Kristina

Thanks for the comparison. I might investigate the apple site, though I think the cost may deter me. Plus, I don't use any apple products at all, so I'm not that familiar with them. I do like the idea of being able to change the template and there were times I wish I could have a landscape page turned portrait.

dogster

Well Kristina, I have to thank you for this post. I'm deep in blurbspace. You were, indeed, correct that the process is time-consuming. Lol. What fun it is.

One of my many projects is a lavish coffee table book featuring The Goats of India. I think it'll be a big seller.

quimbymoy

oops i thought you had a mac (i saw kathie's earlier post and thought she knew something i didn't). unsure if iphoto would work with PCs.

dogster, can't wait to see what else you come up with! i'm sure we'll all be entertained.

Kathie

quimby, no, I'm the one with the Mac. A relative made a book for her mother's 80th birthday using Apple. I was really impressed with the quality.

quimbymoy

aha! i get it now. ;-)

Kristina

Dogster- Glad you like it. Hope you decide to share when you are done.
And yes, if you are at all a perfectionist, it sucks you in, doesn't it? I am still working on my book about my Rome trip, up to 90 pages now.

shandy

This sounds great. I had never heard of this before so am topping for my own future reference.

WillJame

Oops, a dreaded truncation above: "But I did find the white font not too legible on some photos" is what I think I meant to say.

Kristina

WillJame-I don't see another post from you, but I think I "get" what you are saying.
Yes, one of the things I learned in the process is to make sure any text on top of photos can be seen. The best photos for this are those with large areas of either light or dark color so one can put a contrasting color of text on top. It's even more noticeable in print than it is on the screen.
I am going to make a number of changes to my book before I order a copy for myself now that I've seen the book in print.

WillJame

Kristina, some strange things are happening.... This previous post from Dec. 21st comes up on my computer as part of the thread when I begin to add another. But then that earlier one disappears when I check the forum online. Anyway, here's the whole thing:

For Mac users, the Apple "book" option is probably the method of choice because it synchs so well with iPhoto. I especially liked the ability to edit photos as you add them, insert photos from a preselected gallery, and juggle as you edit without fear of duplication. You're also warned if the photo selected isn't high enough res for the book in the proposed size.
Kristina got excellent results, and the amount of text you can put in seems to me to exceed what Apple allows. But I did find the white font not too legible on some photos.

Kristina

Yes, the text over photos is particularly problamatic over 'busy" photos with lots of changes in color and light. It works well with solid color, like sky.
For this reason, I'm spending a lot of time going back and looking through my current project, changing some of my pages, mostly the ones with a 5-photo collage and text on top. The problem is that there really is no better solution to fit all those photos on one page with text. It's frustrating. In many cases I'm taking it down to a 4 photo page with caption below.
There is no easy solution.
Once the book is built, it can be difficult to just add a page in the middle without disrupting the following pages layout. Inserting a page pushes every page behind it down one and if you want a chapter heading page on the right for example, then this will make them all on the left unless you add <i>another</i> page.

offwego

You could go into photoshop, build the collage there, use a feathered selection tool to make a selection and ghost it back, then some black text shows up well on it.

May or may not work depending on the content of the photo.

Kristina

offwego-true and a good idea. But I've already spent so much time on this one...you know how it goes. I have to get it uploaded today.

Book # 3 will be better still, I'm sure. And I may try something like that then. OTOH, I like the look of the overlapping photos in their format and I'd have to teach myself how to do that in PS (more time...).

Another thought I had was to make a text box jpg with the same color as my background (brown) so I can put as much white text in it as I want (thus not limited to their text box on that type of page) and then use it as one of the &quot;photos&quot;. Again, next book.

Kristina

Ok, creating the text box jpeg and using that in place of one of the photos works really well! And it's fast and easy. Only downside is the loss of one of the photos but it's a good option if you don't have a photo which can have text over it.

Kristina

I just finished my second book. 102 pages. Yikes. I feel like I need to detox from the process now, I've been so obsessed with it for the past few weeks. I'm not even sure it's possible to be truly &quot;finished&quot;.

Dogster, if you are reading this, how goes yours?

The preview only shows the first 15 pages, which aren't the best of the book, but if anyone is interested, you can see it here:
http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/519704
I took a lot of the comments about the text being readable to heart and modified almost every page which had text over photos. Creating my own text jpegs was a really good solution for now.

dogster

I totally agree Kristina. Lordy, what a task. It took me about 20 tries before I worked out how to effectively transfer my text. The program seems to wipe out some of my formatting.

I've laid all 390 pages of The Dogster Chronicles down. lol. I just have to go thru now and fix the formatting. But, yup, it's an art form. I love it. I love the fact that the essential mystery has been taken away from those awful young women in publishing [in Oz, at any rate] The ones with big lipstick and bad hair. They always dress in black and sneer for a living.

But then, in Australia, a best-seller is a book that sells 2,000 copies. But, I digress.

Kristina

Dogster-are you including photos in your book, or only text? I really had a hard time editing down my text because I wanted it to be more of a photo book than text-heavy. OTOH, the 2nd book has much more text than the first, so I guess I gave in a little there.

I had a problem pasting text into the program, until I figured out the 2nd paste option of &quot;text only&quot;. That one leaves the format you set in Blurb. But you still have to go back and add in certain spacing and things like italics. Plus, on this last book, I just gave in to the default font (Trebuchet) because I got sick of changing it each time I pasted in text.

I do hope you share the link one you get it uploaded.

dogster

Yeah, I figured that out too. Eventually. Now I've gotta go thru and put BACK all the accents, emphasis and any unusual spacing. Sigh. I'm just sticking in a few B/W pics. One per story. The REAL killer is doing what you're doing. I lost many hours of my life last night tumbling into a picture book. It's a life's work. lol.

I had to just pull back and focus on the Chronicles and just get a first copy from them to see what glitches I have to fix. It's FUN. Anal retentive and time-consuming to the extreme. Perfect for a tragic Dog. Yeah, I'll share the link. What goes around, comes around.

Kristina

I just received book #2 (Rome) yesterday. It looks good. The colors and tones of both the black and white and the color photos are excellent. The premium paper is very good, though I do wish they had a glossier option.

I have a couple of criticisms which are minor and I am aware no printing process is perfect. In general, I am very happy with it.

The book has photos on a dark brown background. There are some areas where the dark brown appears slightly faded or splotchy. It's very faint, but is noticeable. It's almost as if the printer was running out of ink or a roller in the printer pulled off some of the ink as it passed through. The faded areas are in the same place on every page but only visible in dark areas. My last book had the same color background and this was not an issue.

The second issue is the book's dust jacket which appears about 1/4 inch too big for the book. The full-bleed photo on the cover wraps around to the inside flap. I don't want to try and re-fold it because then the title on the spine will be off-center and there will be extra creases on the edge of the book. I have a feeling the dust jacket is created for the largest book in every page range (i.e. 80-120 pages) and because mine falls in the middle (102 pages) it is slightly too large.
This was not noticeable on my last book because the cover photo did not go to the edge of the cover. I will probably change the cover format for the next book I order.

I've emailed Blurb with my comments. It will be interesting to see how they respond. Because this current book is a (belated) Christmas gift I am going to have to give it to my friends and hope they don't notice rather than try to send it back because of the splotchy printing.

Kristina

I just got a personal reply from someone at Blurb. This is pretty good because the web site said I could expect a response in 1 business day which meant Monday given that I sent the email Friday night. Instead they replied in 13 hours.

They asked me to send photos of the issue which I have done. We'll see what they say or offer next....