Crafting with love - on the handmade nature of nPhoto products

Would you believe us if we said that nPhoto still hand-crafts a large portion of its products and the intermediary parts which they are made from? Because it’s true! There exist stages in production which could be automated, but by keeping them in the hands of our trusted artisans, we can ensure that every product is created with attention and care.

For starters, we’d like to let you in on a bit of info: it takes several hours to create something as simple as an Album Box from start to finish, and depending on the options that were selected, more than a dozen people could be involved in the process. The whole product is produced by us, bar the intermediary resources that it’s derived from, such as its cover material and so forth. Many more of our products are created in a similar manner, but we’ll come back to this in a moment.

Our boxes begin their journey in the woodworking section of our facility. You read that correctly - in order to maintain a steady access to base supplies & prevent stock related issues, we operate our own, professional woodworking station. This is the place where exact size measurements are made, where our box “bases” are constructed and where many other products begin their journey, such as our Wall Decor frames and backboards, to name a few. If you previously thought that our boxes come from a separate third party supplier, this may come as a surprise! With this in mind, our boxes really do encapsulate the essence of something that is hand-made, albeit on a slightly larger scale.
 

Attention-to-detail, Precision

Moving on with the journey, once the wooden framework is complete, our boxes are then furnished with one of our cover materials. This part also omits the use of machine automation. Picture an array of textile, leatherette and velvet rolls, from which our production team cuts the right size required for our box. Those strips of materials are then fitted, pressed and attached to the frame - by hand, of course.
 

It goes without saying that each step in this process requires the utmost care and precision. Fabrics and adhesives are a challenging duo, after all! Everything requires a level of logistical planning inherent to each section of the process.

Let’s take the aforementioned box, or an album made with eco-leather with seams, for example. Before they can be finalised, each separate element needs to be designated for its personalisation options and add-ons before they can be combined into the end product. If you were to order an album with a pair of names and a wedding date on its cover, said cover would need to be sent to our fabric text specialists, who would then apply the text to a press,  letter by letter, and measure it for spacing errors, all before finally applying it to the cover which can then be applied to the rest of the product.
 

Adding something like seams into the mix requires a similar amount of work. Our experienced tailors use professional sewing machines for this task, and need to be able to picture the end result to avoid making any mistakes along the way. Other add-on intricacies that find their place here are also done by hand.

Our USB pendrives start from the basics too - beginning with the material selected for the box it belongs to, and ending with the interior & exterior being carefully put together using hand tools. Even the ribbons are hand-cut and tied.

Behind every product stand people who are passionate about what they do.

Nearly every Box, Photo Album and Photo Book collection has its cover created by people, not machines. It’s our production team who make the necessary fittings for acrylic covers, or cut and tie ribbons onto our USB sticks. It can all be decidedly considered hand-made. Only the print itself is a result of modern technology, but everything surrounding it - the frames, edges, adhesives and their eventual connection into one, cohesive product are all effectively made by our workers.

The subsequent packaging process done by its respective department is also more or less a manual task - orders consisting of a variety of products need to be put together and carefully secured in packaging which is then sealed and prepared for delivery. With a production at this scale, standards need to be kept as high as they can be, and we have a dedicated quality control department to thank for that. Each order is thoroughly checked and verified, ensuring that only orders which make it past them are allowed to be sent out.

Colour correction - what professionals can appreciate the most

Colour correction has been offered by our lab since its very inception - and we’ve always had specialists watching over this aspect of printing. Very few other labs offer this option, yet we’ve managed to turn it into a seamless process thanks to the many miracles of technology - one that is still maintained by people.
 

Necessity is the mother of all inventions

Many of our more recent product lineups have been a result of rigorous research looking into the needs of photographers - the Accordion Mini Book was one such product, which was met with great enthusiasm when it was released. It captures the essence of a hand-made craft just like many others, after many atypical methods were tried to ensure that it can be made that way at a larger scale.

Such atypical methods could be found even at the very beginning of our lab’s existence - when we were only starting off, embossing was done with the use of clothing irons, and kitchen ovens were a staple of our production equipment. We look back at those days with fondness, by seeing how far we have grown since then. Nevertheless, one thing remains the same - human hands are being used to make our products, and they have never been fully replaced by machines.

Exceptionally unique products that your clients will want to see

You and your prospective clients can personally admire the handiwork with the help of our current sample offer! Get 85% off on a sample Photo Album & Complete Album Set, in addition to a pack of Retro Prints for just 1 USD/EUR/GBP. Hit the button below to find out more and start selling products that reflect your quality of work.
 

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Photography is art.

To us, this seems obvious - and we also know that art needs the right medium to help it reach a whole new level of beauty. We hope that our products can become that medium for your work. Allow us to fill your future orders with the same passion that we wanted to show you through this post.