A little while ago I made THIS POST about Blurb, which is an online service that lets you create a book using your own photos. I thought this was a pretty rad idea, as did Sam Adams who pulled the trigger and did a book (seen above).

All this happened pretty quick it seems, so I asked Sam to write a review about the Blurb experience.

Okay, sometimes I get psyched on stuff pretty easily; well especially when I should be doing my homework. So anyways, a couple weeks ago when Nuno made a post about Blurb Books, I took to it pretty quickly. One, because I’ve always thought making my own book would be fun, and two, it’s a lot better than doing math homework.

Here’s a little rundown on the whole process from start to finish.

*Making the Book*: 
Blurb has it’s own software called Booksmart, which you can download directly from the site. After downloading the program it will give you about 15 different themes to choose from for the pages and overall layout of the book. I would say about maybe 2-3 of the themes are worthwhile, the rest are pretty cheesy.

After choosing your theme you upload your pictures into the program and then choose your page layouts. They have dozens of page layout options, which cover just about everything you could want from pictures, text, collages, and various mixtures of all of them. However, if you have an idea in mind that the program doesn’t have a layout for your pretty much SOL; there is no manually adjusting or altering these layouts, which is kind of a bummer. So if you have a specific design you want, the best way would be to make it in Photoshop and then save it as one image and upload it that way. Anyways, so I decided to go with a very simple book my first time around, all images, no text. So I was able to layout the book with about 40 pages in about a couple of hours and send it off to Blurb to have it printed. 

After sending it out the printing takes about a week to do and then they ship it to you, so not too terribly long.

Below are my thoughts on the book itself in it’s important aspects.

*Cover*:
I decided to go with the hardcover 8×10 sized book. All the hard covers have a wrap around cover that goes over the book. Despite hearing that the covers on their books with less the 40 pages tend to be loose, I found that with the books closed the cover seemed to fit pretty snugly, which is a nice plus. My biggest problem with the cover that I noticed pretty quickly is it is very prone to fingerprints. Unlike the rest of the book the cover is on a glossy paper, which emphasizes fingerprints pretty badly and doesn’t allow you to just wipe them off super easily either.

*Overall Build*:
The book seems to be made very well and solid. However, I just got the book so only time will tell there.

*Photo Quality*:
This was the number one most important thing for me when it came to this book, and they didn’t let me down.

*Color*:
The color seems pretty spot on for the most part. I’ve noticed a few images tend to have some slight color shifts. So, one thing I might recommend for those of you really picky about color is try to upload all your images in SRGB color mode instead of Adobe RGB which is what I work with on my computer. That might help out a bit.

*Sharpness*:
The sharpness of the whole book seems pretty good. I am super picky about sharpness and you can tell that the images tend to be a tad soft sometimes. Although I notice some sharpness differences from my computer to the book, this is something most people will not notice, unless of course they are photographers or really picky about that stuff.

*Layout*:
There is a slight difference between the book making software and the actual printing of the book. When printing there is a risk of them cutting off about a ¼ to an 1/8th inch off the tops or sides to maintain the full bleed on the page. So if you have something important at the very edge of the photo just be aware of that. The software does make mention of that, but just a heads up if you don’t catch it.

*Overall*:
I am very happy with the book. Quality, price, and the ease of design made the whole process very enjoyable. It’s a great book to have for yourself, and to give or sell to your friends and family. However, if you’re a professional photographer and your looking for a book to show toyour clients or produce for mass sale it becomes a little trickier. I would say for most clients and sales this book is fine, however if your working with some higher end clients who want the best, I would say to definitely look around for another option where the color and sharpness are a bit more reliable.

-Sam Adams 

Thanks Sam!! Be sure to check out Sam’s Autophoto if you haven’t yet. 

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