I have experience making a custom album with iPhoto's photo book on the Macintosh. In fact I have made several and have enjoyed the ease of use and the quality of the product. When I saw the PhotoWorks booth at a trade show in New York, I was intrigued by the variety of offerings from the company. You can order calendars, custom photo books, photo gift keepsakes like mugs, mouse pads, puzzles, coasters, large canvas posters and 19� prints.

Impressed by what I saw, I offered to do a review of their products and they accepted. I found the program not very intuitive. I had to struggle several times to familiarize myself with the way the program worked uploading and arranging the photos for a custom photo book.

My first problem was with Internet Explorer crashing every time I wanted to assemble my photos. In Customize layout, the online bin never loaded my photos with IE.I had to go to Safari to complete the project. You can upload 9 photos at a time, so for putting an album together of say 24 photos the upload is significantly longer than with iPhoto, and that's with broadband.

The photo album's cover shares the title with the photo, leaving a lot of white space around the cover photo. I would have preferred the photo without the title. The binding and the selections of colors were better than the iPhoto photo book. I also liked the way the photo is imbedded in the cover compared to the decal used in the iPhoto photo book. However the photos were not as sharp even though they were uploaded at 1463 x 1684 resolution or 1 MB each. The cost of a book is $29.95 for 20 pages and $1.99 for each additional page. The price for the iPhoto photo book is $29.99 for a 10-page book and $3 for each additional page. I also ordered a 2005 calendar with my favorite family and pet photos and a 10-oz mug with a family photo. Both were stunning.

The process was very difficult and time consuming. The prices are very reasonable.

I give this product 3.5 out of 5 apples.