

Artscow is very scrapbooker oriented in general. It is very easy to use a JPG as a background, and the page designs are very flexible to re-arrange. You can even layer images. Most of the kits are created by scrapbookers, and there is a kit for almost any theme you could imagine.

To read more about people's experiences with Artscow's actualy photo books, read the user Artscow Reviews at the bottom of this page.

PhotoBook Covers and Pages

The cover layout lets you put text on the spine of the book which is starting to become the norm for custom cover books. You can also pay a rather high fee to remove the ArtsCow logo from the book if you choose to do so ($5 for the 12x12 book and $2 for the 8x8 book).

Shipping fees range from $7.99 each for an 8x8 (20-30 pages) to $11.99 each for an 8x8 (39-100 pages) and as high as $19.95 each for the larger 12x12 books. Shipping time is about 8-14 business days.

ArtsCow Photo Book Software Review

In order to upload and use their photo book software, you will also need to download a program from Microsoft called Silverlight 2.0. It is a small download and doesn't take long.

ArtsCow boasts a multi-file uploader, which means you don't have to upload pictures one at a time. The uploader is easy to use and does upload the pictures faster. At the end of the upload, your main option is to purchase prints of the entire album. It is not real easy to find the navigation if you would rather work on a project you have already started or wish to start a book.

Client Designer Issues. The "Client Designer" is not very easy to use. It is not difficult to understand, just very clunky and time consuming. If you want to add a layout to a page while you have been looking at your pictures you will close out of your album and go into several choices of layouts. Once you choose how many pictures you want on the page you will then go back to albums, open the album you were using, scroll to find the picture you were on. It does not sound that bad if you do it once, but I was doing it over and over while designing the book.

Other difficulties I encountered were:

You can only see one or two of your pictures at a time. They are thumbnail-sized, but it is hard to remember what pictures you have in which album and then spend all the time scrolling to see which pictures are in the album.

Having one image on the cover is problematic if you want to resize it. If the photo is resized it is no longer centered on the page. There is an option to center the picture within a photo frame, but not to move the photo frame layout so the picture is centered on the page.

There is really no such thing as a 20 page book. If you try to order a 20-page book there will be 3 blank white pages included at the end. You can use these pages, but it seemed to increase the price more than what it says it will.

Help and Customer Service at ArtsCow

Artscow provides no help from within the Client Designer. When the Client Designer load you get 9 different tips, but once you click away from the tips you no longer see them. There is no other form of help from within the Designer.

They do have a large customer service department, though, with a contact form (they promise a quick response) as well as a 1-800 number and international customer service phone number.

ArtsCow Photo Book Options and Specifications

Paper Weight	157 gsm premium quality
Max. # of Pages	100
Mac Compatible?	Yes

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Reviewed: August 18, 2010

Comparative Photo Book Software Review

Background Themes	31 different themes
Layout Variety	Too many to count
JPG as a Background	Yes
Digi-Scrapbooking Friendly	Yes
In-book Editing	Minimal
Text - variety and Full Page	Full page text and many caption options
Embellishments and Corners	Limited
Full-Page Bleed	Yes
Final Grade	A-

For an explanation of the Feature Set Review

Photo Book Sizes

Additional pages are available for an extra charge. The price given is the lowest price for that size category.

Hardcover
7x5 - 20 pages	4.99
9x7 - 20 pages	9.99
12x12 - 20 pages	24.99

For a more detailed pricing, please visit Photo Book Covers and Sizes

Go from Artscow Review to my page on other photo book publishers