Preparing B& W images for Blurb

[miriam_sushman]

<p>Has anyone recently printed a black and white book with Blurb? I want to know if black and white images need to be a bit light. Sometimes a printed piece can come out darker than expected. I am working in Book Smart and will print on premium paper. I use an excellent monitor that is calibrated.<br>

Thank you.<br>

Miriam</p>

[patricklavoie]

<p>yes. no. what i see is pretty close to what i get. My main problem with BW once print is sometime they have a slight color cast (kind of normal when you print on a commercial press) since they can manually adjust every image on the press itself.. when i say small cast, i mean i see it because im use to work with press, bw image and i am pretty good at seing those 1-2% cast.. it could be not even a problem for you. I still like very much my Blurb book quality.</p>

<p>Dont forget to put your image as sRGB jpeg 300ppi in the page for optimum quality.</p>

[Brad_]

I haven't used Blurb in awhile. But in the past, and with MagCloud (that I now currently use) which uses

the same HP Indigo digital press, I've found that image files processed need to be processed a bit lighter.

FWIW, that's using a calibrated LCD display set to 115 mcd intensity. YMMV...

[richard__]

<p>I have yet to do this myself, but last month Adobe opened a storefront in downtown San Francisco in an attempt to convince the public to buy their software. They had alot of demonstrations, and presentations. Blurb was one of their presenters, I went to that because I'm planning on doing a b&w print on demand book myself at some point this fall.</p>

<p>Blurb said when pressed on their printing of b&w books, that they weren't quite there with a consistent quality. A large part of the issue is due to the fact that they print using a CMYK color space. All the images need to be checked to ensure that they are color neutral before being submitted to them in sRGB at 300 dpi.</p>

<p>You'll also want to download their <a href="http://www.blurb.com/resources/color_management">ICC</a> profile to soft proof your images in Photoshop to get a reasonable sense as to how they'll print out.</p>

<p>The example books they had available, including their b&w looked quite good in both hard and soft covers.</p>

<p>I'd recommend ordering a swatch kit from them which provides samples of their papers, and how color and b&w print on them.</p>

[bill.akstens]

<p>The b&w images Blurb has printed for me are pretty close to what I submitted, and I have not noticed any color casts. Overall I've been very happy with their quality for the price.</p>

[miriam_sushman]

<p>Thank you for all the responses. I have a book that Blurb printed from a gallery show that I participated in. The black and white images did have a cast and my image looked slightly lighter than what I submitted. I will do one book and take it from there.</p>

[bakubo]

<p>Miriam, how did your B&W Blurb book turn out? I am thinking about making one too.</p>

[bakubo]

<p>By the way, I have a thread about my experience with a Blurb B&W photo book:<br /><br /><a href="/digital-darkroom-forum/00csF6">http://www.photo.net/digital-darkroom-forum/00csF6</a></p>