Taking photos with your iPhone is easier than ever, but printing them out is also important. Images look different on your screen than they do printed out, and Motif is one way to print iPhone photos.
Motif Photo Book
First, Motif is available in the App Store as well as the Mac App Store. On the Mac it serves as an extension for Photos. A Photos extension means you can use the app from within the Photos app itself. I printed my photo book using the iOS app although I can’t imagine the Mac version would be much different.
To get started you can pick from several options: A hardcover book, softcover book, photo calendar, and photo wall tiles. The calendar and tiles are listed as coming soon.
Hardcover Size Options
- 11″ x 8.5″ for US$29.99
- 13″ x 10″ for US$49.99
- 8″ x 8″ for US$24.99
- 10″ x 10″ US$39.99
Softcover Size Options
- 8″ x 6″ for US$9.99
- 11″ x 8.5″ for US$19.99
- 8″ x 8″ for US$14.99
I created a softcover book. When you pick a book and size, you’ll have to select a minimum of 20 photos. There are a bunch of book designs to choose from. I chose Black Portfolio. The photos will be automatically arranged throughout the book, although you can go through and change them. Some pages display the photos in a smaller size, and others display them as a bigger size and even different shapes. Some photos are even repeated.
The smaller size options are—in my opinion—too small. I haven’t used many photo printing services but I’d like a photo book where each page was a full size image. This just seems to be how the Portfolio style is, however. For example, the Image Conscious style does show some full page photos. You can tap the Arrange button to add more pages, or tap Style to change the color of the page. You can tap on each photo to adjust the crop, or select a filter which are the same filters in the Photos app.
Another negative was the fact that you can only pick photos from within one album. So if you have a specific set of photos in mind, you’ll have to go into the Photos app and create a new album just for those photos. The name of the album will be the book title, so pick a good one. You can change the book format from within the page layout area in case you change your mind.
Checking out is pretty intuitive. You can have multiple projects going at the same time, such as creating a hardcover book and a softcover. When you check out, you have to create an account with Motif photos, and you won’t be able to use Sign In with Apple.
Once I received my book in the mail I was satisfied overall with the condition. There were a couple of scratches here and there but otherwise it seemed good. My score of “it’s okay” just means that if you do want to print iPhone photos, consider giving Motif a try.
Update
So it turns out that the app can do the aforementioned things. A Motif spokesperson reached out with this information:
Further Reading:
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