They’re finally here! (part 2)
December 31, 2007This post along with other Blurb book tips and tutorials can be found in the “Want to Make a Blurb Book?” link.
Here’s the honeymoon album I ordered from Blurb.
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I’m not an artist.
I’m not a photographer.
I’m not a designer.
I’m a mechanical engineer.
I’m a left brained thinker who exercises my right brain for fun and relaxation. I have no formal art training but I enjoy teaching myself new things.
[...] December 31, 2007: See some pictures of how my Blurb book turned out [...]
Wow…your blurb book looks aweseome. I love how you incorporated the money too. Beautiful pictures!
I was wondering how many pages your book is and what was the cost of the book? Also, you haven’t mentioned, that I can see, how satisfied you are with the quality of the finished product in terms of craftsmanship.
Good observation Scott. I haven’t done a review yet because I’m waiting for my replacement book to arrive. I’ll have a full review with pictures soon.
My book was 276 pages long and cost $125 + shipping. You can find the prices here: http://www.blurb.com/create/book/pricing. And you can figure out how much shipping will cost here: http://www.blurb.com/shipping_calculator.
Hello Robin,
Thanks so much for all the info on your site – it’s both helpful & inspiring. I’ve already made a book I’m very happy with, but I’m now re-creating it, having learnt a few lessons along the way! I’m making it in a bigger size & suddenly Blurb says it doesn’t like the resolution from my 10mp camera.
Don’t worry, this isn’t a technical resolution problem – I understand about re-setting the info, as you & others have clearly explained – but I was just wondering about your own camera equipment: I read elsewhere that you & your husband have a Nikon D40 & a Canon, & I note that the Nikon is 6.1Mp & the Canon 7.1. As I understand it, the optimal size for a full-page bleed in a 13 x 11 inch book is 3777 x 3263, & my 10 mp camera (a Panasonic DMC-LX2 with wide screen) manages highest quality shots of 4224 x 2367.
Did you use just your 2 cameras (i.e. maximum 7.1 mp) for those gorgeous beach shots, & were you happy with the resolution in the printed book? If so, I’m buying a Nikon D40 pronto,as I’ve only heard good things about it, & I’m aware that for a slight increase in megapixels you don’t get a whole heap of difference in print size!
Many congratulations on your wedding – & thanks in anticipation of your help! Best wishes from England,
Sarah
All best
Hi Sarah,
Yes, we used the Nikon D40 and Canon SD800 IS for all of our Fiji shots. I absolutely love my D40 and have had four people buy one after seeing mine. The biggest downfall of the D40 is that you have to use the AF-S lenses. But since I didn’t have a collection of manual focus lenses previously that wasn’t a problem for me. Also, I’m not a big fan of carrying around a lot of lenses so I bought one really nice lens. It worked out great in Fiji especially since we had to limit our luggage weight for the small flights between islands. I bought the Nikon 18-200 VR. It is supposed to be very hard to get but my local camera shop happened to be getting one in right before our trip. And if you want something with more MP you can get the D40X but personally I don’t like working with files over 8MP (both for storing and working in Photoshop).
We really love our Canon too and the underwater case for it. Is there any particular shot you wanted to know which camera used it? Both of the Blue Lagoon shots were taken with the Canon but all of the sunrise shots were with my Nikon. And the Horseshoe Bay picture (the island is in a horseshoe shape) is actually a picture from my Nikon and a picture from the Canon I put together in Photoshop. It’s one of our favorite shots now!
I was very happy with the printing quality of the book. The shots look great. It’s as good of a resolution that I’ve been able to find in any other non-professional book.
I hope to have a review for each camera sometime in the near future. Oh, and for more camera info you can check out Ken Rockwell’s site if you haven’t done so already.
Thanks for visiting my blog! (and all the way from England, wow)
Let me know if you have any other questions.
Robin
hi, thanks for visiting my blog first of all. i love your blurb book. i plan on making one for my parents from their european vacation as well as one for my wedding. your pics are great! btw, i’m an electrical engineer!
Hi Reila,
Those books sound like great ideas! Good luck on them. If you want to do any custom pages there are free templates under the “Want to make a Blurb book?” link. Sorry to hear about your photographer problems. Hopefully, you can find another one that’s even better. And that’s so cool that you are an EE! Left-brained girls can be very creative.
Robin
Hello again, Robin!
Thanks for your respoonse to my question about your cameras – that’s great! Yes, I’d already seen Ken Rockwell’s review & it was his enthusiasm & his insistence on the ‘megapixels don’t matter’ question that have really influenced me. I’m thinking of starting a new business using blurb books, so my idea is that I’ll get the D40 & then if it all takes off & I find I need something more powerful, I’ll at least have a great 2nd camera that I can use for family shots & holidays.
Thanks again! Oh, by the way, I’ve used your templates to fit in a double spread of a sunset shot into my latest book & it looks fabulous. Your tips were really helpful & you’ve inspired me to get to grips with PS – I’m familiar with Elements from about 100 years ago, so a lot of the features are very new to me. It’s worth the effort!
All best wishes,
Sarah
Thanks for this post. I’m thinking of doing a project that will be fairly large, and I’m somewhat nervous about using Blurb, but my print quantity is going to be limited, so I don’t see any real alternatives. This post makes me more nervous, but also reassures me a bit. I don’t want to be returning books. I’ll probably order ten at a time, after I’ve had a look at the first one.
Thanks for the templates! =)
Robin,
Hi. I was just getting ready to design my 13×11 pages using your templates. However, I’ve found that my 10 megapixel photos are not of sufficient resolution to make full bleed pages at 300 dpi.
I’ve noted your pictures are of lower resolution. What dpi did you use your pictures at in your book?
Thanks,
-A.
I love the font you used for Day 4, Day 5, etc…. Where did you get it? Thanks!
Thanks Jill,
The font is called “the King & Queen font” and I got it for free from dafont.com.
Robin
[...] blog. I’m write about more than Blurb books because I haven’t made any since my honeymoon album. I still have a few album post I want to write and I will be making more albums in the future but [...]
great site & info,
I don’t know if i missed it somewhere, but I see you have some photos that extend over 2 pages? How did you do that?
Did you use the templates for those?
Thanks CJS,
I wrote a post about 2 page spreads here:
http://theartofengineering.wordpress.com/2008/01/12/putting-a-photo-across-the-gutter-of-a-spread/
Hope that helps!
Just wanted to say that your books looks great Robin. Very inspiring. Starting my first attempt as we speak. I have downloaded your templates and will give them a try. Thank you very much!
Best regards,
Christian
Good luck Christian! Thanks for stopping by.
Hello again.
Just wanted your opinion on something; if I wish to leave the background white, or have white borders, would you recommend leaving the background as ‘no colour/blank’ or coloured white?
All the best,
Christian
I would leave the background colored white not transparent or blank. Either way when you save it as a jpeg it will change everything that is blank to white.
Hi there,
I was thinking about doing a Blurb book too but was a bit concerned about pictures printing darker. You book turned out GREAT, the colors are beautiful. I was wondering what was your workflow while preparing your pics for the book, if any?
Thanks in advance for any light you can shed.
Robin,
Thank you very much for all the posted information on your blog. I hope blurb gave you some kind of discount for this – you deserve it!
Your album looks amazing, really nice job!
- Thomas from Belgium
I am very impressed with how your book came out, so I hope you could give me a little advice. I am trying to make a Blurb book of travel photos. I originally had around 4,000 photos and narrowed them down to about 600. I am beginning to realize that making 200-some page photo books takes a ton of time. How long did it take you to make your book? Is there any way to make a good-looking book without spending day after day of tedious work?
Thanks, and keep up the great work!
Jesse
Jesse – It took me about two months to make my book but that is also because there was a bunch of wording I had to write too. You can make things go faster by creating your own templates (just add grid lines to the templates I provide for the pictures). Otherwise the fastest thing to do is to probably make most of your pages in the Booksmart software and just make a few custom pages for your unique layouts. The key is to make everything look cohesive so keep things simple and use a black or white background and the same text between the pages.
Good luck on your book!
Robin
Hi,
How did you get the colors to come out so great. I did a Blurb book but the colors didn’t match my screen.
Hi Robin, I have a question about the colour profile you used. I noticed you mentioned that you used the sRGB IEC619662-2.1 profile in your books.
But I was wondering if you have had the chance to use the HP5000SemimatteExp05.icc profile provided by Sam Edge in your blurb books, and if it made the quality of the photos better.
I am doing up a wedding album and I am worried that the B&W photos will not display the true contrast of the photo that I see on the computer with the sRGB IEC619662-2.1 profile. And I don’t particularly want to re-edit my photo’s again with the HP5000SemimatteExp05.icc profile.
Kim.
PS: Great website, have learnt a lot.
Hi Kim and Catherine,
I used the sRGB IEC519662-2.1 color profile for all of my layouts. I haven’t used Sam Edge’s but I also haven’t created a book recently. Unless they’ve switched to a new printer since I made mine you should be good.
HTH!
Robin