I just went ahead and started a new thread on the new blurb sizes so we could share the information with everyone, because I doubt everyone chooses this thread and skips to that last page to see if we're talking about something interesting...I may be wrong...but I doubt it.
when I got the 11X13 announcement in my inbox, I was THRILLED!!!!!!!
Well, Lynne, I guess this solves the problems that I PMed you about a few weeks ago!!!
My Equipment: Canon EOS 5D w/ battery grip Backup Canon EOS 30D | Canon 28 f/1.8 | Canon 24 f/1.4L Canon 50mm f/1.4 | Sigma 50mm f/2.8 EX DI Macro | Canon 70-200 F/2.8 L | Canon 580 EX II Flash and Canon 550 EX Flash Apple MacBook Pro with dual 24" monitors
Domke F-802 bag and a Shootsac by Jessica Claire
Infiniti QX4
I decided to order a book off my mac pro in the Iphoto program. No one else seems to have reviewed it yet so I will give you my review.
The program is extremely simple to use- simply drag and drop from Iphoto galleries. Pic your page layout i.e. cover, text, 1 to 6 photos per page.
Printed on what seems good quality paper and and cover is canvas type hardcover.
It is a bit more than blurb ( I think I will try one of theirs next) with a 28 page book costing about $40 with shipping.
There are a decent number of themes but not a lot of page background pattern or color options.
Only real negative is that a few pictures have a rolled appearance to them, where you can see faint vertical lines throughout the photo. This only occured on two of the large one picture/ page layouts.
With that said some of the smaller pictures with noise actually turned out great.
I would use again but will try others to establish a quality vs price baseline.
I second that smugmug should move to have books as an option as well as calendars and greeting cards.
"The Journey of life is as much in oneself as the roads one travels"
I decided to order a book off my mac pro in the Iphoto program. No one else seems to have reviewed it yet so I will give you my review.
The program is extremely simple to use- simply drag and drop from Iphoto galleries. Pic your page layout i.e. cover, text, 1 to 6 photos per page.
Printed on what seems good quality paper and and cover is canvas type hardcover.
It is a bit more than blurb ( I think I will try one of theirs next) with a 28 page book costing about $40 with shipping.
There are a decent number of themes but not a lot of page background pattern or color options.
Only real negative is that a few pictures have a rolled appearance to them, where you can see faint vertical lines throughout the photo. This only occured on two of the large one picture/ page layouts.
With that said some of the smaller pictures with noise actually turned out great.
I would use again but will try others to establish a quality vs price baseline.
I second that smugmug should move to have books as an option as well as calendars and greeting cards.
I too have heard great things about the iphoto books, and I think they actually get them printed at mypublisher, that's what I've heard from various sources. but they get expensive (as does mypublisher) if you get too many pages. I might have to try them though just to see, cause I just got my mac and haven't used all of it's cool features yet...
My Equipment: Canon EOS 5D w/ battery grip Backup Canon EOS 30D | Canon 28 f/1.8 | Canon 24 f/1.4L Canon 50mm f/1.4 | Sigma 50mm f/2.8 EX DI Macro | Canon 70-200 F/2.8 L | Canon 580 EX II Flash and Canon 550 EX Flash Apple MacBook Pro with dual 24" monitors
Domke F-802 bag and a Shootsac by Jessica Claire
Infiniti QX4
Since this thread has been resurrected, I'll add on another option I recently heard about: http://pikto.ca/ Apparently Michael Reichmann of Luminous Landscape uses them. The options sound pretty good, I think I'll give them a try eventually.
Explain to them the problems and they will do a reprint. Maybe due to the really lousy job I might also ask for a on the spot quality check!
Derek
Waiting on a CS reply from Blurb.
The paper quality seemed a little less than perfect also. I have had stuff done at Mpix with much better results. I was just trying to save a few bucks and as they say "got what I paid for"
“Look, I'm not an intellectual - I just take pictures.” -Helmut Newton-
This makes me very sad. I just shot a wedding and was hoping to put together a proof book using blurb. :cry
I'm coming late to this thread, but I've used Kodak Gallery, Picaboo and tried Mypublisher. Hands down, Kodak is the best. Picaboo may have more layout options, but Kodak's paper, binding, and photo quality was far and above the others. Until I find something better, I print all my photobooks on Kodak. You can create your own layouts in photoshop and then download them as jpgs, so you're really only as limited as your creativity.
Another option is K&K photo lab. They have custom books and prints of great quality.
If you'd like to see a wedding photobook I put together through Kodakgallery, let me know and I'll send you a preview. I show it to all my prospective clients as an option to traditional prints, and I haven't had a single couple choose a standard print album yet!
I'm sticking with Asuka
Just read through this entire length of forum posts because my fiance and I are currently designing photo books for Christmas presents (we each have one neice and tons of photos of each one). I was tempted to go with Blurb given the price, however I've seen way too much varied reviews of their quality. I've never heard a bad thing about Asuka, and my own experience with them has always been top-notch. I'm going to stick with Asuka.
Blurb is indeed really inexpensive, but I think that is probably part of their problem. Maybe they're too cheap. I also tend to agree that the iPhoto books are very easy to design, but sometimes have a banding issue, and I'm not fond of the canvas covers. I tend not to use them, and I'm a big Apple fan.
Another photo book vendor I've found is www.forbeyon.com. Our wedding album will be done through them. Very expensive, but holy cow what an impressive binding, page weight and reproduction.
I'm a huge www.viovio.com fan. Their interface is rather clunky, but I really like the quality, flexibility (I designed each page in PS and uploaded each page as a separate .jpg), price and customer service. I had a perfect bound, full color, soft cover, 30 page book printed for only $12.49. Actually, the price was less than that because I ordered 20 books at one time to sell to other parents in my son's kindergarten class.
I've used Picaboo.com and Pictureslide.com several times, also. Picaboo.com was the most expensive and at the time had the least binding options. I wanted a full color cover. They didn't have it at the time. The quality was good, though. Pictureslide.com had the lowest quality. The user interfaces were the best and easiest when using Picaboo.com and Pictureslide.com.
"Just because no one understands you doesn't mean you're an artist."
Help with saving a powerpoint slide as a graphic.
I am new to this board and have found it so helpful in my search for a good photobook site. I am a scrapbooker, and have decided to go digital. I thought that the idea to lay it out in powerpoint first was such a great idea! Thank you!
My question is, how do I do that? I don't see the option to save it as a graphic.
Also, is there a special way to save it so that it does not get distorted when it's a full page in the photo book?
Thank you in advance!
Janet
I am new to this board and have found it so helpful in my search for a good photobook site. I am a scrapbooker, and have decided to go digital. I thought that the idea to lay it out in powerpoint first was such a great idea! Thank you!
My question is, how do I do that? I don't see the option to save it as a graphic.
Also, is there a special way to save it so that it does not get distorted when it's a full page in the photo book?
Thank you in advance!
Janet
I don't know anything about powerpoint but we've been doing all of our wedding album layouts in photoshop and then saving them as level 10 jpegs. We design 12x24 at 300 dpi, 12x24 is our largest album, but then we can downsize from there to 10x10 or 8x8 and it still looks great.
Quick answer before I launch into why I came back to this thread. PowerPoint was never meant to be a layout program. I wouldn't recommend it for actual POD printing, but to get it into a usable format for uploading to a printer, you can choose File > Save As and where it says "Save as Type," click on the drop-down menu and choose "JPEG" instead. You can also go the "File > Print > Adobe PDF" route, though I've learned not everyone automatically has this option set up on their computers.
So after reading through this thread from the beginning and shopping around, I decided to print a few test runs before I need to create the actual client albums I have in my near future.
I first began with Blurb. Their program is okay to use, and I really liked its connection with SmugMug because it made my images super easy to find (I need to fix my folder nomenclature on my computer very badly). I had to "trick" the program a couple times to get the layout I wanted if it wasn't offered, which was usually a full-bleed image that didn't cover the entire page--perhaps a portrait image on a landscape page that I wanted centered or on one half or the other. I got around this by choosing the full-page layout and then zooming out (with multiple mouse clicks) until I had the size I wanted, then I moved the image left or right on the page for placement. A PITA, but I got it to work. Ordering was simple.
On to SharedInk.com. I tried first to upload my native images, but they only give you 50MB of storage space, and I used it all up after only uploading 16 photos. I got a page saying I could purchase more space, but I balked at the price and closed out of the window. Screw that, I figured.
About an hour later, I get an e-mail from Chris Hickman, the pres, saying he noticed I had run out of space and he was sorry for that. So he upped my available space to 150MB at no charge to me. Wow. That kind of service seriously impresses me, so I went back to give them another chance.
By now I'd figured a simpler route would be to upload an iPhoto PDF (remember I'm just doing a quick test book--if I go with them for the real thing, they do allow designing your own pages and uploading them as separate jpgs, which is certainly the route I'd choose for the final, pro product). They don't support PDFs unless they've been created with iPhoto or Aperture, which I find a bit odd, but okay. I can play that way. I upload my iPhoto PDF and notice the cover is cropping really badly--completely off--in their preview. It's fine in the PDF. The rest of the pages are fine. Just the front cover is going wonky after upload.
I e-mailed them to ask for help, because I couldn't find an answer on their help page. The next morning I had an e-mail from Chris again explaining the problem (stupid new version of iPhoto) and letting me know he'd fixed it for me. I could check the preview again and order. Which I've done. A bit more pricey, but I hear the quality is a bit better. We shall see.
SharedInk's layout capabilities online, I should note, are just horrid. Very clunky and severely limited. But they are big supporters of letting you create your own layouts in whatever program you want, so that gives them bonus points in my book.
On to Viovio.com. I truly got so annoyed with their online interface I broke down and set up my own book layout in InDesign. I followed their instructions on PDF creation and uploaded my PDF. The preview looked odd after I uploaded it, but I figured, "I followed instructions, it should be okay."
After my order last night, I received an e-mail this morning saying they noticed the page bleed looked a little off--did they want me to proceed with the order? I replied back saying I'd followed their posted instructions and had been concerned by the preview, but I want to ensure the book prints correctly...so how should I fix it? Here's where Viovio shone: I got a reply back from a real person within the hour helping me figure out what to do. Not only that, but I've gone back and forth three times--all through e-mail, with the same support person, even!--just to clarify I don't eff anything up, and each response I've gotten back has been within the hour. That's just...unheard of (except for here ).
So for superquick support service, Viovio rocks. For going a bit above and beyond your expectations on service, SharedInk gets a cookie. Blurb's cookie is only for an easier layout interface (which Viovio and SharedInk both lack).
Once I get all three books, I'll make my final call and follow up here on quality differences. But I'm already leaning more toward Viovio and SharedInk because of the outstanding service.
WinkFlash was having a $19.95 flat book rate -- up to 100 pages for $19.95. I couldn't get a book together fast enough at the time, but my daughter who scrapbooks (digital letter size) had downsized all her pages to 150 dpi just to archive them.
When I told her about the flat rate book deal she set up a book with two scrapbook pages to a page. She received her books quite promptly. I checked, and they actually had a dot screen! (shaking my head trying to figure out how they do all this one off stuff on a "real" press). The hardcover was fine, nothing fancy, it had the title embossed on it. The interior pages were of a nice heavy quality, and the printing was acceptable.
She got an email with another flat rate offer, and I decided to make a book myself.
I will have to say I had a lot of problems with the online interface. The interface would not "save" my project. When I tried to go back to my project there was nothing there. But when I went to create a book, the interface said I had a previous book and that's how I got back to it. I "lost" my book about 4 times and had to recreate it. My photos which I uploaded were fine, just the creating the book part was problematic for me.
Now, I'm quite concerned that I may have lost a few of the last pages because when I went to put the pages in my SmugMug albums in the same order that I did the book a few images weren't in the "saved" book.
I was in such a hurry to get the book done before the deadline that I'm a little fuzzy about all this due to lack of sleep and working nonstop to get the pages together.
I'm thinking now that probably I made my individual photos too large and should have allowed more room between them. I did try various layouts (if you check the album you'll see) to see what works best.
A good test of the print quality will be the gradations and flat tones I used. In any case if it's not perfect, I'm sure my mom would love to receive it as a gift. She doesn't have a trained eye and will think it's just fine. So nothing lost so to speak.
Blurb proof book
We did a proof book with Blurb and we were very pleased, as was the bride and her family. I believe we are going to include this with our top wedding packages from now on. It looked really good, here's the link to the gallery we have in our info section - http://strattonphotography.smugmug.com/gallery/3765758/1/216766417
This one was 10x13, it held over 1400 images at 12 per page (it was well over 100 pages), and we paid about $100 for it with shipping. It was easy to put together too, we just made contact sheets in photoshop to the deminsions we wanted and then inserted them in order. We put a little bio on the inside flap and included print order info too.
On to Viovio.com. I truly got so annoyed with their online interface I broke down and set up my own book layout in InDesign. I followed their instructions on PDF creation and uploaded my PDF. The preview looked odd after I uploaded it, but I figured, "I followed instructions, it should be okay."
After my order last night, I received an e-mail this morning saying they noticed the page bleed looked a little off--did they want me to proceed with the order? I replied back saying I'd followed their posted instructions and had been concerned by the preview, but I want to ensure the book prints correctly...so how should I fix it? Here's where Viovio shone: I got a reply back from a real person within the hour helping me figure out what to do. Not only that, but I've gone back and forth three times--all through e-mail, with the same support person, even!--just to clarify I don't eff anything up, and each response I've gotten back has been within the hour. That's just...unheard of (except for here ).
Llywellyn, now you know why I signed up for Smugmug. I was already familiar with viovio.com's customer service performance. Smugmug had that same feel. Customer service really does much of the marketing for a company.
"Just because no one understands you doesn't mean you're an artist."
Books arrived!
Just a follow up on the two photo books I created and received from WinkFlash and Blurb.
Both books were created in Photoshop CS2. Each page was then saved as a .jpg file and uploaded.
The WinkFlash book was created in sRGB as requested.
The Blurb book was created in CMYK (not as requested )
I've worked in graphic arts design and production for many years. When I read both FAQs on both sites and they both claimed to use a genuine 4 color offset press I had serious doubts about creating my pages in sRGB.
The WinkFlash book reinforced those concerns. MOST of the pages were about as I expected, and the ones I thought for sure would not convert -- did not. However, all in all, I was extremely impressed with the quality of the printing (of both books).
The Blurb book I created in CMYK, then converted to sRGB. I was stunned to see some color shifts when I converted from CMYK to sRGB, usually I don't see any at all.
All in all the Blurb colors matched better. I had no problems with blacks being too dark (set up in CMYK with 5% black for the white point on the "eyedropper" and 95% for the black point).
The slip cover for the Blurb book is attractive, but gets fingerprints easily and falls off easily. Without the slip cover there is no identification on the binding. WinkFlash had the title of the book stamped on the cover.
Of course these books did not share the same ratio, and layouts had to be done separately for each ratio. I have one more book to make, Shutterfly. It too, has a different ratio!
You can see a preview of the blurb book in my signature below.
My brother-in-law and myself took our S2000's to Hallett Motor Racing Circuit. I ended up buying a CD-ROM of images of both of us from the track photographer (and, luckily, got the best images of me on a track ever -- the only photos of me I've actually been happy with). I took those photos and made a Blurb book of them.
In retrospect I should have made a book of photos I took. For one, that guy used a Panasonic high-end P&S. The camera itself is actually quite nice, but its relatively obvious that its not the same as a Mark II or 40D with L-glass. There's a bit more noise than I'd want and the colors don't "pop" the same.
While its been hard to compare that book to ones from Asuka Book with photos I took, I do have some conclusions.
The Blurb book is inexpensive, and the editing software was relatively easy to use, but cumbersome in a few key spots. The print quality seems good but not as good as Asuka Book. A strong point for Blurb is how flexible they are in page counts, whereas with Asuka you are forced to 20, 30, 40 pages, etc., but cannot do 34 pages. I really don't like paper dust jackets and much prefer the full-bleed cover from Asuka. Paper jackets just get in the way and tear.
All in all, for serious books I'll stick with Asuka. But for everyday books that I don't need the best quality the Blurb would do fine.
Speaking of, what is meant by a "monograph"? I've seen this somewhere else as well: http://www.rollingsculpture.com/ (and boy, wouldn't I love to be able to command the prices he does for car photography!!!)
I think that a "monograph" is a project.
I assume that a "project" is a sequence of photos following a guide line whichever it is.
I am not lecturing you, oh no. As you know English is not my native language so ...
I have three projects running. But I wouldn't like to write about them as it is not within the target of this thread.
To All,
Great thread and lot's of good comments. I can tell you about Blurb because I have several books I've had printed by them. Even sold a few to friends and family.
I am very pleased with the quality of the printing and binding. They give you a great program "BookSmart" (free download) that guides you through the process of building a book. Now you can also upload a PDF version, but I haven't tried that. I think their photographic books are their specialty. The software is very powerful and allows a great number of templates with the photo and text sizes laid out on the page for you, but you can modify their templates and create almost any look and feel that you want for your images and text.
I first created a short 15 page book to test the color space. I found a few problems with my photos and calibrated my monitor and the problems went away. You should read their FAQ's on photo quality and follow the directions. I downloaded the ICC file for their printer, but don't think I had to.
I have ordered (or some of my friends have ordered) the softcover, hard cover with dust jacket and the image wrap versions. All are great quality. I am really impressed with the image wrap. They have a great technique to bring out the color and meld it into the canvas of the cover. I saw someone mention earlier about the spine and I had the name of the book and my name on the spine of both hard cover books. Blurb provides a small web site to market your books. One really cool feature is that you can turn on the ability to preview the entire book (the default is the first 15 pages).
I recently created a version of my book for my daughter and created a special dedication with several pages of pictures of her as a child. Where else could you create a one off book of 80 pages for less than $80?
I can't vouch for them, but these 2 places look promising for getting photo books published. The first one is called Picaboo and it looks like it's more about books that you'd send to grandma (which isn't to say that they don't look nice). The other one is called Blurb and it looks like a more serious book publishing site. You can print all kinds of books on blurb and it looks like you can do 440 pages in a book for only $80 which sounds pretty good.
Mac users - don't waste your time on Picaboo - yet. They have Mac software in beta, but nothing available right now.
As for Blurb, be sure to read their forums - she seems to be much like the little girl with the curl in the middle of her forehead (rhymes with horrid). From what I see posted there, many users have had problems with quality - others were quite happy. Most people report their seriously flawed books were reprinted at no cost, but from what I gather, a rather large percentage do need to be reprinted. May be a problem for anyone working to a deadline?
... You can create your own layouts in photoshop and then download them as jpgs, so you're really only as limited as your creativity...
Darci,
Have you (or anyone else) used text in the Photoshop-to-Kodak Gallery books process?
Generally, the JPGs I've seen on the internet that included text look very bad - a major concern, for me, because my photo book will have a lot of text.
Comments
www.zxstudios.com
http://creativedragonstudios.smugmug.com
when I got the 11X13 announcement in my inbox, I was THRILLED!!!!!!!
Well, Lynne, I guess this solves the problems that I PMed you about a few weeks ago!!!
- RE
www.rossfrazier.com/blog
My Equipment:
Canon EOS 5D w/ battery grip
Backup Canon EOS 30D | Canon 28 f/1.8 | Canon 24 f/1.4L Canon 50mm f/1.4 | Sigma 50mm f/2.8 EX DI Macro | Canon 70-200 F/2.8 L | Canon 580 EX II Flash and Canon 550 EX Flash
Apple MacBook Pro with dual 24" monitors
Domke F-802 bag and a Shootsac by Jessica Claire
Infiniti QX4
The program is extremely simple to use- simply drag and drop from Iphoto galleries. Pic your page layout i.e. cover, text, 1 to 6 photos per page.
Printed on what seems good quality paper and and cover is canvas type hardcover.
It is a bit more than blurb ( I think I will try one of theirs next) with a 28 page book costing about $40 with shipping.
There are a decent number of themes but not a lot of page background pattern or color options.
Only real negative is that a few pictures have a rolled appearance to them, where you can see faint vertical lines throughout the photo. This only occured on two of the large one picture/ page layouts.
With that said some of the smaller pictures with noise actually turned out great.
I would use again but will try others to establish a quality vs price baseline.
I second that smugmug should move to have books as an option as well as calendars and greeting cards.
Aaron Newman
Website:www.CapturingLightandEmotion.com
Facebook: Capturing Light and Emotion
I too have heard great things about the iphoto books, and I think they actually get them printed at mypublisher, that's what I've heard from various sources. but they get expensive (as does mypublisher) if you get too many pages. I might have to try them though just to see, cause I just got my mac and haven't used all of it's cool features yet...
- RE
www.rossfrazier.com/blog
My Equipment:
Canon EOS 5D w/ battery grip
Backup Canon EOS 30D | Canon 28 f/1.8 | Canon 24 f/1.4L Canon 50mm f/1.4 | Sigma 50mm f/2.8 EX DI Macro | Canon 70-200 F/2.8 L | Canon 580 EX II Flash and Canon 550 EX Flash
Apple MacBook Pro with dual 24" monitors
Domke F-802 bag and a Shootsac by Jessica Claire
Infiniti QX4
http://www.youtube.com/user/NYCFilmmakersGroup
http://www.meetup.com/NYC-Filmmakers-and-Actors-Meetup-Group/
http://www.chrislaudermilkphoto.com/
Just got my book from Blurb and was shocked with the poor quality!
- Every single page was tinged blue - purple (even the black and whites)
- Large (2 inch) red streak right through the middle of a black and white
- Grainy looking quality. You could do better by right clicking a web image and printing it to a an old HP desk jet!
- red & purple blotchy looking skin tones
This is bar none the worst printing I have seen in years. The prices at blurb are low but, but not as low as their quality & quality control.This makes me very sad. I just shot a wedding and was hoping to put together a proof book using blurb. :cry
Illuminate Photography ~ My personal smugmug site~ My blog
They will do a reprint for free.
Explain to them the problems and they will do a reprint. Maybe due to the really lousy job I might also ask for a on the spot quality check!
Derek
What did Cinderella say when she left the photo shop? "One day my prints will come."
Waiting on a CS reply from Blurb.
The paper quality seemed a little less than perfect also. I have had stuff done at Mpix with much better results. I was just trying to save a few bucks and as they say "got what I paid for"
I'm coming late to this thread, but I've used Kodak Gallery, Picaboo and tried Mypublisher. Hands down, Kodak is the best. Picaboo may have more layout options, but Kodak's paper, binding, and photo quality was far and above the others. Until I find something better, I print all my photobooks on Kodak. You can create your own layouts in photoshop and then download them as jpgs, so you're really only as limited as your creativity.
Another option is K&K photo lab. They have custom books and prints of great quality.
If you'd like to see a wedding photobook I put together through Kodakgallery, let me know and I'll send you a preview. I show it to all my prospective clients as an option to traditional prints, and I haven't had a single couple choose a standard print album yet!
Darci
www.kazuriimages.com
Just read through this entire length of forum posts because my fiance and I are currently designing photo books for Christmas presents (we each have one neice and tons of photos of each one). I was tempted to go with Blurb given the price, however I've seen way too much varied reviews of their quality. I've never heard a bad thing about Asuka, and my own experience with them has always been top-notch. I'm going to stick with Asuka.
Blurb is indeed really inexpensive, but I think that is probably part of their problem. Maybe they're too cheap. I also tend to agree that the iPhoto books are very easy to design, but sometimes have a banding issue, and I'm not fond of the canvas covers. I tend not to use them, and I'm a big Apple fan.
Another photo book vendor I've found is www.forbeyon.com. Our wedding album will be done through them. Very expensive, but holy cow what an impressive binding, page weight and reproduction.
A former sports shooter
Follow me at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/bjurasz/
My Etsy store: https://www.etsy.com/shop/mercphoto?ref=hdr_shop_menu
I've used Picaboo.com and Pictureslide.com several times, also. Picaboo.com was the most expensive and at the time had the least binding options. I wanted a full color cover. They didn't have it at the time. The quality was good, though. Pictureslide.com had the lowest quality. The user interfaces were the best and easiest when using Picaboo.com and Pictureslide.com.
www.feliciabphotography.com
I am new to this board and have found it so helpful in my search for a good photobook site. I am a scrapbooker, and have decided to go digital. I thought that the idea to lay it out in powerpoint first was such a great idea! Thank you!
My question is, how do I do that? I don't see the option to save it as a graphic.
Also, is there a special way to save it so that it does not get distorted when it's a full page in the photo book?
Thank you in advance!
Janet
I don't know anything about powerpoint but we've been doing all of our wedding album layouts in photoshop and then saving them as level 10 jpegs. We design 12x24 at 300 dpi, 12x24 is our largest album, but then we can downsize from there to 10x10 or 8x8 and it still looks great.
I first began with Blurb. Their program is okay to use, and I really liked its connection with SmugMug because it made my images super easy to find (I need to fix my folder nomenclature on my computer very badly). I had to "trick" the program a couple times to get the layout I wanted if it wasn't offered, which was usually a full-bleed image that didn't cover the entire page--perhaps a portrait image on a landscape page that I wanted centered or on one half or the other. I got around this by choosing the full-page layout and then zooming out (with multiple mouse clicks) until I had the size I wanted, then I moved the image left or right on the page for placement. A PITA, but I got it to work. Ordering was simple.
On to SharedInk.com. I tried first to upload my native images, but they only give you 50MB of storage space, and I used it all up after only uploading 16 photos. I got a page saying I could purchase more space, but I balked at the price and closed out of the window. Screw that, I figured.
About an hour later, I get an e-mail from Chris Hickman, the pres, saying he noticed I had run out of space and he was sorry for that. So he upped my available space to 150MB at no charge to me. Wow.
By now I'd figured a simpler route would be to upload an iPhoto PDF (remember I'm just doing a quick test book--if I go with them for the real thing, they do allow designing your own pages and uploading them as separate jpgs, which is certainly the route I'd choose for the final, pro product). They don't support PDFs unless they've been created with iPhoto or Aperture, which I find a bit odd, but okay. I can play that way. I upload my iPhoto PDF and notice the cover is cropping really badly--completely off--in their preview. It's fine in the PDF. The rest of the pages are fine. Just the front cover is going wonky after upload.
I e-mailed them to ask for help, because I couldn't find an answer on their help page. The next morning I had an e-mail from Chris again explaining the problem (stupid new version of iPhoto) and letting me know he'd fixed it for me. I could check the preview again and order. Which I've done. A bit more pricey, but I hear the quality is a bit better. We shall see.
SharedInk's layout capabilities online, I should note, are just horrid. Very clunky and severely limited. But they are big supporters of letting you create your own layouts in whatever program you want, so that gives them bonus points in my book.
On to Viovio.com. I truly got so annoyed with their online interface I broke down and set up my own book layout in InDesign. I followed their instructions on PDF creation and uploaded my PDF. The preview looked odd after I uploaded it, but I figured, "I followed instructions, it should be okay."
After my order last night, I received an e-mail this morning saying they noticed the page bleed looked a little off--did they want me to proceed with the order? I replied back saying I'd followed their posted instructions and had been concerned by the preview, but I want to ensure the book prints correctly...so how should I fix it? Here's where Viovio shone: I got a reply back from a real person within the hour helping me figure out what to do. Not only that, but I've gone back and forth three times--all through e-mail, with the same support person, even!--just to clarify I don't eff anything up, and each response I've gotten back has been within the hour. That's just...unheard of (except for here
So for superquick support service, Viovio rocks. For going a bit above and beyond your expectations on service, SharedInk gets a cookie. Blurb's cookie is only for an easier layout interface (which Viovio and SharedInk both lack).
Once I get all three books, I'll make my final call and follow up here on quality differences. But I'm already leaning more toward Viovio and SharedInk because of the outstanding service.
dak.smugmug.com
Being a graphic designer with very definite page layout ideas I did all my pages in photoshop.
If you are interested in seeing the pages you can see them here:
http://dee
golden.smugmug.com/gallery/3781849#218126191
WinkFlash was having a $19.95 flat book rate -- up to 100 pages for $19.95. I couldn't get a book together fast enough at the time, but my daughter who scrapbooks (digital letter size) had downsized all her pages to 150 dpi just to archive them.
When I told her about the flat rate book deal she set up a book with two scrapbook pages to a page. She received her books quite promptly. I checked, and they actually had a dot screen! (shaking my head trying to figure out how they do all this one off stuff on a "real" press). The hardcover was fine, nothing fancy, it had the title embossed on it. The interior pages were of a nice heavy quality, and the printing was acceptable.
She got an email with another flat rate offer, and I decided to make a book myself.
I will have to say I had a lot of problems with the online interface. The interface would not "save" my project. When I tried to go back to my project there was nothing there. But when I went to create a book, the interface said I had a previous book and that's how I got back to it. I "lost" my book about 4 times and had to recreate it. My photos which I uploaded were fine, just the creating the book part was problematic for me.
Now, I'm quite concerned that I may have lost a few of the last pages because when I went to put the pages in my SmugMug albums in the same order that I did the book a few images weren't in the "saved" book.
I was in such a hurry to get the book done before the deadline that I'm a little fuzzy about all this due to lack of sleep and working nonstop to get the pages together.
I'm thinking now that probably I made my individual photos too large and should have allowed more room between them. I did try various layouts (if you check the album you'll see) to see what works best.
A good test of the print quality will be the gradations and flat tones I used. In any case if it's not perfect, I'm sure my mom would love to receive it as a gift. She doesn't have a trained eye and will think it's just fine. So nothing lost so to speak.
http://www.twitter.com/deegolden
We did a proof book with Blurb and we were very pleased, as was the bride and her family. I believe we are going to include this with our top wedding packages from now on. It looked really good, here's the link to the gallery we have in our info section - http://strattonphotography.smugmug.com/gallery/3765758/1/216766417
This one was 10x13, it held over 1400 images at 12 per page (it was well over 100 pages), and we paid about $100 for it with shipping. It was easy to put together too, we just made contact sheets in photoshop to the deminsions we wanted and then inserted them in order. We put a little bio on the inside flap and included print order info too.
I'm putting another one together today.
Llywellyn, now you know why I signed up for Smugmug. I was already familiar with viovio.com's customer service performance. Smugmug had that same feel. Customer service really does much of the marketing for a company.
www.feliciabphotography.com
Just a follow up on the two photo books I created and received from WinkFlash and Blurb.
Both books were created in Photoshop CS2. Each page was then saved as a .jpg file and uploaded.
The WinkFlash book was created in sRGB as requested.
The Blurb book was created in CMYK (not as requested
I've worked in graphic arts design and production for many years. When I read both FAQs on both sites and they both claimed to use a genuine 4 color offset press I had serious doubts about creating my pages in sRGB.
The WinkFlash book reinforced those concerns. MOST of the pages were about as I expected, and the ones I thought for sure would not convert -- did not. However, all in all, I was extremely impressed with the quality of the printing (of both books).
The Blurb book I created in CMYK, then converted to sRGB. I was stunned to see some color shifts when I converted from CMYK to sRGB, usually I don't see any at all.
All in all the Blurb colors matched better. I had no problems with blacks being too dark (set up in CMYK with 5% black for the white point on the "eyedropper" and 95% for the black point).
The slip cover for the Blurb book is attractive, but gets fingerprints easily and falls off easily. Without the slip cover there is no identification on the binding. WinkFlash had the title of the book stamped on the cover.
Of course these books did not share the same ratio, and layouts had to be done separately for each ratio. I have one more book to make, Shutterfly. It too, has a different ratio!
You can see a preview of the blurb book in my signature below.
http://www.twitter.com/deegolden
In retrospect I should have made a book of photos I took. For one, that guy used a Panasonic high-end P&S. The camera itself is actually quite nice, but its relatively obvious that its not the same as a Mark II or 40D with L-glass. There's a bit more noise than I'd want and the colors don't "pop" the same.
While its been hard to compare that book to ones from Asuka Book with photos I took, I do have some conclusions.
The Blurb book is inexpensive, and the editing software was relatively easy to use, but cumbersome in a few key spots. The print quality seems good but not as good as Asuka Book. A strong point for Blurb is how flexible they are in page counts, whereas with Asuka you are forced to 20, 30, 40 pages, etc., but cannot do 34 pages. I really don't like paper dust jackets and much prefer the full-bleed cover from Asuka. Paper jackets just get in the way and tear.
All in all, for serious books I'll stick with Asuka. But for everyday books that I don't need the best quality the Blurb would do fine.
A former sports shooter
Follow me at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/bjurasz/
My Etsy store: https://www.etsy.com/shop/mercphoto?ref=hdr_shop_menu
Is this of any help ?
http://www.rollingsculpture.com/
(and boy, wouldn't I love to be able to command the prices he does for car photography!!!)
A former sports shooter
Follow me at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/bjurasz/
My Etsy store: https://www.etsy.com/shop/mercphoto?ref=hdr_shop_menu
I think that a "monograph" is a project.
I assume that a "project" is a sequence of photos following a guide line whichever it is.
I am not lecturing you, oh no. As you know English is not my native language so ...
I have three projects running. But I wouldn't like to write about them as it is not within the target of this thread.
Great thread and lot's of good comments. I can tell you about Blurb because I have several books I've had printed by them. Even sold a few to friends and family.
I am very pleased with the quality of the printing and binding. They give you a great program "BookSmart" (free download) that guides you through the process of building a book. Now you can also upload a PDF version, but I haven't tried that. I think their photographic books are their specialty. The software is very powerful and allows a great number of templates with the photo and text sizes laid out on the page for you, but you can modify their templates and create almost any look and feel that you want for your images and text.
I first created a short 15 page book to test the color space. I found a few problems with my photos and calibrated my monitor and the problems went away. You should read their FAQ's on photo quality and follow the directions. I downloaded the ICC file for their printer, but don't think I had to.
I have ordered (or some of my friends have ordered) the softcover, hard cover with dust jacket and the image wrap versions. All are great quality. I am really impressed with the image wrap. They have a great technique to bring out the color and meld it into the canvas of the cover. I saw someone mention earlier about the spine and I had the name of the book and my name on the spine of both hard cover books. Blurb provides a small web site to market your books. One really cool feature is that you can turn on the ability to preview the entire book (the default is the first 15 pages).
I recently created a version of my book for my daughter and created a special dedication with several pages of pictures of her as a child. Where else could you create a one off book of 80 pages for less than $80?
My latest Blurb book can be found here: http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/977350
SmugMug: www.randyjacksonimages.com
Email: randyjacksonimages@cox.net
Photography Blog: http://randyonphotography.com
Mac users - don't waste your time on Picaboo - yet. They have Mac software in beta, but nothing available right now.
As for Blurb, be sure to read their forums - she seems to be much like the little girl with the curl in the middle of her forehead (rhymes with horrid). From what I see posted there, many users have had problems with quality - others were quite happy. Most people report their seriously flawed books were reprinted at no cost, but from what I gather, a rather large percentage do need to be reprinted. May be a problem for anyone working to a deadline?
Darci,
Have you (or anyone else) used text in the Photoshop-to-Kodak Gallery books process?
Generally, the JPGs I've seen on the internet that included text look very bad - a major concern, for me, because my photo book will have a lot of text.
Thanks