Blurb Books Quality

[Mark_Se]

I would like to make an affordable photo book (portfolio) that I can give to clients/ future clients.
Has anyone made a book at blurb.com, how do you like the quality? Are there any better alternatives?

[Frank Petronio]

Buy one of mine: http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/2589826

I think Blurb has good quality at its price point. Their photo books are printed with ink using an HP Indigo. Lessor books use toner-based systems. More expensive books use high quality inkjet (like an Epson). You pay for the operator's attention - in Blurb's case nobody eyeballs and adjusts each sheet but it's only a $30 book. If you pay $500 to BookSmart Studios then they definitely look at and adjust each sheet. (A bound book of inkjets may be the highest quality book ever when you stop to think about it....)

You can spend many times more and get a little better quality control and nicer paper from a place that specializes in ~$300 wedding photo books and portfolios. But not that much nicer I've found. Like 3% nicer for 10x the price. But they have fancier binding and cover options and for one-off special albums they might make sense. Who doesn't want a 10x12 white leather album with Gold leaf?

I think you do best making incremental tests and work your ways towards a more refined book. In my case I probably made a dozen small variations and eventually decided that given Blurb's medium-level quality, a softbound book on their regular paper was the best fit. The premium paper didn't make much difference and it was a little too precious to do a hardbound version of something that really isn't the same quality as a traditional good litho book. It is however, a nice $30 book that I can give to serious potential clients and keep in my camera bag to show. Now that I have a more mature version, I just buy a couple at a time as needed - like when I get a Groupon or promo code!

Their color quality is really nice I think. B&W, if you prepare CMYK files using their profile and design things in InDesign to PDF (like a real graphic designer) works pretty well and they have had neutral B&W images for the past few years. They do tend to plug in the low to mid-tones though, so slightly harder, contrasty images work best.

I just got one that was green-cast and they promptly replaced it, they still mess up occasionally and wouldn't rely on a deadline because of that. But their customer service is good and overall I recommend Blurb.

I like Moo.com for cards and such, same sort of operation. You can definitely find lower cost alternatives than Blurb or Moo but they do have a nice quality and excellent service so I end up going back to them because they are so trouble-free compared to the other online services. I started experimenting with Print on Demand books in 1999, it's only been the past couple of years that they have become acceptable. Next time I want to be in the middle of the curve, not at the front ;-p

[Mark_Se]

thank you frank! i will give it a try.

[Richard Wasserman]

I agree with Frank on this. I have had Blurb do a few books as a way to show work that is portable and printed well enough. I just got a couple books from them that I received exactly 1 week after I ordered them, which was great. In the past I did have a some issues with their printing, and they resolved them very quickly and painlessly. I opted this last time to go with the premium paper and hardcover as it is a bit more durable, I hope.

That said, for my purposes—I am not giving potential clients copies—I'm thinking seriously of an iPad. A few Blurb books in the size I've been getting will pay for it.

[Frank Petronio]

Just got an iPad in the family and photos truly look great on it, better than any screen I've seen. I guess the new iPad 3 that will come out early next year may have the Retina display that is even higher resolution - you'll need larger images for best quality!

I still do inkjets in bound portfolios because I think it is nice to show prints in person but now I only have a couple of those to send out, as opposed to having half a dozen back in the day when you would keep them circulating via FedEx.

I hate the idea of sending clients an iPad in a shipper but I guess some successful togs do just that. I guess a nice portfolio book costs at least as much - $300 for a leather book with a custom logo, more for the prints themselves....

[Bill Koechling]

I've been very happy with the dozen or so Blurb books I've made for clients. Each client has loved their books as well. I've come to like their Imagewrap covers more than their dust covers but that's a judgment call. I like the quality and their service is good.

There are a number of other less and more expensive book printers but I've been happy with Blurb.

[Matus Kalisky]

Frank, I remember a lengthy discussion some time ago on this topic and you were rather unsatisfied with the online printing services, including Blurb. Did their approach change (more uniformity, etc.)?

I have a copy of the "Large View" book (2 or 3 years old I guess by now) and while I understand that it is a collection of photographs from may photographers and therefore probably not so well processed and adjusted for the best results, but many images had some (though mostly minor) issues (blocked shadows, contrast, color shifts).

[Brian Ellis]

Yes, some people here have made a book from blurb.com. In fact if you type "blurb" into the advanced search-titles only search function here you'll find 16 threads, some running for many pages, dealing with Blurb and other book options.

[Frank Petronio]

Yes the consistency has improved greatly from Blurb. I can't say that every service is better but Blurb definitely is.

That Larger View book was done in mid-2007 I think, in four years they've come a long way.

Thank you Cyrus ;-p .... lawyers....

A big improvement was allowing a PDF-based workflow with a CMYK profile. But I think their quality control on press improved too, the B&Ws are nice and neutral (although there is still metarism - different color shifts in B&W in different light sources - but any litho process does that).

[rdenney]

I just did a Blurb book from my trip to Alaska in May, to give as Christmas presents to the family members who traveled with us.

And we did a wedding book using Blurb a couple of months ago. That was our first; we were friends of the bride and were doing it for free as friends. They already had a professional photographer from whom they bought a regular album (which sucked, by the way).

They print using an HP process-color printer, preferring input at 300 pixels/inch at printed size (or more). We did not resize anything fit that target exactly, and depended on them to resample at print time. We saw no resulting issue with that or any hint of aliasing or moire. The images were quite sharp and detailed (as long as the details weren't too dark to begin with).

The wedding photos were generally too dark. On my calibrated monitor, a photo needs to look a bit bright with mid ranges above where I would want them. The Blurb rendering is contrastier with less separation in the shadows (as expected) but it pulled down the mid-range tonal values more than I expected or wanted. The bride and groom did not notice that, though, and they loved having the book to supplement the professional album.

The color photos from Alaska were fine, as long as the important subject material wasn't in the lower middle range to begin with. I think we only had one photo in that book that really bugged us (for its intended purpose), because I had batch-processed the photos to increase the gamma by a healthy amount. I only worked in detail on two of the images in the book, and gave them a final targeting curve adjustment, pulling the middle up. The highlights in their rendering were nicely separated with little or no problem with blocking up or blowing out. I noticed no posterization, even on the two images I worked on, one of which ended up with fairly extreme moves. For an art portfolio, however, I would have had lots of issues, particularly with muddy shadows, and I would have tried to dial in a profile for their work before committing to much expense.

We used their "Booksmart" application on a PC, and after I created a couple of dozen standard layouts for the pages, that software worked okay. It doesn't provide much flexibility, so you have to decide you like what it does. It is pretty darn easy, though. My wife could use it pretty well, and InDesign would not even be on the right planet for her. It took her a solid day to drop in about 450 photos into the 144-page book, and I spent another couple of hours editing and fixing things.

The premium luster paper is nicely thick, quite opaque, and binds reasonably well. Their hard cover is not really bound like a hard-cover book should be, with stitched signatures. It's what I've always called case binding, which is like perfect binding (glued at the binding edge) with a hard-cover case glued in place, and protected at the inside edges by the end papers. I would have been floored if the signatures had been stitched at this price point, however. Only someone interested in book-binding will know the difference. Full bleeds are easy. I set up pages that bled across the binding by dropping the same photo in twice and cropping each so that the middle 1/8" or 3/16" or so repeated on both sides of the binding. That kept the binding from sucking up too much image and leaving a noticeable gap, without risking a visible white stripe in the middle.

The penalty for using their fancier stuff is not that high. The Alaska book is 144 pages, hard-bound using the "pro" materials, on their premium lustre paper and "pro" end papers and dust jacket, and it was a bit over $80. So, Frank's $30 and my $80 pretty much encompasses their product choices.

I have not attempted black and white, but the color balance was pretty good with the color photos so I wouldn't think it too hard to get neutral results. Middle colors may be too saturated (because the tone pulled down more than we expected), but the hue is pretty close. If I attempt anything very serious with it (and I would put a portfolio in that category), I would definitely dial in their profile and design the book in a color-managed workflow using InDesign or Quark and sending them a PDF. But I don't think I'd use them for a portfolio unless I'm demonstrating my ability to make photos that look good in process color. They lack the subtlety of carefully made inkjet prints using a proven workflow.

For our purposes, they are fantastic. They impress regular people profoundly with even just a little bit of care on your part.

Service has been excellent, with product on our doorstep within about a week.

Rick "impressed, within reasonable expectations" Denney

[Steve Gledhill]

I made two Blurb books recently, an 8x10 softback and a 12x12 hardback. Both were printed on their Proline Pearl Photopaper. Both more than met my reasonably high expectations for such a book, particularly at the price for single copies. The softback is mostly b&w photographs of my Chastleton House work, the hardback is a set of images, both colour and b&w, derived (heavily manipulated) from my original photographs. The colour was close enough to the images on my calibrated monitor and the b&w were very close to neutral though perhaps tending very slightly to cool.

The one downside was that for the softback they badly mistrimmed the book - well outside their guide marking in BookSmart. I immediately emailed them a photo of their handiwork and they sent a correctly trimmed copy by return - no quibbles.

As for speed of service, all three shipments were in my hands in less than 5 working days from either the original order or from the time I complained. Which ain't bad as I'm in the UK and the shipments were from Seattle.

[Frank Petronio]

Timing can vary. Sometimes they print the books 15 miles from my house and my order is delivered within two or three days. Other times they take a week to get it on press and then another week to ship (using the least expensive option). They print wherever there is room at their subcontractors - I tried to get them to default to local vendors and they won't.

I'm surprised they would print a UK book in the USA.

Try the ordinary paper and soft binding sometimes, it is surprisingly decent. You can always swap cover designs and use the same "guts" for the hardbound book once it is perfected. I think you would want a nice thick book for hard binding or it would look silly, they can't make the hard bindings too thin.

Another trouble spot to look for is type on the spine. If you use the template and it is still off, complain!

For most complaints just take a quick digisnap and attach it to the customer service contact email form - follow the steps. Usually they give you a credit, sometimes they want the book back for forensics and to keep people honest. Shipping is on their dime.

Book - magazine - ad designers know not to put straight lines too close to the trim because even a slight error will be glaring. Not that you don't see plenty of examples of people ignoring this, but doing a bleed usually makes more sense than running a line a few mms from the edge.