Which photo book service?

<p>I'm putting together a collection of photos to be used in a photo book that I will give as presents to friends and family this year. Initially I am looking at Blurb, in part because the lightroom plug-in that makes this a relatively seamless process, though I am still exploring how that all works. I am curious though about other people's experience using not only Blurb but other services for printing photo books. If you have created photo books what service did you use, what were the limitations you experienced, what tips or tricks would you suggest? Especially useful would be if you have used more than one service, how would you compare/contrast them? Thanks for your input!</p>

<p>I've been less impressed with the quality of Blurb printing compared to the same images output through Aperture from Apple's print providers. If you're a Mac users, Aperture or iPhoto is a better option. One area Blurb didn't get it right was the cover. Covers are printed on a different press technology than inside the books so a good test is using the same image in both locations. Apple's books match pretty well, Blurb's were way off! </p>

<p>MixBook was highly rated here <a href="http://photo-book-review.toptenreviews.com/">http://photo-book-review.toptenreviews.com/</a> and <a href="http://www.tomsguide.com/us/best-photo-books,review-2651.html">http://www.tomsguide.com/us/best-photo-books,review-2651.html</a> <br>

Also found a <a href="

Review of a Mixbook</a>. Anyone ever use them? </p>

<p>I've only used Blurb, so I can't compare providers. However the reason I've only used Blurb, for c a dozen books so far, is that I've been pretty happy with the results. I haven't had the issue that Andrew Rodney indicates where the same image (presumably from the same original file) appears markedly differently on cover and interior. I had a couple of prints made at a lab this week that I've included in my latest Blurb book, and whilst I'm not going to say they were indistinguishable , they were pretty close.</p>

<p>A few hints on using Blurb</p>

<ul>

<li>Pay for one of the heavier semi-gloss papers.</li>

<li>Download their colour profiles and use them for soft proofing</li>

<li>There will be a tendency , even after adjusting a soft proof, for the printed images to be a little less bright and contrasty than what you might see on a calibrated screen. I've learned through experience that 5 points on both brightness and contrast in PS will improve the final printed image. </li>

<li>There's a lot of stuff on the website that could help. View it thoroughly before you start</li>

<li>There's a lot of stuff you can do but doesn't necessarily come easily- for example fixing a font/type size for titling your images. Especially if you intend to make several books, it'll pay to fix template page layouts and type styles. Otherwise after 100 pages things start to get less than fun.</li>

</ul>

Thank for the responses, I've seen some references to low quality images in blurb but those seem to be pretty low

frequency. I will take a look at the Minooka offering and see what that looks like. David, since you are a blurb user I am

curious if you size your images specifically for the page and container they are intended for or if you just let LR or blurb

take care of that? I imagine that question I could ask of any of these services really.

<ul>

<li>Download their colour profiles and use them for soft proofing</li>

</ul>

<p>Even though, the profile isn't used for any of the output <g>. So take what you see with a serious grain of salt. One profile that's specifically targeting GRACOL for all the various paper options can't possibly work for all. </p>

<ul>

<li>There will be a tendency , even after adjusting a soft proof, for the printed images to be a little less bright and contrasty than what you might see on a calibrated screen. I've learned through experience that 5 points on both brightness and contrast in PS will improve the final printed image.</li>

</ul>

<p>Kind of depends on the calibration of the backlight! Your 5 points may be way, way off for how I calibrate my display (specifically at 150cd/m2). YMMV! <br>

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/why_are_my_prints_too_dark.shtml</p>

<p>Mr Thompson</p>

<p>I've been trying-several times- to respond to your question but I keep getting a warning that signature urls aren't allowed despite that I'm not using a url or a signature in the post. Sorry. I'll try again tomorrow. </p>

<p>I took David Henderson's advice on Blurb and made a photobook for my girlfriend of all our trips and various adventures for Christmas. It came out awesome on the first shot. Sure I could make a few tweaks to my editing but the color was quality of the book was excellent. <br>

I used AdobeINDesign with the Blurb color profiles, came up with actions to default sharpening, color profile conversion to CMYK and processed in Photoshop CS6 sRGB going back to the original RAW images. So my book came out at around 100 pages and it looks good. I chose the hardcover book option. Also I did a recalibrate of my monitor with the Spyder 5 before starting. <br>

I should have had more time before Christmas to do all this work, especially since I needed to Learn InDesign from scratch and watch youtube videos. <br>

Thanks for giving me a winning idea.</p>