Blurb erroneously coloring monochrome pictures into sepia

[Alberti]

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Today I received a book published with Blurb and made from the Lightroom app.

The pictures (MM, M) are incredibly sharp.

 

The black and white on the front is beyond breath.

 

However, black and white from the MM on the inside have all been turned into some kind of dark sepia (brown hue). It is off-tone. 

Colored pictures from the M with black in it are black. Borders are appropriately black where this was selected as background. Blurb can obviously handle black. 

 

Who has encountered this sepia toning of MM pictures generated from Lightroom? What should I do?

[AceVentura1986]

Blurb probably printed the MM images as if they were color images thus resulting in a color cast. This is because it is nearly impossible to generate neutral BW prints using a color printer.  In the future you might be better off either printing duo tone images or at least applying a pale cream layer which will give the image just enough color that it should look like warm grey rather than sepia. 

[johnwolf]

Alberti, did you make any progress with this? I tried the same format with Blurb and have no color cast. 

 

Did you see these instructions for B&W in Blurb? The thing I don't understand is how publishing from LR complies with these requirements, since LR does not output CMYK. I know that if you send sRGB image to Blurb, it automatically converts them to CMYK, but that's probably not the right approach for B&W. 

 

For my book I used InDesign. I output the grayscale images from LR as TIFFs and then converted them to CMYK using Photoshop. The BW is very neutral. 

 

John 

[Alberti]

Thanks John.

No progress so far.

 

Blurb was so kind to send me a new copy, and like I expected, they had the same brownish tone again. 

 

Most of my B&W images came from a Monochrome, and Lightroom does not allow any of the recommendations that are given on the Blurb site for Photoshop. So there is no saturation slider available. But also B&W from a M, processed in Silver Effex Pro turned out with a (varying) cast. While a simple conversion in Lightroom or Capture One sometimes works out fine (??) 

The recommendations you link to are for processing native color images in Adobe Photoshop.

 

Because the book was over $ 50, I have no intent to experiment.

 

There should be paper selections that do work out. Who can recommend such settings?

albert

[250swb]

You have to follow Blurb's instructions exactly, and because those aren't always immediately apparent it can be a case of check and double check. But I have done a B&W book through Blurb and the results were spot on. It is almost impossible to second guess the fine detail another user needs, but if you use perhaps a duo-tone rather than 'Greyscale' it gives the sRGB file you are submitting another level of colour authority, and using the best paper is far better than the cheap paper.

 

Steve

[Alberti]

Thanks Steve, 

I used the Lightroom-Blurb plug-in, so I cannot manage anything!

 

I was afraid that making the book in the traditional way with JPG's would reduce the detail. . .

 

albert

[johnwolf]

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It sounds to me like the problem is with the LR-Blurb plug-in, which must not be configured to handle B&W per Blurb requirements. I know that for color (sRGB) Blurb automatically does the CMYK conversion. But maybe not for B&W. 

 

I think if you output grayscale from LR and then could find a way to convert to CMYK, you'd be OK. There are some online utilities for that, if you don't have Photoshop. But then you could not re-import into LR to use the plug-in.

 

John 

[250swb]

I've sent sRGB to Blurb and they came out great, but don't think of a B&W picture as Greyscale. B&W when printed in high end photo books is never ever Greyscale, it is duo-tone, tri-tone, quad-tone, etc. So give the image some sort of colour information, it doesn't have to shout 'sepia' or anything like that.

 

Steve