RitzPix Photo Book Review:
A Mixed Blessing

by Valerie
(Durham, NC)

My photo book experience began in Shutterfly. The quality of their books is good, but the creativity aspect is limited. You choose a background, then a page template, and plug in your pictures and text. The picture orientation (landscape vs. portrait) may or may not fit your photo. The text you want to include may or may not fit their text area. I felt constrained. I'm an artist, and wanted as much design flexibility as possible.

Then I found out about Wolf Camera's RitzPix. I was delighted by the total flexibility, once I got into a page. As many pictures as I wanted, any orientation and size. Text wherever and however much I wanted it. And I could use my own pictures as background. All of this was great!

Now, RitzPix's Photo Books limitations:

1. You make decisions at the beginning that can't be changed, as was possible in Shutterfly. The kind of cover, and size of book are permanent. If you make your book in a leatherette cover, and want to order one for someone else in cloth, you have to make an entirely new book from scratch! This is ridiculous. I got conflicting information about this from their phone help and online chat. Finally, I was told that if I had ordered the one-hour book to be picked up from the store, I could call the store to have the cover changed. An ad hoc way of getting out of this problem.

2. The text options are extremely limited, to just several fairly similar ones.

3. The book covers are in limited colors.

4. With the least expensive, one-hour books, the page edges are noticeably serrated! It reminds me of waxed paper.

5. Perhaps the most annoying aspect of this software is that -- even if you choose the design-it-yourself mode -- when you upload the pictures at the beginning, they are automatically put onto the pages in a random way. You have to drag each picture out onto the workspace to design your book. A real drawback, especially when you've loaded over a hundred photos.

So, RitzPix is a mixed blessing for me. I am designing a new photo book, and will be trying out Picaboo software next.