(Note: I’ve been meaning to post this for ages. Now, finally getting around to posting…!)
There is a huge difference between sticking photos into a photo album and the amazing service offered by Blurb.com
I originally found the site through Flickr.com – they have links to various printing companies and Blurb was one so I decided to check it out.
The process involved couldn’t have been simpler – the final product, couldn’t be better.
To start, download the “BookSmart” software, which is currently only available for Windows XP/Vista & Mac OS. I will forgive them for not offering a Linux version of the software.. But ideally this should be sorted sooner rather than later.
The BookSmart software is used to build a photobook from scratch, allowing you arrange photos and text in a number of pre-defined templates. It’s very customisable but I kept it simple for my first book.
I chose the best photos from my trip to Toronto and New York and compiled them into a 40 page book. The result is like I said before amazing, it’s a professional quality book. I got 4 printed and gave them to the guys we went on the trip with for their birthdays, the ultimate in personalised and unique gifts I’d say.
There are five different sizes of book you can create and an option is given for soft back or hard back and the inclusion of a dust jacket etc. Pricing of the books is done on how many pages the book will contain, starting from as little as £10.
You can view my final product or at least the first few pages of it at http://www.blurb.com/books/366876
The only real let down for me was the ink used is pretty dark, when I do my next book I’ll try to adjust the photos and make them a little bit lighter to compensate. Obviously the higher quality photos you use the better quality the final prints are and as such it takes absolutely ages to get the thing uploaded to their servers once you’ve finished the layout. Having said that, I used some photos taken on my old Nokia 6680 which is only 1.3MP and they came out alright – the images taking up the entire page though were 7.1MP from Kat’s Pentax Optio M30
It does say to get 1 book printed first on it’s own if you’re going to do a bulk order – so you can check how it looks. I opted not to and just went for it… then found when I received them through the post that I’d used one photo twice. Oops.. But luckily hardly anyone notices! It’d suck if you got 20 printed and they all had a typo on though. So make sure you double triple check it before you upload…
Happy book making!
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