Album99 Review | Nation's Photo Lab

*UPDATE July 21, 2014*•Nation's asked if they could send me a new album with color corrections. The photos in the new album are a little bit better and brighter, however the photos to be a bit grainier since the exposure has been manipulated in post. I also have noticed since writing this blog originally that there is a problem with backprinting in these albums. Backprinting happens when information is printed on the back of prints (print information, photo name, etc) and you can see it through the paper in the lighter areas. It's not very pretty. It basically looks like faint writing on the white parts of your album.

•They did update the font on my newer album which I like a lot better. It's a simple serif font that looks really timeless.

•Their customer service has been amazing, so I do recommend this company for personal printing because they've gone above and beyond to correct the problems I had with the album. They've been really great.

•I still stick with my original review. These albums are very pretty and would be great for personal albums, family pictures and things like that but I would definitely always recommend buying an album through your wedding photographer because the colors and print quality just don't compare in this case.

*Original Post* Nation's Photo Lab sent me a $100 coupon to use on any of their products a few weeks ago. I don't have a wedding album of my own pictures so I thought, it's free, why not get one?! Their Album99 is $100 for any size. I thought, if it turns out to be a really great album, I can pass on the savings to you guys and if it turns out to be a crappy album, I'll still have it for my own personal use. So, here are my thoughts on Nation's Album99.

I ordered the 12 inch album with white leather and embossing. I also ordered the thicker pages which are a little more expensive than the thinner ones, so I spent an extra few dollars on those, but I think it's worth it.

The embossing only comes in one font choice which is a sort of tacky scripty, but not so scripty font. Something like Apple Chancery. I'm not 100% sure though. My first wish during ordering was that they had more font choices. I would have loved to have a simple sans serif font.

The album itself is really good quality. The leather is nice and soft and it smells just like you'd expect it to. Mine is 15 spreads (30 pages) so it's about an inch and a half thick. The pages are nice and sturdy. I was not disspointed in the quality of the album build at all. The Album99 is a flush mount so the seams are nice and flat. You could put a full sized image over the whole spread and it would look really nice.

The images are the only thing that I was disappointed in, which is really the main thing you should look for when ordering your album, since the images are why you're ordering an album in the first place. The pictures are much darker than they should be. I would say about a stop below the actual exposure of the image. It also seems like the larger the image, the darker it was. You can see in the picture of the cake cutting, the images look nice and bright, but in this picture of our grand exit, it's pretty dark. The front page of my album which is a page of our chapel, was also really, REALLY dark. 

Now, keep in mind that these are MY own personal wedding pictures, so I'm doing this review as an actual customer (but with the background of a photographer). My final thoughts on this album are that while the actual album itself is great quality, the photo quality is subpar, especially on the larger images.

All of my wedding photos were by Sarah Warmker.