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| self publishing made easy as shown by Brian Lee |
Publishing a Photo Book Through blurb.com ... Brian Lee
With the advent of digital photography and the Internet, we’ve enjoyed an unprecedented ability to share images electronically and by producing high quality prints. And, we can now achieve the dream of publishing a hardbound book of photos. Gone are the days of difficult layout, production, press checks, large minimum production runs, printing delays, and prohibitive costs. You can now produce a hardbound book of photos with a production run of a single copy at an extremely affordable price!
Print on Demand
There are numerous online Print on Demand services that allow you to produce and print small runs of books. These include Lulu, Shutterfly, iPhoto, and Blurb. I selected Blurb based on favorable reviews, layout flexibility, the ability to order as few as a single copy, and the availability of a soft proofing profile.
Blurb BookSmart
Blurb provides software that you install on your PC that allows you to design your book. I won’t go into all the details of their software, but would like to share some of the things I found that seem to work best for me. Four layouts are supported:
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| Pricing depends on the size you select and the number of pages |
I selected Portrait for my book and planned for 40 pages ($29.95 hard bound with dust jacket, $19.95 soft bound).
You can then start laying out your book in the BookSmart software:
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| laying out your book in the BookSmart software |
There are many photo and text layouts available for each page (upper left pane in the screen above) with both text and photo boxes.
Since mine was to be a photo book, I was most concerned about producing images optimized for output in the book. By hovering your mouse pointer over an image box in the preview, BookSmart will give you the optimal image size in pixels and inches (it works out to 300dpi). I did this for each image box in my book and created images of exactly that size.
You can creatively use some of the provided layouts to extend their capabilities. For example, I was able to use a layout with full bleed left and right to create a double truck layout. To do this, I hovered my mouse over the image box on each page and split my original image into two pieces of that size.
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| a full page image in Photoshop |
Similarly, I wanted to use a square image for the front cover and there was no corresponding layout provided. However, there was a layout for a full bleed image. So, I created a full page image in Photoshop that contained the square image and the title and subtitle text.
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| making the cover image |
Preparing Images for BookSmart:
I shoot with a Nikon D2x and process the images in a color managed workflow (Lightroom, Photoshop CS3, calibrated Sony Artisan monitor, ImagePrint RIP, and Epson 7600) and have come to expect output closely matching what I see on screen. A few reviews of books created on Blurb reported issues with color matching and sharpness, so these were primary concerns.
Through web research, I was able to locate an article on color management and Blurb’s BookSmart software In that article, author Sam Edge notes that Blurb uses and HP Indigo 5000. He graciously provides the profile at http://www.bonsai-photography.com/ with HP’s permission. The profile should be installed in C:\Program Files\Common Files\Adobe\Color\Profiles\.
Toning
With the availability of Lightroom, I now do nearly all of my basic tone curve adjustments in Lightroom. Fine adjustments are still done in Photoshop and it is there that I used the HP 5000 soft proofing profile.
My working color space is ProPhoto RGB because of its larger gamut, so I convert the raw file to ProPhoto RGB as it is loaded. I then make the adjustments in layers as needed, checking the result with the Proof Colors option to view the relative effect of the more limited gamut of the output device. It takes a while to get used to viewing the image in a soft proof since it looks washed out, but it is the only way to gauge the relative color balance of the final image.
Cropping and Sizing
As mentioned above, I hover my mouse over each image box in the page layout to determine the optimum size. I then cropped and sized each image to that target size. This is a necessary step prior to performing the image sharpening that relies upon the final output resolution.
Sharpening
My preferred sharpening tool is PixelGenius’ Photokit Sharpeners which contains capture, creative, and output sharpening tools. I applied the capture sharpening to the source file which compensates for the detail loss from the bayer demosaicing process first, then cropped and resized the image to the target image size. Then, viewing the image at actual pixel resolution, I applied the creative sharpening as needed. Lastly, I used the continuous tone 300 dpi output sharpening process to optimize the image for printing at the 300 dpi
Saving the Image
Note that BookSmart only supports importing of JPEG, PNG, and GIF formats, and that JPEGs must be in the sRGB color space. So, I sample the image to 8bit depth and convert it to sRGB color space (perceptual rendering intent) before saving it as JPEG.
Publishing Your Book
Once you have completed creating your book in BookSmart, you upload it from the menu to their website where you can place an order. Initially, I ordered one copy so I could see how things turned out. After a wait of a couple weeks, I received my book. I was quite impressed with the quality of the paper and binding. And, most importantly, the images came out exactly as expected. Color was spot on and images were sharp. I placed a second order for multiple copies which came much faster than the initial order. This included one soft bound copy. Because my book is only 40 pages, the soft bound book feels like a pamphlet and is probably a better option for much larger books.
I am extremely pleased with the result and highly recommend Blurb!
To purchase a copy of the book
Comment
With the growing interest in self publishing and the now ease and relatively inexpensive cost at the entry level, Brian's article is both timely and beneficial to all that might want to set foot on this course. Workshop participants Matt Schlotzhauer and David Levy have found great success with the process also.