This week my wife and I chose photos of my daughter’s wedding to be placed in a Shutterfly photo book.

As you may know, I am an aficionado of Picasa (Google’s great photo editing program), and especially of Picasa’s collage program. With Picasa’s collages, I can do more with photo arrangements than can be done with the Shutterfly book program. But, alas, as far as I know, Picasa cannot turn my arrangements into a professionally bound book.

The Shutterfly book we made had 72 pages of photos and cost about $88. What if I decided to make my own photo book using printouts of Picasa’s collages, and my spiral binding machine? Let’s say the spiral-bound book would have the same number of pages and photos as the Shutterfly book. How much would such a book cost me?

• 72 sheets of Costco’s glossy paper… $9.

• Color ink for approximately 108 photos… .50.
(I fill my own ink cartridges with “bulk ink.”)

• 1 plastic binding comb … .20.

TOTAL: $9.70

It sounds great, but wait. Yes, I could have saved about $78, but my spiral-bound photo book would look less “professional” than the Shutterfly book. Who cares? My spiral-bound book’s photos would be just as sharp as the Shutterfly’s photos. My spiral-bound book’s photos would be better arranged on the pages than they are on the Shutterfly book. And, for $88, with my spiral binding, I could have about 700 pages of photos!

So, it comes down to this. Seeing photos of your family in a “professionally” bound book makes you feel important — it’s a “real book.” Seeing photos of your family in a spiral-bound, soft-cover book, makes you feel, well, less important since it’s not a “real book.”

Why doesn’t a company produce a professional-type bookbinding machine for the home market? At first, such a machine might sell for, say, $1200. But with product competition and public demand, the price would likely drop quickly. After all, who wouldn’t want to see ALL of their family’s photos in a “real book”?

Mr. Ebsen may be contacted at robertebsen@hotmail.com