Friday, November 30, 2007

The Blurb Book

I ordered my book from blurb.com on Saturday and had it on Tuesday. Amazing! I didn't realize they were just up the road in Tukwila.

I got the 8x10 softcover. Print-quality wise I would say it's fair, though it's kind of hard to tell. The pictures on the cover aren't great, and all the pictures inside are tiny thumbnails and too small to judge anyway.



I wasn't sure if there was a gutter allowance built into the template. There isn't. My inside photos are very nearly vanishing into the gutter. I'll know what to do about that next time. Overall, I'm pleased--as a printed record of contact sheets, it's perfectly adequate.

Now I just need to do more with these photos, besides just cataloging them.

3 comments:

Molly Newman said...

Inquiring minds want to know more. Why is there no gutter built into the template? It makes no sense. And could you maybe post a closeup of the cover photos or discuss what the problems are with them?

(Jim has been thinking about doing some books with Blurb and I want to make sure he'll be happy with them.)

And have I mentioned to you yet what a cool project this is?

Helena said...

Their "Booksmart" software is kind of limited--they have a bunch of different page layout templates, and those do have margins built in, but none of those were exactly right for me. I put my pages together in Photoshop and then used the full-page option on the template, and then had to guess at the margins. It's actually quite easy, once the image is in place, to move it over a specific amount, but I didn't realize that until later. It was not immediately obvious.

The cover photos are just a bit muddy. Not quite photo-quality printing. You could order their "How to Make a Book" book (only $14.95, plus shipping!) and check the printing quality on that.

I've been seriously thinking about finally tackling my mission pictures, but not sure yet who I want to do it with. WHCC is spendy.

Gina.Maria said...

That's a great idea for a permanent record, though. Not too expensive - probably cheaper than the photo paper, ink and album required to do it yourself - and easy to store. Thanks for thinking outside the box and sharing with the rest of us.