U of S | Mailing List Archive | alt-photo-process-l | Re: making photo books - any recommendations?

Re: making photo books - any recommendations?


  • To: alt-photo-process-l@usask.ca
  • Subject: Re: making photo books - any recommendations?
  • From: "Christina Z. Anderson" <zphoto@montana.net>
  • Date: Sat, 06 Jun 2009 09:08:00 -0600
  • Comments: "alt-photo-process mailing list"
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  • Reply-to: alt-photo-process-l@usask.ca

Henk, Don, Remko,
I have made 4 books to date on Blurb--a wedding book, a book on Haiti, a cookbook, and a book of my own personal work. I did the latter because of the difficulty of traveling with large gum prints on the plane and decided to put all my work in a book and carry that.  It presented its own unique problems though but nevertheless, to see your work in a book feels tidy.
 
Blurb just came out with excellent improvements on their program this week, so I am even more excited about this company. However, there are a number of book publishers now that are probably equally as good (artefact studio comes to mind).
 
I taught a non-fiction class this semester and had 15 students make their own Blurb books as well and they were for the most part happy with them.
 
Problems--you gotta watch BW images as Don says.  If Blurb does anything, it prints darker, an issue with some images only and I am not sure why the inconsistency.  Images must be converted to sRGB.
 
If your image has much greater resolution than the box it fits in, it can become grainy.
 
The biggest issues that I see (aside from above):  the cropping--you have to be REALLY sure to keep things 1/2 inch away from the edge; text--seeing text on the computer looks so much smaller and then you get it back as a book and invariably the text is too big.
 
One other thing I want to mention (aside from the fact that one really should slug through all the FAQs for really helpful info) is that there is now a company called magcloud.com where you can publish your own magazine and that is GREAT.  20 cents a page!!  So the self-publishing opportunities are endless.  You can make all your images in Photoshop (making sure to size the page according to the Magcloud specs) and upload a PDF.  Very easy except for embedded fonts issues and the website buttons are not logical where you go for what. I strongly suggest ordering their how-to magazine before you do your first--it's not expensive, under $5.
 
My 2 cents for this Saturday morning.
Chris
__________________
 
Christina Z. Anderson
http://christinaZanderson.com/
__________________
----- Original Message -----
From: henk thijs
Sent: Friday, June 05, 2009 2:42 PM
Subject: Re: making photo books - any recommendations?

I ordered the same book with BLURB and Mypublisher; i prefer the cover of Myplubisher but with the premium paper of BLURB i would say that the quality difference wasn't really worth the higher price of Mypublisher.
And the free offer Don mentioned is a bit confusing, the advertisement looks like:
New Customer?
Get a FREE PhotoBook with your first order.
This means ordering your first book you get two, but after that prices are significant higher. Apart from shipping costs (MYPUBLISHER to Europe  is nearly 8 USDollar more compared to Blurb) Mypublisher is 50 percent more expensive.
I included (tri)color, brom(oil) and inkjet prints to have a real idea how it looks like and was happy with the result, see:


regards,
Henk

On 7 mei 2009, at 21:48, Don Bryant wrote:


Remko,


I am still looking for other ways to print B/W without this colorshifts. 

That's why I mentioned MyPublisher. Probably more expensive than Blurb but
they have a free offer until May 11th. 

Based on the Blurb books and the MyPublisher books I've viewed, MyPublisher
wins on quality, for color and B&W work.

Don Bryant