This week I received a sample album to evaluate.
On first look at the album, i was very pleased with the finish, the cover is very well finished, no rough edges showing, and the leather perfectly smooth. The cover text print quality looks good, crisp and sharp.
However on closer inspection, there were a few issues with the album…
The first and last pages are stuck to the inside of cover, which pulls up the second page causing it to not lay flat, pressing down to stop this may cause the varnish on the crease to crack even more than currently (see my point below). The inner pages lay flat better than the end spreads
I ordered the gloss pages and the print quality is superb, lovely details and colours as well as deep blacks.
However, where there is the crease on the centre of the double page spread the varnish has split causing the paper below (white) to appear, perhaps this would not be so much of an issue with luster papers (I dont know). This means where I have placed an image to flow over the two pages, the image is ruined by the cracking of the varnish.
Generally a nice album. I’d avoid images in the middle of the spread especially due to the cracking, and I would prefer if there were additional blank spreads at the start and finish of the book to allow the pages to lay flat more.
Due to the reasons above this will not be an album for sale to clients, I will continue to use my current supplier of stunning albums.
