To meet fast-growing demand for personalized keepsakes, online photo products boutique Pinhole Press used the superior printing quality of HP Indigo digital presses to create its new Storybook product.

The Storybook is the first Pinhole Press photo book that allows customers to personalize each page with text and choose their own layouts. Cohoes, N.Y.-based Pinhole Press released the new web-to-print offering on pinholepress.com in November.

HP is the market leader in photo book/photo merchandise printing.(1) Pinhole Press, a subsidiary of Mohawk Fine Papers, uses HP Indigo presses exclusively for its printing. The high-quality color imaging HP Indigo presses offer, combined with premium Mohawk papers and fabric cover options, make Storybooks coveted photo gifts.

Early Storybook customers include Martha Stewart, who created a series of Storybooks featuring pictures of her new granddaughter and wrote about the process in the December 2011 issue of Martha Stewart Living magazine.(2) The article shows images from the Storybooks she created using Pinhole Press’s templates and provides tips on writing and photography for the Storybook format.

“Because many of our customers are creative people who appreciate high-quality products, we wanted to offer a book that would give them the ability to combine photos and text to create heartfelt stories,” said Bart Robinson, vice president, Pinhole Press. “We’ve heard from our customers that their Storybook photo gifts are often the most cherished holiday presents.”

Digital economies of scale, with high-end, photo-quality imaging
Since the set-up costs and waste associated with traditional analog offset printing create minimum run-length requirements that do not fit with Pinhole Press’s personalized, print-on-demand business model, the HP Indigo is an affordable production solution for the company.

The photo boutique’s print service provider creates Storybooks on an HP Indigo press 5500 using 100-percent recycled Mohawk Options Smooth i-Tone Panoramic papers, which provide extraordinary quality for limited-edition books and prints. The papers include Convertible Solutions’ TRU-Flat® technology, which allows books to lie flat with seamless images across every spread.

“Pinhole Press has successfully combined innovative web-to-print layouts, binding expertise, high-quality HP Indigo digital printing, and premium Mohawk papers to create a new product that makes an emotional connection with consumers,” said Alon Bar-Shany, vice president and general manager, Indigo division, HP.

More information about HP Indigo presses is available at www.hp.com/go/indigo, through the HP Graphic Arts YouTube channel at www.youtube.com/hpgraphicarts and through the HP Graphic Arts Twitter Feed at www.twitter.com/hpgraphicarts.