I was so amped up after my little rant about Blurb, that I went searching for other photo book companies I might check out.
CostCo has partnered with MyPublisher, who I believe have been around for a while. I tried the Windows app. Seems snappy enough, although the layouts are pretty limited.
Picaboo.com cleverly bought the Google ad words "free photobook" and so I actually clicked on an ad for once. What I found was a kind of quirky little company and app that seems to work quite well. And if my investigation of the developers (Codesta) is right, I think it too is written in Java.
Load time is forever and a day, which seems to confirm it. But performance is very good.
Oh, and this was significant: MyPublisher and Picaboo have a feature that is very very clever for doing books. They offer organization/storybook modes that let you drag-and-drop your photos into the right order or even groups of photos for a page before you even start the page layout process. This is really really smart, as one of the biggest pains in using Shutterfly and Blurb was having to dig around and find all the photos for each page. Pre-sorting is a simple yet brilliant idea.
So, a couple of alternatives. No -- no SmugMug integration. So I guess you should just make sure you have AlbumFetcher handy. :-}
yea, the app has a pretty slow response time but its got some nice features. I think more RAM may help a bit. I didn't sign up for a coupon in time but I'm hoping someone has an extra one Please PM me if you do. I have a finished book and hoping to save some money on the 2nd copy. I'll hold my verdict after I see the final product.
Anyway, I discovered this halfway through my book - Don't import pictures. You can just drag and drop from a windows folder to the appropriate frame - it works well with Picasa. I pick out the pictures I want to use, export it to a temp folder, and then drag and drop.
MyPublisher isn't a bad option - decent quality, but from what I've read, people prefer blurb over MyPublisher. I figure I'd give them some time to improve their software and we'll see.
Yes, ridiculously slow for me too and I don't really think my computer is that slow. (1.7MHz Pentium M w/ 1.0GB RAM).
It's gotta be Java. I don't think it was meant for this kind of image/graphic manipulation.
Anyways, I just *finally* finished a 21-page book. What an ordeal. About a week ago I had a free code for a Shutterfly book (an incentive for migrating over my 2 photos from the soon-to-close Sony Imagestation).
So I culled through a years' worth of photos down to 200 "good ones", and then had to deal with uploading the ones I wanted to Shutterfly. Yes, that was a pain (the Shutterfly uploader actually kept dying, so I ended up uploading to Phanfare and then having *them* transfer to Shutterfly. Ridiculous.)
BUT... once the photos were there, the web application was nice and snappy (UNLIKE Blurb), and while it sucked not being able to drag-and-drop photos, there seemed to be more layouts friendly to simply photo books (no captions or text), again, unlike Blurb.
But I won't gripe about layouts. That's all personal style and how much the book company wants to "help" users make pretty books.
What I will gripe about is how horrible the BookSmart app was. I must've wasted an hour because clicks did not register. Clicks like highlighting a photo so I could adjust the crop. Clicks to select a page to change the layout. Clicks to move to the next page. It was really really frustrating, and if I wasn't getting a book for free (and what's with UPS shipping only? What's wrong with ye olde USPS?), I wouldn't have trudged through.
Heck, at a certain point it didn't even feel worth it for a free book.
But I do want to see the quality. The Shutterfly book I got (which came wicked fast via First Class US Mail like 2 days later in great shape) was nice, although upon a close examination of the binding you could see that it was nicely printed sheets but they were all glued to a center spine. It wasn't a fancy bound book. But hey, it's $30. That's not too bad. (And I wonder if Blurb is any different. I realize now that they're doing dustcovers so that they avoid the problem of printing covers. Shutterfly gets around this by using covers w/ cut-out "peek-a-boo" holes, which actually is a nice effect for photo books.
But even if Blurb's print quality is way better, for the purposes of Christmas gifts to my son's grandmothers, I really don't care. I want it to be fast, and I want it to be easy. Despite the upload and picture picking pains, Shutterfly was both fast and easy.
If they live up to the hype, I'm sure the Blurb book quality will be great. And this might be good for Pros that want to sell books.
But if I was a Pro, I would *hate* the extra time and frustration it takes to use just use this app. As Elysium states, compared to Photoshop, this thing is a slug. And it would drive me *mad* trying to deal with this on a regular basis.
I can't imaging trying to "lay out" a real book with text and such into the tool. Maybe the automatic importer would be the way to go there.
But man, most Pros probably have InDesign with their Adobe Creative Suite. Lay it out there and print it at Lulu.com or something. Hey, you can get an ISBN number from them too. And they can do casewrap (images are actually bound to the cover, as opposed to a dust-jacket) bindings. Nice! :-}
Blurb does not seem yo be honoring the promo code. Uploaded my book this morning. Went to order and when i entered the code that was given to me 11-07-2007 it said, "The promotion code is not valid. Please check that you've entered promotion code correctly." Well I copied and pasted the code so it had to be entered correctly. I sent them an e-mail this morning and no response. Any ideas on how to get them to honor the promo code?
Blurb does not seem yo be honoring the promo code. Uploaded my book this morning. Went to order and when i entered the code that was given to me 11-07-2007 it said, "The promotion code is not valid. Please check that you've entered promotion code correctly." Well I copied and pasted the code so it had to be entered correctly. I sent them an e-mail this morning and no response. Any ideas on how to get them to honor the promo code?
I ordered a book and entered my code last night and it was honored. Hopefully someone got back with you before the deadline.
Is their BookSmart program ridiculously slow for anyone else? My computer hasn't been top of the line for years (P4 3.2, 1 gig ram) but processing RAW files and using photoshop is generally pain free, yet this book program CRAWLS doing something as simple as dragging a photo to move it an inch.
I started my book last night, downloading the images directly into BookSmart from my SmugMug account. It did take awhile to download all 600 images from the galleries I selected, but after that the speed of display, resizing and moving the images from page to page was relatively good most of the time. I'm running the program on my Pentium M 1.75GHz 1GB RAM laptop.
My only complaint was I wish the program gave move control over the layout.
Is their BookSmart program ridiculously slow for anyone else? My computer hasn't been top of the line for years (P4 3.2, 1 gig ram) but processing RAW files and using photoshop is generally pain free, yet this book program CRAWLS doing something as simple as dragging a photo to move it an inch.
I'm running an old Pentium 4 with 256 Mb and Booksmart ran fine. No slower than expected. In fact, I was quite impressed. Produced a 64 page book in no time. The whole process was so fine I commented.
My only complaint was I wish the program gave move control over the layout.
If you're talking about shifting pix around in the layout... it does. Drag and drop on the picturebar at the bottom. Drag a shot to a new place and the whole layout reshuffles itself.
NOTE: There was a very recent upgrade to Booksmart. (Last week I think it was.) That may be the difference.
I have been having trouble with Blurb customer service though. The e-mail verification is not working for me and, after 3 or 4 e-mails (providing an alternative e-mail address) AND a posting on the forum, I still have no response after several days. :splat
All in all I think it's a winner. I'm just waiting to see what my books turn out like??
Strangely, the few experiences I've had thus far with clients order prints from SM the main complaint has been shipping time. Five weeks in one case!
Now to Blurb:
I ordered my books last Sunday -- late afternoon. As I've said in the link below, the software was pretty-much flawless.
The books shipped UPS regular ground service (supposedly the worst choice) Wednesday. (I call that 2-day turnaround.)
And they arrived here, Southern Ontario, at 16:30h Friday!
NO taxes. NO brokerage fee!
I've still not heard from Blurb customer service regarding my e-mail verification problem. Thankfully nothing went weird because I'm not receiving any e-mails from them.
But the whole experinece has FAR exceeded expectations.
I'll be ordering more in the New Year.
And Thanks SmugMug for the great lead AND the great deal!!!
To start off our new partnership with Blurb, they are giving SmugMug customers 500 coupon codes for a free book!
To get your coupon code, go and download the Blurb software and create an account from this page: www.blurb.com/partner/smugmug The coupon code will come in an automated response email after you register.
Once you get the coupon, you are golden. However, you must purchase the book by Nov 20, 2007.
FINE PRINT:
** Coupon code is valued at $29.95
** Only 1 coupon code per SmugMug customer
** If you have problems getting the coupon code, please post here, I'll get you sorted out
Thanks!
Markham
DOH! just seen this too late!
Pity such great offers can't be sent as messages like other alerts:cry
Just WOW!
Wanted to post as I just got my Blurb book using the free coupon. I had made one book previously with My Publisher and was very, very disappointed. Used Booksmart 1.9 to build my book which only took a few hours to set up.
Received my book today and I was just floored. From the dust jacket to the photos within, the quality is just supurb - especially at this price point. Crushes all other do-it-yourself books I've seen. I'll be ordering lots more copies now as gifts for family and can't wait to build more books. I may try to make my own layouts next time as theirs is somewhat limited.
E
Another WOW from the UK
I would just like to concur with the previous post - Superb quality, color good, binding good, price good, delivery etc - what more can I say.
EDIT:-Of course thank you to Blurb for giving me a free book )
My sister just tried to order my book. She entered the site using the link in
the share email from Blurb. After clicking "order" it asked her for a user name
and password and to register so she backed out. What gives? Can't the public
order private books?
My sister just tried to order my book. She entered the site using the link in
the share email from Blurb. After clicking "order" it asked her for a user name
and password and to register so she backed out. What gives? Can't the public
order private books?
Hey Allen,
Yep, currently Blurb makes all customers register for an account to be able to buy a book. You don't have to download the software, but you have to create an account.
I have brought this up to them as something they should change. We don't like that policy either. They are looking into it, but I can't promise you anything.
As soon as I get more details on this subject from them, I will post an update.
My sister just tried to order my book. She entered the site using the link in
the share email from Blurb. After clicking "order" it asked her for a user name
and password and to register so she backed out. What gives? Can't the public
order private books?
There are many sites where you need to register in order to place an order. I've ordered from sites that don't require it, but it seems that a log in is required more often than not. So I guess the requirement to register doesn't surprise me that much.
What seems odd to me is that when you register blurb assumes that you want to create a book (in that the screen says "register to download Blurb BookSmart).
I'd also be interested in hearing the reasons behind the screen heading for registration given that it appears that buyers of our books need to register to purchase.
But I won't gripe about layouts. That's all personal style and how much the book company wants to "help" users make pretty books.
I forgot. I do have to gripe about one thing. Shutterfly knows its audience. The layout I used (one of their defaults) was designed for the 3x4 photo ratio. So since I've been shooting with the S3 that replaced our lost/stolen Digital Rebel (300D), all of our photos just fit perfectly.
Blurb's templates are designed for 3x2 ratio (SLR) photos. So I ended up having to crop and fiddle with the photos and layouts a *lot*.
I suspect that Shutterfly has more point-and-shoot customers, and Blurb has more 3x2 shooters. Still, it'd be nice if you could choose 3x4 layouts vs 3x2, and vice-versa.
Anyways, that aside, the Blurb binding *is* does seem a little more solid than Shutterfly's. The pages are stitched together, so it does look like it will last longer. However the quality is not perfect. Trimming on a few of the pages wasn't quite right.
Additionally, dust jackets suck. It was printed nicely enough, but dust jackets are such a hassle. Shutterfly's "peekaboo" design really does work better. Or I would have liked the option of Lulu's "casewrap" option. (Where a photograph w/ title, etc. is laminated to the cover. But I imagine this is not as easily or cheaply automated.)
Oh, one last thing, and probably very important to the pros out there. It seemed like the Shutterfly book's photos were much "warmer" than the Blurb book's. Going back to the original photos (well, as viewed on my wife's MacBook Pro), I was surprised to see that many of the originals actually were a bit washed-out or overexposed.
So Shutterfly must apply some filters to the photos, but the end result is that I was actually happier with the photos in the Shutterfly book.
Blurb's templates are designed for 3x2 ratio (SLR) photos. So I ended up having to crop and fiddle with the photos and layouts a *lot*.
Hmm, I noticed just the opposite with Blurb. I had a choice of 8x10 or 10x8 books, both of which are sized closer to P&S images than my dSLR images. I was wishing they offered 8x12 and 12x8 sized books. I would have loved pages completely filled with my images without having to crop them. Since cropping was required to fill the page, I ended up with black bars either above, below or both above and below my images.
Additionally, dust jackets suck. It was printed nicely enough, but dust jackets are such a hassle. Shutterfly's "peekaboo" design really does work better. Or I would have liked the option of Lulu's "casewrap" option. (Where a photograph w/ title, etc. is laminated to the cover. But I imagine this is not as easily or cheaply automated.)
I don't mind the dust jacket, and I was actually pleased with how this one turned out, however it would have been nice to have at least something printed on the actual spine of the book. I don't like the "peekaboo" design, however the "casewrap" option sounds nice. Hopefully Blurb will offer that in the future.
Here is my cover (photo of actual book dust jacket):
I had a headache getting the books from shutterfly, I found uploading each photo to take FOREVER, I went to upload some before heading going out to run an errand, came back a few hours later and they were STILL uploading. I found the layouts quite blahhh and the backgrounds really...umm. to have lots of Junior high school girl appeal. I stuck with the basic black. I didn't find them professional looking, rather something that I had thrown together.
I did order 2 books from shutterfly earlier this summer to have them returned with horrid tints, off color photos and lots of "blurr" I immediatly blamed myself and took some of the blahh looking photos to a local printer to double check the color cast and the sharpness...they were fine. I sent them back, they were reprinted, and they were no better....the time I wasted on these projects was soooo very frustrating.
I found blurb from researching here, I downloaded the booksmart and was really pleased that I could go through bridge and pull the photo right into the book where I wanted. I did have problems with it being responsive to adjusting placement etc, but I did find that more often than not the wrong page was highlighted (especially when I had the two page display up) and as soon as the page that I was trying to edit was selected i had no troubles. The beauty with the blurb books is you are only limited by your imagination, so if you don't like the layout...make your own! Create it in photoshop and upload to a full photo layout page.
In a nutshell, I'll never waste my time with shutterfly again. and Blurb gets my business from now on. I got a code and did a freebie book, which I ordered on the 20th, my code worked, and it's showing that it's due to be finished publishing on the 30th. I am sure it's due to the time of year as well as the free codes given out, because that it a long dely...it wasn't nearly that long with my first order.
Cool. Blurb definitely has a stellar marketing department and this certainly is a solid move on their part! Just check out the positive plug for them in the current issue of American Photo magazine.
I'm in no way affiliated with blurb, but I did order a book a while ago. It arrived fast (within a week of ordering it). The print quality was what I'd expect for a book-- not fine art portfolio but plenty good enough for a quick look-see book.
n.
I wonder if they have plans to move into the fine art portfolio market because that would surely be where many of us have aspirations?
I got a code and did a freebie book, which I ordered on the 20th, my code worked, and it's showing that it's due to be finished publishing on the 30th.
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention. I ordered my book late on the 20th... around 10pm PST. I received shipping confirmation on the 25th saying my book would ship on the 26th and I would receive it the 29th (via UPS Ground) Not bad service saying it was over a holiday weekend and I'm sure a bunch of other people waited to the last minute to order their free book as well.
This time I worked in CMYK and processed my photos. So I was pretty certain of what I'd see when it was printed. I then saved them as RGB and put them in the BookSmart program. It took quite a bit longer to upload than I thought, but after all, it was 40 full color edge to edge images. I ordered mine the very very end of the last day (Nov. 20), and received the book Nov. 28th.
I was quite pleased with the book, I just haven't had the time to compare the printed images with the onscreen version yet.
Some of the colors varied from my WinkFlash book, but that was processed in RGB and as expected, some of the colors shifted.
If I do another book, I will have to shift the margins for left and right hand sides. I left 3/4 inch margin on both sides, but the center of the pages is closer to the binding than I'd like. Just a minor nitpick :-)
I'll bring both books with me to the SmugMug party if anyone local is interested in seeing them.
I ordered a blurb book some time ago and was pretty happy with it.
Since i was trying it out, I used a variety of photos of different resolutions.
The print quality was good, the product delivered on time and in packaging
that would stand up to shipping.
My book is about 20 pages and the production quality is very good.
Some things I would do differently next time. For the cover, I would
create an image that included the title as fonts are a little scarce. Instead of
drag and drop, I'd put all the images into a folder and import them. You can
move the images within booksmart fairly easily. I would be careful about
changing styles mid book--not too forgiving there :eek1
For the small numbers any of us would ever make, Blurb is a great way to
produce a quality product you'd be happy to give to someone as a gift.
Moderator Journeys/Sports/Big Picture :: Need some help with dgrin?
I got my blurb book today. Whilst I haven't used any other companies and I'm not a professional photographer, to me the quality of the book was excellent. I would certainly recommend them and I will be getting a few more copies printed myself
The quality is good, although I was a bit startled to find no name on the actual cover of the book. Yes, the name is on the book jacket, but lose that and the book is unidentifiable. I suppose that's not a huge issue - think I'll try a softcover book the next time. So yes, I'm going to try at least one more book from blurb.
I did log some bugs and enhancement requests on the blurb BookSmart forum. In case any of you had the same or similar issues and want to chime in, here's a list of the entries:
if you're lurking here (and I hope that you are!), please let me know if you'd prefer I report problems to you in some other way than on the blurb BookSmart forum.
The quality is good, although I was a bit startled to find no name on the actual cover of the book. Yes, the name is on the book jacket, but lose that and the book is unidentifiable. I suppose that's not a huge issue - think I'll try a softcover book the next time. So yes, I'm going to try at least one more book from blurb.
I did log some bugs and enhancement requests on the blurb BookSmart forum. In case any of you had the same or similar issues and want to chime in, here's a list of the entries:
Of all of the issues, the inability to easily identify and sort my images by date taken or file name is the most troubling. With the little thumbs shown in what appears to be a random order, I found it took much longer to choose my photos than it shoud have (see screen shots in first bug listed above).
bruceblurb -
if you're lurking here (and I hope that you are!), please let me know if you'd prefer I report problems to you in some other way than on the blurb BookSmart forum.
--- Denise
Well done Denise for raising each of these points both here and on the Blurb Forum. As I mentioned previously I was pleased with my book, but I was looking at the paper, binding and color repro and didn't add any text. The points you raise significantly affect the assembly process, which if it is a pain will certainly detract from using the service.
Hi Denise, our Forums are the right place for comments and suggestions. If you have a specific problem with an order, that should be sent to us via our Order Support here http://www.blurb.com/help/order_support.
We appreciate your feedback. And, since you are a member here, you can always PM me if you have a specific issue that is not being addressed.
The quality is good, although I was a bit startled to find no name on the actual cover of the book. Yes, the name is on the book jacket, but lose that and the book is unidentifiable. I suppose that's not a huge issue - think I'll try a softcover book the next time. So yes, I'm going to try at least one more book from blurb.
I did log some bugs and enhancement requests on the blurb BookSmart forum. In case any of you had the same or similar issues and want to chime in, here's a list of the entries:
Of all of the issues, the inability to easily identify and sort my images by date taken or file name is the most troubling. With the little thumbs shown in what appears to be a random order, I found it took much longer to choose my photos than it shoud have (see screen shots in first bug listed above).
bruceblurb -
if you're lurking here (and I hope that you are!), please let me know if you'd prefer I report problems to you in some other way than on the blurb BookSmart forum.
Hi Denise, our Forums are the right place for comments and suggestions. If you have a specific problem with an order, that should be sent to us via our Order Support here http://www.blurb.com/help/order_support.
We appreciate your feedback. And, since you are a member here, you can always PM me if you have a specific issue that is not being addressed.
I received the book that I ordered 2 hours before the discount deadline. It's my second Blurb book, an 80-page hardcover, 10x8. My first book was a softcover 7x7, 40 pages... I posted a "review" of it a long time ago after I first found out about blurb on this site and put it together right away.
I'm very happy with the new book. I put most of it together in a hurry to get the discount, so I knew it wouldn't be perfect. It's meant to be a prototype I can show people, then I'll fix it up and put in a bulk order when I get at least 10 commitments. The price I can offer it at becomes MUCH more reasonable that way. Didn't get a single individual order for the 7x7 book I made before, but I think I sold over 20 of them when I put in a bulk order. (That was a HUGE number of sales for me).
I think the print quality of the new book is a bit better than the old book. I think I remember reading somewhere that blurb uses different equipment for the smaller books and the larger books, which was one of the reasons I went to a larger format.
The only issues I have with it are:
The dust jacket is very curled and won't stay in place when the book is open. Weakest part of the whole book... just doesn't look professional.
There are a few little splotches on pictures... not really a big deal, but it's a printing issue. I got asked "what's that thing in the background?" a couple times.
A semi-pro photographer pointed out immediately that all the pictures were "off" colorwise. My book has 280 pictures in it... definitely didn't do any soft proofing. I felt the color was MUCH better than my previous book, and I got a lot of comments from other people how crisp and clear the pictures looked. Not the same as a photographic print, but just fine for a book, in my opinion. Just a SLIGHT color cast on some of the pictures, at most. I find deep blue skies to look slightly purple. But I was very happy with the color and the clarity of the pictures.
I wish the booksmart software allowed captions on more of the layouts. Custom layouts in photoshop would be ideal, but I probably wouldn't ever spend the time to do that.
So overall I'm very satisfied with the book... much happier than last time even though I really liked the 7x7 book. I think I'll probably save money and order softcover books in the future, until blurb finds a way to print right onto a hard cover and do away with the cheap looking dust jackets. I'm also looking forward to seeing what improvements they make to BookSmart as time goes on. I don't mind it so much now... I found it easy to use and I didn't run into any major problems. But it can only get better.
Comments
CostCo has partnered with MyPublisher, who I believe have been around for a while. I tried the Windows app. Seems snappy enough, although the layouts are pretty limited.
Picaboo.com cleverly bought the Google ad words "free photobook" and so I actually clicked on an ad for once. What I found was a kind of quirky little company and app that seems to work quite well. And if my investigation of the developers (Codesta) is right, I think it too is written in Java.
Load time is forever and a day, which seems to confirm it. But performance is very good.
Oh, and this was significant: MyPublisher and Picaboo have a feature that is very very clever for doing books. They offer organization/storybook modes that let you drag-and-drop your photos into the right order or even groups of photos for a page before you even start the page layout process. This is really really smart, as one of the biggest pains in using Shutterfly and Blurb was having to dig around and find all the photos for each page. Pre-sorting is a simple yet brilliant idea.
So, a couple of alternatives. No -- no SmugMug integration. So I guess you should just make sure you have AlbumFetcher handy. :-}
Anyway, I discovered this halfway through my book - Don't import pictures. You can just drag and drop from a windows folder to the appropriate frame - it works well with Picasa. I pick out the pictures I want to use, export it to a temp folder, and then drag and drop.
MyPublisher isn't a bad option - decent quality, but from what I've read, people prefer blurb over MyPublisher. I figure I'd give them some time to improve their software and we'll see.
Nope. I finally got my new PC up and running last weekend. I have 4GB of yummy RAM goodness and it was still crawling.
It was valid until the 20th...
Got mine redeemed last week no problem.
http://www.michaelhelbigphotography.com
http://www.thewildpig.blogspot.com
I ordered a book and entered my code last night and it was honored. Hopefully someone got back with you before the deadline.
I started my book last night, downloading the images directly into BookSmart from my SmugMug account. It did take awhile to download all 600 images from the galleries I selected, but after that the speed of display, resizing and moving the images from page to page was relatively good most of the time. I'm running the program on my Pentium M 1.75GHz 1GB RAM laptop.
My only complaint was I wish the program gave move control over the layout.
If you're talking about shifting pix around in the layout... it does. Drag and drop on the picturebar at the bottom. Drag a shot to a new place and the whole layout reshuffles itself.
NOTE: There was a very recent upgrade to Booksmart. (Last week I think it was.) That may be the difference.
I have been having trouble with Blurb customer service though. The e-mail verification is not working for me and, after 3 or 4 e-mails (providing an alternative e-mail address) AND a posting on the forum, I still have no response after several days. :splat
All in all I think it's a winner. I'm just waiting to see what my books turn out like??
Well, here's the real deal if your interested.
I live in Canada and have been asking a lot of questions about cross-border dealings and received a lot of very good answers from another thread:
http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=76253
Strangely, the few experiences I've had thus far with clients order prints from SM the main complaint has been shipping time. Five weeks in one case!
Now to Blurb:
I ordered my books last Sunday -- late afternoon. As I've said in the link below, the software was pretty-much flawless.
The books shipped UPS regular ground service (supposedly the worst choice) Wednesday. (I call that 2-day turnaround.)
And they arrived here, Southern Ontario, at 16:30h Friday!
NO taxes. NO brokerage fee!
I've still not heard from Blurb customer service regarding my e-mail verification problem. Thankfully nothing went weird because I'm not receiving any e-mails from them.
But the whole experinece has FAR exceeded expectations.
I'll be ordering more in the New Year.
And Thanks SmugMug for the great lead AND the great deal!!!
DOH! just seen this too late!
Pity such great offers can't be sent as messages like other alerts:cry
...pics..
Portfolio • Workshops • Facebook • Twitter
No doubt! sadly I rarely remember to check it out:cry
...pics..
Wanted to post as I just got my Blurb book using the free coupon. I had made one book previously with My Publisher and was very, very disappointed. Used Booksmart 1.9 to build my book which only took a few hours to set up.
Received my book today and I was just floored. From the dust jacket to the photos within, the quality is just supurb - especially at this price point. Crushes all other do-it-yourself books I've seen. I'll be ordering lots more copies now as gifts for family and can't wait to build more books. I may try to make my own layouts next time as theirs is somewhat limited.
E
My site | Non-MHD Landscapes |Google+ | Twitter | Facebook | Smugmug photos
I would just like to concur with the previous post - Superb quality, color good, binding good, price good, delivery etc - what more can I say.
EDIT:-Of course thank you to Blurb for giving me a free book
www.carolineshipsey.co.uk - Follow me on G+
[/URL]
the share email from Blurb. After clicking "order" it asked her for a user name
and password and to register so she backed out. What gives? Can't the public
order private books?
My Website index | My Blog
Hey Allen,
Yep, currently Blurb makes all customers register for an account to be able to buy a book. You don't have to download the software, but you have to create an account.
I have brought this up to them as something they should change. We don't like that policy either. They are looking into it, but I can't promise you anything.
As soon as I get more details on this subject from them, I will post an update.
Thanks,
Markham
www.twitter.com/markhambennett
What seems odd to me is that when you register blurb assumes that you want to create a book (in that the screen says "register to download Blurb BookSmart).
I'd also be interested in hearing the reasons behind the screen heading for registration given that it appears that buyers of our books need to register to purchase.
--- Denise
Musings & ramblings at https://denisegoldberg.blogspot.com
First off:
I forgot. I do have to gripe about one thing. Shutterfly knows its audience. The layout I used (one of their defaults) was designed for the 3x4 photo ratio. So since I've been shooting with the S3 that replaced our lost/stolen Digital Rebel (300D), all of our photos just fit perfectly.
Blurb's templates are designed for 3x2 ratio (SLR) photos. So I ended up having to crop and fiddle with the photos and layouts a *lot*.
I suspect that Shutterfly has more point-and-shoot customers, and Blurb has more 3x2 shooters. Still, it'd be nice if you could choose 3x4 layouts vs 3x2, and vice-versa.
Anyways, that aside, the Blurb binding *is* does seem a little more solid than Shutterfly's. The pages are stitched together, so it does look like it will last longer. However the quality is not perfect. Trimming on a few of the pages wasn't quite right.
Additionally, dust jackets suck. It was printed nicely enough, but dust jackets are such a hassle. Shutterfly's "peekaboo" design really does work better. Or I would have liked the option of Lulu's "casewrap" option. (Where a photograph w/ title, etc. is laminated to the cover. But I imagine this is not as easily or cheaply automated.)
Here's some photos (sorry about the quality) of the covers and binding details.
Oh, one last thing, and probably very important to the pros out there. It seemed like the Shutterfly book's photos were much "warmer" than the Blurb book's. Going back to the original photos (well, as viewed on my wife's MacBook Pro), I was surprised to see that many of the originals actually were a bit washed-out or overexposed.
So Shutterfly must apply some filters to the photos, but the end result is that I was actually happier with the photos in the Shutterfly book.
I don't mind the dust jacket, and I was actually pleased with how this one turned out, however it would have been nice to have at least something printed on the actual spine of the book. I don't like the "peekaboo" design, however the "casewrap" option sounds nice. Hopefully Blurb will offer that in the future.
Here is my cover (photo of actual book dust jacket):
I had a headache getting the books from shutterfly, I found uploading each photo to take FOREVER, I went to upload some before heading going out to run an errand, came back a few hours later and they were STILL uploading. I found the layouts quite blahhh and the backgrounds really...umm. to have lots of Junior high school girl appeal. I stuck with the basic black. I didn't find them professional looking, rather something that I had thrown together.
I did order 2 books from shutterfly earlier this summer to have them returned with horrid tints, off color photos and lots of "blurr" I immediatly blamed myself and took some of the blahh looking photos to a local printer to double check the color cast and the sharpness...they were fine. I sent them back, they were reprinted, and they were no better....the time I wasted on these projects was soooo very frustrating.
I found blurb from researching here, I downloaded the booksmart and was really pleased that I could go through bridge and pull the photo right into the book where I wanted. I did have problems with it being responsive to adjusting placement etc, but I did find that more often than not the wrong page was highlighted (especially when I had the two page display up) and as soon as the page that I was trying to edit was selected i had no troubles. The beauty with the blurb books is you are only limited by your imagination, so if you don't like the layout...make your own! Create it in photoshop and upload to a full photo layout page.
In a nutshell, I'll never waste my time with shutterfly again. and Blurb gets my business from now on. I got a code and did a freebie book, which I ordered on the 20th, my code worked, and it's showing that it's due to be finished publishing on the 30th. I am sure it's due to the time of year as well as the free codes given out, because that it a long dely...it wasn't nearly that long with my first order.
From now on, it's only Blurb for me! (So the coupon worked out for me and for Blurb!)
I wonder if they have plans to move into the fine art portfolio market because that would surely be where many of us have aspirations?
...pics..
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention. I ordered my book late on the 20th... around 10pm PST. I received shipping confirmation on the 25th saying my book would ship on the 26th and I would receive it the 29th (via UPS Ground) Not bad service saying it was over a holiday weekend and I'm sure a bunch of other people waited to the last minute to order their free book as well.
Thanks SmugMug and Blurb!
This time I worked in CMYK and processed my photos. So I was pretty certain of what I'd see when it was printed. I then saved them as RGB and put them in the BookSmart program. It took quite a bit longer to upload than I thought, but after all, it was 40 full color edge to edge images. I ordered mine the very very end of the last day (Nov. 20), and received the book Nov. 28th.
I was quite pleased with the book, I just haven't had the time to compare the printed images with the onscreen version yet.
Some of the colors varied from my WinkFlash book, but that was processed in RGB and as expected, some of the colors shifted.
If I do another book, I will have to shift the margins for left and right hand sides. I left 3/4 inch margin on both sides, but the center of the pages is closer to the binding than I'd like. Just a minor nitpick :-)
I'll bring both books with me to the SmugMug party if anyone local is interested in seeing them.
http://www.twitter.com/deegolden
Since i was trying it out, I used a variety of photos of different resolutions.
The print quality was good, the product delivered on time and in packaging
that would stand up to shipping.
My book is about 20 pages and the production quality is very good.
Some things I would do differently next time. For the cover, I would
create an image that included the title as fonts are a little scarce. Instead of
drag and drop, I'd put all the images into a folder and import them. You can
move the images within booksmart fairly easily. I would be careful about
changing styles mid book--not too forgiving there :eek1
For the small numbers any of us would ever make, Blurb is a great way to
produce a quality product you'd be happy to give to someone as a gift.
The quality is good, although I was a bit startled to find no name on the actual cover of the book. Yes, the name is on the book jacket, but lose that and the book is unidentifiable. I suppose that's not a huge issue - think I'll try a softcover book the next time. So yes, I'm going to try at least one more book from blurb.
I did log some bugs and enhancement requests on the blurb BookSmart forum. In case any of you had the same or similar issues and want to chime in, here's a list of the entries:
[*]Image name and date taken are not preserved from EXIF of photo: http://forums.blurb.com/forums/1/topics/1430
[*]No title on book (hardcover) as opposed to on the book jacket: http://forums.blurb.com/forums/1/topics/1433
[*]Enhancement request - allow author to specify default font: http://forums.blurb.com/forums/1/topics/1432
[*]Request to allow resizing of photo boxes on pages: http://forums.blurb.com/forums/1/topics/1431
[*]Auto cropping and resizing: http://forums.blurb.com/forums/1/topics/139
Of all of the issues, the inability to easily identify and sort my images by date taken or file name is the most troubling. With the little thumbs shown in what appears to be a random order, I found it took much longer to choose my photos than it shoud have (see screen shots in first bug listed above).
bruceblurb -
Musings & ramblings at https://denisegoldberg.blogspot.com
Caroline
www.carolineshipsey.co.uk - Follow me on G+
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We appreciate your feedback. And, since you are a member here, you can always PM me if you have a specific issue that is not being addressed.
Best,
--bw
--- Denise
Musings & ramblings at https://denisegoldberg.blogspot.com
I'm very happy with the new book. I put most of it together in a hurry to get the discount, so I knew it wouldn't be perfect. It's meant to be a prototype I can show people, then I'll fix it up and put in a bulk order when I get at least 10 commitments. The price I can offer it at becomes MUCH more reasonable that way. Didn't get a single individual order for the 7x7 book I made before, but I think I sold over 20 of them when I put in a bulk order. (That was a HUGE number of sales for me).
I think the print quality of the new book is a bit better than the old book. I think I remember reading somewhere that blurb uses different equipment for the smaller books and the larger books, which was one of the reasons I went to a larger format.
The only issues I have with it are:
The dust jacket is very curled and won't stay in place when the book is open. Weakest part of the whole book... just doesn't look professional.
There are a few little splotches on pictures... not really a big deal, but it's a printing issue. I got asked "what's that thing in the background?" a couple times.
A semi-pro photographer pointed out immediately that all the pictures were "off" colorwise. My book has 280 pictures in it... definitely didn't do any soft proofing. I felt the color was MUCH better than my previous book, and I got a lot of comments from other people how crisp and clear the pictures looked. Not the same as a photographic print, but just fine for a book, in my opinion. Just a SLIGHT color cast on some of the pictures, at most. I find deep blue skies to look slightly purple. But I was very happy with the color and the clarity of the pictures.
I wish the booksmart software allowed captions on more of the layouts. Custom layouts in photoshop would be ideal, but I probably wouldn't ever spend the time to do that.
So overall I'm very satisfied with the book... much happier than last time even though I really liked the 7x7 book. I think I'll probably save money and order softcover books in the future, until blurb finds a way to print right onto a hard cover and do away with the cheap looking dust jackets. I'm also looking forward to seeing what improvements they make to BookSmart as time goes on. I don't mind it so much now... I found it easy to use and I didn't run into any major problems. But it can only get better.
I'll try to get some pictures of the book later.
Dave