Anyone thinks that making a Shutterfly book is stressful?

omg...i thought it was me...I find it soooooooooooo painful!

Yes and that's why I only use mixbook.com

I did a Shutterfly book once because I was going to give it as a gift and had a coupon code for a free book. It was painful, just painful. Especially for someone like me who frequently designs wedding albums in Photoshop. The lack of control and bad interface have ensured I will never make one with them again. Now if I want to give a book as a gift I just design it in Photoshop and pay way more to have it printed at my pro lab. The convenience is worth it.

Thanks,I thought it was just me because I really dislike any type of photo software no matter what I'm doing. I find it so frustrating! I'd rather stick to paper! But I was trying to just make a simple book out of some instagram pics and ugghh...
Took me two hours.

Coupons come so often for mixbook, I finish my project at my leisure, then wait for the next coupon.

i do. i did one last year and it took way too much time, not to mention a sore arm and forefinger from using the mouse. even with free book offers, i won't do another one until i have the time and patience. that means no holiday books LOL.

Yes! We do 2 sets of calendars each year, one for my side, one for his. Painful! I don't think it is all that difficult, it's that we wait until the last minute and rush and then need more pictures and then end up paying way more than we should. I think tomorrow is the last of the "good" sales. If we would just select and edit the photos throughout the year, we could just drop them in and go, but it just doesn't work like that for us.

I find the price to be comparable.

No I love making them! I really like how easy it is to use and all those free embellishments really make the page. I usually get a groupon and only have to pay for shipping costs.

Shutterfly makes me want to drink, I swear.

I make my yearly photobook in Photoshop and then just insert them as a spread which is as easy as I can make it, and I still put 30 or 50 hours of work into it by the time comes but it's a 80-100 page book. I usually use Photobook Canada.

I made a calendar in Shutterfly last week because I had a promo code- I had tk restart it three times because the site messed up and it still took me thee or four hours to put 12 pictures in a wall calendar. Sweet Jebus. I can't stand their interface at all- I prefer being able to customize things more than they let you.

YES! Definitely not any fun. I've had several FREE book coupons come and go just because I can't bring myself to undergo the stress of trying to get their goofy online thing to work the way it should without crapping out on me halfway through.   If I ever do another one, I'll design the pages in some other software and just upload the whole pages intact.

It used to be a headache for me until I started finding a groove. I like a simple, collage style of photobook (so no embellishments and just a neutral black background). I take their existing layouts and modify them to what I want (usually look for layouts with the same # of pictures that I want to use). I used to create the layouts in Photoshop and upload them as 8x8 or 12x12 size and picked the full page layout.

The thing I do now that makes it easier is to just do a little at a time. I do yearly books (a two-page spread for each month) for myself, my mom, and the EX. I try to start working on them in January and do a little every month so when November comes around it's pretty much done and just waiting for Thanksgiving pictures (because I like to give them as gifts they are December - November instead of traditional year). I do the same for the kids sports books. Youngest daughter played in a tournament last weekend, I spent maybe an hour or two going through all the pictures, picking out which ones I wanted to use, editing those, uploading them to Shutterfly, and creating layouts that highlighted the game. It's still time consuming, but less stressful than trying to do it all at once. Amazingly I was able to go back and do all of my younger daughter's AYSO books from U6-U10, when she moved to club, in a few days because of re-using the same formats. Now I'm working on my son's books.