Book composition and printing

[ricwis]

Thought I would share some information and experience with you and also ask for your input as well. I've usually printed my keepers on my Kodak dye sub printer, gone to the photo store and spent $50 on a nice portfolio book and pages. and then had one presentation book with about $150 invested. The problem has been that this is too expensive for friends and family who would like copies of the photos.

Book publishing has always been too expensive, until recently. But it is a solution that works well for me so if you are looking for some alternatives, this may be something to consider. I've tried the Apple books and they are quite nice but expensive. Viovio.com has been my choice for books lately. They offer a nice landscape perfect bound (soft cover and 6x9) book with a sharp laminated cover and reasonable cost. Once your photos are uploaded, they offer a very nice layout tool.

What they lacked until now is a hardcover option. It is now available and I've ordered my first hardcover book. A 30 page book (I chose 2 pictures per page) and hardbound comes to $22.49 plus shipping. This is less than what a nice portfolio album costs let alone adding the prints.

A friend suggested I try another publisher called blurb.com. Blurb has an application to download and then you assemble the book on your computer and upload the final file to their site for printing. It is more expensive at $30 for the first 40 pages plust $9 shipping for the first book. The software application is beta, at least for the Mac, and has some quirks. It is especially slow on screen refresh as you type and that gets quite annoying. It does have more options than Viovio in that it allows a different format for each page, including the number of photos, captions, and text.

Of course, the proof is in the pudding, ah I mean printing. I'm looking forward to comparing the two and deciding if this is a good option for my photos.

If there is interest in this area of having photos printed in book form, I would be glad to report back in more detail about how these processes work and what the quality of the final product is. There is a significant amount of work that has to go into photo preperation, especially if you have a large number of pictures to put in a book, so it is important to get the best value for the time and money spent. I would also be interested in others experience.

[MGlennn]

I am very interested in doing this at some point...several folks over at NC have done it and gotten good results.....would be interested in your experience :D

[ricwis]

Here is where the hard part comes in for me. When I had an Apple book printed, I did not add captions and depending on the number of photos per page, there was too much white space. I did not care for the look. Then I printed a Viovio book, one photo per page and with a caption under the photo. This looked much better but still had about 1/2 inch white space around each photo. Full bleed on each page would look much better but then there would be no captions.

Here are the problems I am trying to solve to create my book. Since my book will be of birds and wildlife, the issue of captions come up. Hopefully some forum members have considered some of these things and can offer some help.
1. Captions or no captions. I don't care for captions under the picture. If the page design allowed for a page number, say on the outside and a caption on the inside margin, either top or bottom that might be ok. Another option is to add the caption as part of the picture, allowing for full bleed.
2. Aspect Ratio. 1:1, 3:2, 4:3. Depending on the book size aspect ratio has a lot to do with page layout. It seems that a lot of planning has to go into which photo will be on which page or which photos will make up a page. This means a lot of work cropping and sizing.
3. Additional text. Sometimes a shot is very unique and there is the temptation to tell the story behind it. I'n not sure about this.
4. Book size. I'm thinking coffee table book and possibly square 8.5x8.5.

I keep coming back to the idea of my portfolio album. It is just photos. Nothing else. I am thinking this is the way to go with a book, just photos, full bleed, no text, no captions, one photo per page. It would sure make life easier but then might make it boring too.

[txbonds]

I used blurb to print a book about my sons first year. I put in all the pertinent information for the first 20 pages recording stuff about the birth and other details using various page layouts. Then, for the next 39 pages, I filled them with full page pictures. Some pages had funny quotes overlayed and stuff.

Anyway, total hard back bound book in 8x10, with color printed dust jacket and 59 total printed pages came to $34.95 per copy. I ordered two copies initially to check quality and found them to be very nice. Then got an email from blurb offering free shipping on my next order, so using that I placed the remainder of my order.

All in all, I'm very pleased with the end product and cost, and it provides family members with a very nice looking picture album that they can keep to look at and show others.

Worth a try, although I too found the software to be a little slow, but thinking about it, it let me assemble a book of many very large pictures on my local computer and then upload the whole thing to them, so it's no surprise it's a little slow.

[Paul]

I've used My Publisher and been happy with the results. Viovio seems to be cheeper. These books are a great way to organize and show your work. Especially in this digital age when we are tempted to leave them on the laptop until the thing breaks and we lose them for good. frown; (OK, nobody here would be that careless, but I know people it has happened to.) At least the book has the photos in a format people can view without needing a computer, electricity, operating systems, software, etc. nonono;

[ricwis]

I've received the book from Blurb.com and all I can say is WOW! The quality of their work is evident. I'm very pleased.

Their software is still in beta and is cumbersome and slow to use. Fortunately, I ordered 1 copy of the book just to be sure and didn't go for more copies. I missed about 3 spelling and formatting errors because their text entry process is not easy to use. Editing text already entered is really hard as the text changes color to match the background. Bug?

Now I am waiting for the Viovio book to arrive.

[Jim Thiel]

Rich, I look forward to seeing your book on Wednesday. I have spent the past few days getting my Blurb book ready. The editing on the windows based was hard until I began to enter additional text and then all my text turned white on a black background and was easy to see. Not sure why it did not show up until I began to type.

What I am not sure of is using the one image which is not full frame. It allows for text but I am unsure how big the border will be. Is there away to make the picture almost full frame and yet have a small border around the edge, maybe 1/2 inch or so?

Thanks.

Jim T.

[ricwis]

Jim,
At least on the Mac version, and I think it is the same for the PC, you are not able to change picture size or move the picture on the page. This is one of the down sides of the product. You are locked into their page formats. I decided that for my first book, I would use captions only on the photo pages. I have one page of just text in the beginning of the book. Borders are set in stone as well. You can choose different styles, but nothing else.

On Wednesday, I'll have the Blurb book with me as well as the Viovio soft cover book so you can compare picture quality from each vendor. The Blurb book is really well done but requires a lot of work in their book builder product.

[ricwis]

I can now report on both books. I received the Viovio hardcover book today. I am dividing this report into three major sections: Cover, Pages, Other stuff.

Cover: The Viovio book hardcover is very nice. There is no dust jacket. The cover photo, title, and other text is printed right on the cover. It has a very glossy finish. Size is portrait at 8.75x11.75. The photo is in the center with a two inch margin top and bottom, black with white lettering. Looks really sharp. The back is black. This cover is much like many books you will see in a bookstore with no dust jacket.
The Blurb book has a blank hard cover but comes with a printed dust jacket. The jacket is nice and has a front and back flap where you can add a photo and more text and include a photo on the back. This book is landscape at 10x8.5. The jacket adds a nice touch but if it gets torn or lost, you have a blank book cover with nothing printed anywhere on it. The photo on the jacket covers the whole front with the lettering on the photo background. There is a photo on the back too.
Conclusion: Both are very nice and good quality but present a different look. Neither one is better or worse than the other so depends on individual taste and audience. I wouldn't want to give a dust jacket book to a child as it would probably not last too long but it would look nice on a coffee table.

Pages: I looked at both book pages with a loupe (yes, just like all crazy photographers do) and find the printing identical. Its hard to describe what I see. It is not the usual "inkjet dithering" pattern seen on so many prints. The ink density is very good and the colors are great. There is a slight color difference. I cannot say which one is "right". The black pages of the Blurb book with the white frames around the photos makes them have a little more "pop" but that is only seen in a side-by-side comparison.
Conclusion: Both look good and are so close that I cannot choose one over the other. Just make sure you photos have the Adobe RGB color profile imbedded in them and they are 300 dpi.

Other Stuff: Viovio book building is online. You manage image order and captions there. Right now, a text page is difficult to add but can be done with some extra work. White pages are the only color available. I know they are working on these things for future options. Blurb book building is on your PC using their beta software. It is beta for sure and can get frustrating to use.

Blurb just raised their shipping charges. I ordered three books and shipping is $15. Blurb has a shorter turn around time than Viovio. Viovio has better and more shippping options.

Summary: This is a tough one. I like both. They have a different look and would work for different purposes. I guess it boils down to which cover option works for you, what size book you need, how soon you need it, and how much text, table of contents, or other goodies you need. Each offering has their strong points and some weak ones but both will work for me.

[Robert]

Rich,

Thanks for all the information!! I've just started to consider a bound book to show and give some of my photos to friends etc. I'll be looking into trying my hand at publishing something and will check out these options you mention.:)

[Jim Thiel]

Just to let you guys know, I have now received my second set of books from Blurb. I am very happy with the quality as Rich said. The shipping was fast. The down side I see is that if you want to edit the book even if it is just one page you must upload all the images all over again. This can be very time consuming. I also wish they had larger sizes available. I would highly recommend the product at this time. It makes great gifts as well.

[retief]

I saw Jim's book on Saturday, it does look great.

Rich, good to see you here, I'd love to see the two books side-by-side myself. Any chance that you will be somewhere in the "not distant future" where I could take a look?

[ricwis]

Bill,
Great to hear from you. There was one "slight" problem with the Viovio hard back book. Page 1 should have been the last page and the last page should have been the first page. Whoever bound it did it backwards. After I called it to their attention, they are re-printing the book and will send me the new copy. They say it should ship next week. I hope that happens.

I am working at the store pretty much every day except Tuesday and Thursday until Christmas. When the book arrives, I'll bring it along with the Blurb book and if you have a chance to stop by, you can compare.

I do like the cover of the Viovio book. No paper jacket.

I tried the soft cover from Blurb and it is very nice as well. Only difference is the inside front and back flap photo and text is not there.

[retief]

Thanks, Rich, I'll let Jim know as well. Bring either copy along, I wouldn't know the 1st page was in wrong :biglaugh:

One thing I like about VioVio is the size, but I don't like the "slim pickens" for paper choices.

[Sheldon Bowles]

What a great idea. I'm going to give this a try --- once I get a couple of decent photos to put in one that is. Actually, I'll probably do one of my three granddaughters first. There's no such thing as a bad granddaughter picture! Thanks for posting all this good information.

Sheldon

[ricwis]

Sheldon,
Here is another idea for a book that our family did last year. Fortunately one of my sons did all the work to put the book together. We had each family member submit pictures from their family for the year. Kind of like a year in review. This included my kids and their spouses and the spouses brothers and sisters and included the grandparents (like me). This got all the grandkids too. Then each family put together a page or two of text about their year. Each family got their own chapter. Since we have a pretty large extended family, the book ended up being 130 pages but worth every one of them. It is great to look through and to show friends. We decided it was better than photos in a shoe box and photos stuck on a hard drive.

[Paul]

I have ordered two books. One was made using images from a digital camera and the other from scanned negatives. I have to say I like the quality of the images from the digital camera better.


When I print a scanned negative, I get great results on my Canon printer. But, the book showed a lot of grain. I am not sure why. Perhaps the printing process is optimized for purely digital images, not the negative-digital hybrid.

In the future I plan to only 100% digital images in a book. For my scanned negatives I will stick with the ink jet.

[Sheldon Bowles]

Sheldon,
Here is another idea for a book that our family did last year.

Great idea Rich! This is terrific. Many thanks.

Sheldon

[Paul]

I should add that I am not upset with the quality of the books made from scanned negatives. Rather, I noted that the one made from original digital images seems better. If I had a number of photos on film that I wanted to make into a book, I certainly would do so if it was important to me.

[bwick]

I realize that your posting about the bookmaking is old, but I have read it and made my own book. I used viovio, and was very pleased with the results. I made a die-cut hardback book, and everything went perfectly, except the color. My gallery images were bright and clear, just as they were on my monitor in photoshop. However, the pdf preview, and to a lesser extent, the actual book, were very flat and unsaturated. I was so pleased to be able to create the book. Now I am a little disappointed in the results. I can't seem to find out from them what to do differently. You seem to be very knowledgeable, and I wondered if you could help. I use a macintosh, created the pages completely in photoshop, changed them to a jpeg format, and uploaded two large zip files to create the book.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks

Beverly

[ricwis]

Hi Beverly,
One of the process things that makes a big difference is for you to imbed the Adobe RGB color profile in the image before you upload to Viovio. I just had two more books printed in the last couple of weeks and the color is great. The other thing that can make a difference is to choose the glossy paper. it is a little extra but really ads to the contrast of the printed page. So my guess is imbedding the profile and the glossy paper could make a difference for you.

[bwick]

Thanks for your reply, Rich. I'm not sure what you mean by "imbed" the rgb profile. The images are created in the adobe rbg color space, but is there another step I'm missing? I guess the paper I've used in my first book is more of a semi-gloss. If they offer it, I'll try the glossy next time.

Thanks again,

Beverly

[ricwis]

Beverly,
When you do a Save As... in Photoshop, in the dialog there is a box to check that says "Embed Color Profile: Adobe RGB(1998)" You will want to make sure that is checked. Otherwise, it will probably embed the sRGB profile which could cause your prints to look flat in print. Their Xerox XGen printers use the Adobe RGB profile.

There is a color settings dialog under edit that lets you set your working space to Adobe RGB as well and will apply it to what you open in Photoshop.

Viovio has a satin finish and a more glossy finish. The glossy is not really a high gloss like you would see on a lab print but does give better contrast than the satin.

I really like their solid hard cover look. The cover photo is laminated on the cover and really looks great. I've not tried the die cut cover.

The photos I use for my books are 2800x2100 (4:3 aspect ratio) 300 dpi, and Adobe RGB color space embedded.

[bwick]

Thanks, Rich.

I checked, and my images do have the RGB profile embedded. The die-cut book only seems to offer glossy paper, so I guess that's what I have. I'll just have to try to increase the saturation level and the contrast before uploading them. I just don't understand how the appearance of the images could change so drastically from the gallery to the bookmaker. The pdf preview is quite desaturated and flat, so something must happen in their creation process that I'm not aware of. I have a few more books ready to upload, I just wish I could work through this first.

Thanks so much for your time. We computer challenged people require step by step instructions sometimes.

Beverly

[ricwis]

Beverly,
A friend of mine just recently received the same type die-cut cover book from Viovio and his pages were fine. One thing I forgot to ask... is your monitor profiled? If the monitor is off in its color adjustments, it could have you make it look good but then when sent to print, it looks bad.

If you want, send me an email with a sample photo attached and I will see how it looks on my monitor. I use and LCD profiled with the eye 1.

The quality of their books is really quite good and we should be able to figure out what is happening before you do any more work. Oh the joys of color management.

[bwick]

Thanks, Rich. I would greatly appreciate your looking at one of my images. I don't seem to be able to find your email address. If you could send it to me at: bwick@ipro.net, I will get right back to you.

Thanks a lot,

Beverly