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Creating and printing a Photo Book [Merged]


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Wanted to hear people's impressions of/experiences with Blurb, the on-line book printing/publishing company?

 

Was the design interface easy to use, and could you modify it easily to suit your own design needs?

 

What about the print quality and binding quality? I am especially interested in how the color looked, and whether you were pleased with it?

 

How about other services?

 

TX, SP

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Steve, I have seen a book that came from Blurb and was very impressed. The guy who did it said their software was easy to use and also that they were about to update it and offer more features (I believe this has since happened). He said the colors were cirrect; I thought the book looked very good.

 

I'm thinking of doing a book and plan to try here, first.

 

You can order 1 to many copies, at any time.

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Hi Steve, the LUG used Blurb to produce a photographic year book last year.

 

The layout is template driven, so there are particular page sizes that you have to keep to. According to the person who actually compiled the book the software is very easy to use.

 

Print quality is very good, if not up to the highest standards of dedicated photo books. The two shots I contributed looked good.

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wow, the prices look really reasonable!

 

you can have a 40 pager 33x28 cm hard cover book for 55 bucks as a one off!

 

they must be digitally printing these. even so, hard cover, with stiching is a very good price

 

i wonder where they print these, china? and what is the turna round time.

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I was not impressed. Blue sky showed, at closer look, ugly vertical banding. I had seen that before, at other printers, but I know at least one printer, in Europe that is, that gives me perfect prints. Blurb does not.

 

I emailed them and they said it was possible due to scaling down artifacts. Problem is that with every picture you get the ideal size, which then necessitates making a new picture: not a good idea.

 

The send back service was fast: no complaints. But in the end: nothing special.

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> Was the design interface easy to use, and could you modify it easily to suit your own design needs?

 

Interface is OK.

Client sometimes freezes for huge files, and especially if you leave it running overnight.

But for many people it worked OK, and it allows to have a book published. :)

 

> What about the print quality and binding quality? I am especially interested in how the color looked, and whether you were pleased with it?

 

I printed one black-and-white book, and won't do that again. Their process is just not designed for black-and-white photography. In my case it was purple tint for all the light-grey areas. Here is how it looked like:

998452549_07c07f4f6b.jpg

 

Top book is blurb's product. Bottom is Helmut Newton's book published in regular way.

 

For some people it turned out green.

 

In Blurb's Forum there are a lot of people happy about their color books.

 

> How about other services?

 

You can not order a separate (or just extra) cover for example. But nobody promissed. :)

 

People complain about rediculous prices for shipping in some european locations. In U.S. there are reasonable shipping options.

 

Generally I'd suggest to read their Forum. People talks a lot about what they find unusual there. And they share not only problems but their success stories too.

 

I did not use any competitors.

And I'm still looking for relatively cheap way to print black-and-white. Please let me know if you'll find something. :)

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Stay away from the softcover books and books smaller than 10 x 8 if you care about color fidelity. Those get printed on a toner-based printer that isn't up to my expectations. 10 x 8 and larger hardcover books are printed with real ink and have much better color.

 

Hope this helps

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Stay away from the softcover books and books smaller than 10 x 8 if you care about color fidelity. Those get printed on a toner-based printer that isn't up to my expectations. 10 x 8 and larger hardcover books are printed with real ink and have much better color.

 

Hope this helps

 

Roey, are you referring to Blurb, specifically?

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blurb is okay (esp. given the price) but i found the quality spotty as others have also noted.

has anyone tried mpix? i've used them for regular prints and found their quality to be better than blurb, but have never gotten a book produced by them. they also offer specialty black and white paper which could be better than the blurb b&w process.

 

//oliver

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Roey, are you referring to Blurb, specifically?

 

Yes. My wife had them print a softcover book and wasn't satisfied with the colors (skin tones were too red). After conferring with their support (who explained the different printing technologies they use) she tried out a hardcover version and got much better colors.

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The LUG book was hard cover. the black and white photographs I submitted came out fine. There seems to be some variation according to the book type.

 

Shipping costs to Europe were appallingly high - more than the cost of the book, but they now have a European printer so shipping costs are a lot better now.

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  • 9 months later...

Hi. I have produced several books using blurb, with their Booksmart software, and the quality is excellent. The pages do tend to fall out after a while unless you're very careful not to open the book wide. If you get sick of their templates, you can make your own layout in Photoshop, save it as a JPEG and use that as a whole page. Remember to make all your photos 300 dpi (recommended for any publisher).

 

One thing worth knowing. They very annoyingly insist on putting their logo at the back of the book and charging you about $4 to remove it. If you complain .... they waive that charge (but don't tell them I told you, otherwise they won't). I don't think the rival companies put a logo on at all.

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I have only made two books and used two companies.

1) My Publisher, not so good

2) My CEWE (http://www.cewe-photoworld.co.uk/photobook/). I thought it was pretty good. I did not do much of large print though. Book was 5x7 I think and I was designing in place of normal album. I have not used their final product. I used while they were in Beta. Software from short use, CeWe had better than Blurb.

 

Blurb, waiting for our M8 book project.

 

Just my $0.02.

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The LUG's Family of Man 2 book that I just got (from Blurb) has much improved B&W images compared to the sample above. Don't know if Blurb has just improved their process, or perhaps the LUG editor did something to help (rgb monochomes or some such).

 

My B&W shots in FOM2 are near perfect.

 

The photographer whose portfolio I referenced above told me recently that she did 4 or 5 copies and they were slightly different put side-by-side, but all reasonable reproductions in their own right.

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My second (replacement) version of the FOM2 book just arrived from Blurb after I complained bitterly about the appalling condition of the shipping. The first books spine was completely broken. They did not hesitate to replace it, but the second volume is nearly as bad! I could neither sell it to a client or present to anyone. Very dissapointing since I , and other photographers put five years into the compilation of the contents.

 

I am currently preparing several books of my own using Blurb, But I seriously think I will 'change camps' before completion.

 

I have yet to overcome my dissapointment and assess the quality of image reproduction. In the first volume it was variable.

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