Blurb B&W photo books
Posted: Thu Mar 19, 2015 7:36 am
Some of you may remember this thread from 2013 about making photos with Blurb:
http://www.photoclubalpha.com/forum/vie ... =52&t=7473
Last year as an experiment I worked on making my first Blurb book using Lightroom 5.6. I finished it and ordered a copy in August. It is B&W standard landscape (10x8 inches, 25x20 centimeters), softcover, 90 pages, printed on premium lustre paper. My costs for the book are $44 + $23 for standard shipping here to Japan. I got a discount off the regular price because Blurb was having a temporary sale.
After spending about 4 months working on it and then 5-6 weeks waiting to receive it after ordering it I was hoping for it to be pretty good. Well, what shall I say? I am disappointed, especially for the price. Here are 3 photos to illustrate what I see. I tried to adjust these photos to be as close to what I see when I look at the book as I could. I took a photo of the cover and a page in the book that has the same photo. You can see how different they look. I would say the cover is much too contrasty with a too high black point and the photo inside the book has too low contrast with no blacks, just dark gray and a bit of a green cast. Then the last photo is a 100% crop of a close-up of a different photo in the book, but all the photos look the same. Even from a normal viewing distance you can see the newspaper-like or CRT-like pattern. By the way, the cover doesn't have this CRT-like look to it, but all the photos on the pages do.
I don't think I will order anymore. If the price was cheap, maybe $10 with inexpensive shipping then I would feel differently, but this Blurb book is pretty disappointing to me. Even inexpensive regular photo books at the bookstore are much, much better.
Mine was meant as an experiment that if it had worked out satisfactorily would have resulted in me making several more books over the coming years. As it stands now, I have decided that the current Blurb B&W printing is not worth all my time and effort.
What has your experience been?
http://www.photoclubalpha.com/forum/vie ... =52&t=7473
Last year as an experiment I worked on making my first Blurb book using Lightroom 5.6. I finished it and ordered a copy in August. It is B&W standard landscape (10x8 inches, 25x20 centimeters), softcover, 90 pages, printed on premium lustre paper. My costs for the book are $44 + $23 for standard shipping here to Japan. I got a discount off the regular price because Blurb was having a temporary sale.
After spending about 4 months working on it and then 5-6 weeks waiting to receive it after ordering it I was hoping for it to be pretty good. Well, what shall I say? I am disappointed, especially for the price. Here are 3 photos to illustrate what I see. I tried to adjust these photos to be as close to what I see when I look at the book as I could. I took a photo of the cover and a page in the book that has the same photo. You can see how different they look. I would say the cover is much too contrasty with a too high black point and the photo inside the book has too low contrast with no blacks, just dark gray and a bit of a green cast. Then the last photo is a 100% crop of a close-up of a different photo in the book, but all the photos look the same. Even from a normal viewing distance you can see the newspaper-like or CRT-like pattern. By the way, the cover doesn't have this CRT-like look to it, but all the photos on the pages do.
I don't think I will order anymore. If the price was cheap, maybe $10 with inexpensive shipping then I would feel differently, but this Blurb book is pretty disappointing to me. Even inexpensive regular photo books at the bookstore are much, much better.
Mine was meant as an experiment that if it had worked out satisfactorily would have resulted in me making several more books over the coming years. As it stands now, I have decided that the current Blurb B&W printing is not worth all my time and effort.
What has your experience been?