Print quality
Colour, paper, ink and binding — in detail
Most complaints about photo books come down to four things: washed-out skin, soft images, a spine that cracks, and pages that yellow. Here is exactly what we do about each of them.
00 — How the pages are imaged
Three ways to put a photograph on paper
This is the single biggest factor in how a book looks, and almost nobody in this category will tell you which one they use. We sell all three and label every edition with its process and its resolution.
Press
300 dpi
Ink laid down as a fine screen of dots and colour-managed to a measured profile. What a good book or magazine is printed with, and what four of our seven editions use. At normal reading distance the dot structure is invisible.
Right for: nearly everything — family books, travel, yearbooks, gifts.
Photographic
400 dpi, continuous tone
Not ink at all. The paper is exposed to red, green and blue light and developed in chemistry, exactly as a darkroom print is — so there is no dot structure anywhere and nothing for a gradient to band against.
Right for: portraiture and weddings — anywhere skin has to be flawless.
Giclée
1200 dpi, 12 inks
Twelve pigment inks — including three greys and two blacks — sprayed onto cotton rag. The widest colour range and deepest blacks we can produce, and the extra greys are what stop monochrome work picking up a colour cast.
Right for: fine-art editions, gallery catalogues, black-and-white work.
| Edition | Process | Resolution | Paper |
|---|---|---|---|
| Softcover | Offset-quality press | 300 dpi | Silk art paper, 170 gsm |
| Classic Hardcover | Offset-quality press | 300 dpi | Silk art paper, 170 gsm |
| Linen Hardcover | Offset-quality press | 300 dpi | Uncoated matte art paper, 200 gsm |
| Lay-Flat Premium | Offset-quality press | 300 dpi | Double-thick mounted board, 200 gsm |
| Photographic Lay-Flat | True photographic (silver-halide) | 400 dpi | Fujicolor Crystal Archive photographic, 250 gsm |
| Archival Heirloom | Offset-quality press | 300 dpi | 100% cotton rag, acid-free, 310 gsm |
| Giclée Atelier | Giclée, 12-ink pigment | 1200 dpi | Hahnemühle Photo Rag, 100% cotton, 308 gsm |
A higher process cannot rescue a low-resolution photograph — it will render the softness more faithfully. Resolution of your files and resolution of our press are separate problems; the builder handles the first, this page is about the second.
01 — Colour
Skin tones are the whole test
A press that renders a blue sky beautifully can still make a pale face look grey and a dark face look orange. Skin sits in the hardest part of the gamut, and it is the part everyone notices.
- Every press is profiled to a measured ICC target and re-linearised each morning against a printed control strip — not weekly, not when it looks off.
- Our profiling targets include a full range of skin tones from very pale to very dark, weighted so neither end is sacrificed for the other.
- sRGB, Adobe RGB and ProPhoto files are all converted with a perceptual intent and black-point compensation, so deep shadows keep separation instead of blocking up.
- If you send us an embedded profile, we honour it. If you send an untagged file, we assume sRGB and say so on the photo.
02 — Resolution
We will not print a photo that cannot survive the size
A 640-pixel screenshot looks fine on a phone and terrible across a 12-inch spread. Every upload is measured against the trim size you chose, at the size it will actually be placed.
300+ DPI
Press quality. Fine detail, clean edges, no visible softening at any size the photo is placed.
100–180 DPI
Usable small, soft large. The builder marks it and suggests a smaller cell — your call, made with the facts in front of you.
<100 DPI
Genuinely unprintable at this size. We stop the order rather than take your money for a blurry book and argue about it afterwards.
Screenshots, WhatsApp forwards and images saved from social media are the usual culprits — all three re-compress and shrink the original. If you can find the file the photo came from, use that instead; the builder will tell you immediately whether it helped.
03 — Paper
Four stocks, and when each one is right
| Stock | Weight | Surface | Best for | Watch for | Editions |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Silk art paper | 170 gsm | Low sheen, smooth | Saturated colour, mixed subjects, everyday books | Slight reflection under a downlight | Softcover, Classic Hardcover |
| Uncoated matte art | 200 gsm | Papery, no sheen | Portraits, dark images, text-heavy books, anything read under a lamp | Very deep blacks sit a touch lighter than on silk | Linen Hardcover |
| Double-thick mounted board | 200 gsm ×2 | Rigid, matte or silk face | Anything crossing the spine; albums that get handled constantly | Fewer pages fit before the book gets thick | Lay-Flat Premium |
| 100% cotton rag | 310 gsm | Textured, fine-art | Heirloom books, fine-art editions, anything meant to outlive you | The texture is visible in flat areas — that is the point | Archival Heirloom |
04 — Binding
A spine is a mechanism, not a decoration
The difference between a book you reread and one that lives in a cupboard is usually whether it opens without a fight.
Perfect bound (Softcover)
Pages milled at the spine and glued into a wrapped cover with a flexible PUR adhesive rather than the brittle hot-melt used for paperbacks. It opens further than you expect and does not shed pages.
Case bound (Classic & Linen Hardcover)
Sections sewn, then glued, then cased into board covers with endpapers. The sewing is what stops the block cracking away from the spine after a hundred openings.
Lay-flat (Premium & Heirloom)
Each spread is a single sheet mounted to board and hinged to its neighbours. There is no gutter to lose an image into, and the book stays open on a table by itself.
05 — Longevity
What “archival” has to mean before we will print the word
The term is unregulated and freely abused. On this site it refers only to the Archival Heirloom edition, and it means these four specific things.
Acid-free, lignin-free
Cotton rag has no residual acid and no lignin to break down, which is what turns cheap paper brown from the edges inwards.
Pigment, not dye
Ground mineral particles sitting on the surface rather than soluble dye soaking in. Accelerated testing puts visible fade beyond 100 years in normal display.
No optical brighteners
OBAs make paper look whiter now and yellower in twenty years as they burn off. Ours has none, so the white you receive is the white it stays.
Backed by a warranty
If an Heirloom book visibly fades in your lifetime, we reprint it. A claim nobody stands behind is marketing; this one is on the guarantee page.
06 — Materials sourcing
Where the paper comes from
Print is a physical product and pretending otherwise is silly. What we can do is be specific about the inputs.
- Every paper stock is FSC-certified; chain-of-custody numbers are on request
- Vegetable-based inks, and press wash recovered rather than discharged
- Books are printed to order — we hold no speculative stock and pulp nothing
- Packaging is moulded recycled board, no plastic film, no polystyrene
- Delivery emissions offset through a certified removals portfolio, not avoidance credits
What every edition gets, regardless of price
- The same press, the same inks, the same colour management
- Full-bleed printing — photos run to the trim edge
- The same resolution checking before anything is printed
- A human looking at the book before it is boxed
- The same reprint guarantee if anything is wrong
The tiers differ in materials and construction. They do not differ in care.
Do not take our word for any of this
The sample kit puts every material in your hands, and the free press proof puts one spread of your own book on the actual paper. Both cost nothing.