Some newbie advice..
Hello, I came across this site while looking for ideas on printing photos. I saw blurb’s site and got very excited and downloaded booksmart and made a 40 page photobook of color photos of my daughters so far seven month of life =) My wife and I had a blast putting the book together and are excited to see the results and show it off! Anyways after reading a few posts about softproofing, picture quality issues, binding issues, and other issues and tips I was hoping some of you could maybe give me a couple of tips that should be done that will help this photo book come out as nice a quality as it looks on my screen. I’ve never done anything like this (making a book) and don’t have a ton of cash to order a second if I happen to mess up the first. The pictures we added came straight out of a Canon Digital (5 or 6 mpix) and weren’t resized when added to booksmart. Also, for a 40 page photo book does the price stay the same as it is on the pricing page? I read the pricing on there is $39.95 for 21-40 pages for standard Portrait but 4 colors only. Does that mean it may cost more for the color photos? If that’s a dumb question I apologize!
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First of all, welcome aboard to Blurb!
Does that mean it may cost more for the color photos?
No. It doesn’t matter if you have photos are black/white or color photos on Blurb Booksmart.
Other thing, I see and realize that you are new to Blurb Booksmart. I suggest that you do a bit of research on Color profile. Be sure to convert ALL of your images to sRGB color profile. BookSmart is a sRGB color-based application. And also be sure to have all of your images set to 300 DPI resolution. So that photos on Blurb printed book looks better that way.
If you need some more help on the topic related to sRGB color profile or 300 DPI resolution, feel free to conduct a search query on those topic under Help or in Search FAQs, or through forums’ Search Blurb Forums query. You have three options to find a possible lead. Hope that helps.
Good luck with your book project!
Cheers, Brian
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Thanks for the welcome! Darn.. I wish I would have read these forums before I finished putting all of the pics together! I was excited about ordering the book already. I’m guessing the I am going to have to resize them all, re-add them to booksmart, then put them back into their respective pages? Once their converted should I get a good quality photo for the book?
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Good advice from Brian as usual! BookSmart CAN be fairly forgiving. Although 300dpi is the recommended resolution many people seem happy with photos that are 150dpi, so you do not need slavishly to resample each one to 300dpi exactly, the nearer 300dpi though the better the quality of print. The one thing it is not forgiving over is the use of sRGB, Brian is right to stress that. You should get a VERY good quality book. I did a trial print of the first 20 pages of my book (I’m still working on the rest – I’m up to page 85 now) and was blown away with the result, it was absolutely great, I was really chuffed. As you browse the forums you will find some people who are not so happy, but bear in mind the majority who are happy rarely post in the forums … there are many exceptions to this as there are many happy Blurbers out there who want to tell the world :-) If you do rework a photo you are right, you need to re-import and re-add them to the respective page. Careful as you re-import. BookSMart will not over-write the original photo it will add the photo as a new one, (even though it has the same name in your files) then you’ll have two that look the same and (if you are like me) will have trouble telling which is which. I have gotten into the habit of deleting from BookSmart any photo that I plan re-import after changes. Good Luck with your book. .....Tony
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Thank you all so much for the feedback! I want a perfect book and I’m sure we’ll now be happy with the quality. Now I just need to do a search on how to make the conversion! Thanks again, Lance
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Alrighty….. So it’s almost 1145pm and I’m still kind of racking my brain with this sRgb convert. What I did after reading several several several postings is first changed PS’s default setting as detailed here: http://www.blurb.com/assets/colormgt_dpreview-v3-1.pdf I then created a droplet and dumped all my photos into it, which were saved to a seperate folder. The droplet (very cool that I was able to do that haha) that I did was an action that first did Image/Mode/Convert to Profile and changed the profile to sRGB ****-2.1. I left the remaining settings at Microsoft ICM (engine), Relative Colometric (intent), and left the Black Point Compensation and Use Dither checked. I then went to Image/Image Size and only changed the resolution to 400 (DPI right?) and left the rest at default with both the constrain proportions and Bicubic resample image checked. After reading postings I "THINK" I did this correctly but am not sure how to make sure it is or not. Can somebody give me a nod yay or nay or tell me where I can check the pics settings to make sure? Thanks very much in advance!
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Hello Lance; First off, it is HIGHLY PROBABLE that your images are already sRGB, so it’s doubtful if you need to worry about converting them! Check the settings on your camera’s menu. If it gives you a choice of colour settings, it will be either sRGB or Adobe RGB. If the camera is NOT a D-SLR, then it’s probable that you only have sRGB as a default anyway… If you’re not sure, then just open up any image in your editing software, and select Image, Mode and/or review the file properties… you will find the colour-profile in there somewhere… As for re-sizing, here you need to be VERY CAREFUL. I note you say you left "Bicubic" checked… that will have re-sampled your image! I.e it would have updated the original data! It’s always best to leave re-sample UN-CHECKED unless you really do want to re-size the image by ADDING pixels! From a 5Mp camera, it’s doubtful that you have needed to re-size, unless you’re making a large format 13×11 book!. A 5Mp image will give you a decent printed 10" x 7" image! (Provided of course that the origianl image is good!!!) Be very careful when dealing with your images; if you screw them up – they’re gone for good! I ALWAYS make a duplicate folder BEFORE I start playing with any of my images; that way, if I really do foul anything up, I always have the original intact! I hope that doesn’t sound too drastic… Good luck with your project; Cheers; Lee
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Yeah it did resize the heck out of them.. I can always do it again since it’s so easy with the droplet. I made a point to only use a copy of the original, I’ve always done that when messing with photos. Thanks, I’ll go back and uncheck that option and get the book back together. You all were so much help, thanks!
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Re Brian: "BookSmart is a sRGB color-based application. And also be sure to have all of your images set to 300 DPI resolution." I’m also a newbie, working slowly on my book. My photos come from a couple of different Canon Powershots (4-8MP) and a Digital Rebel XTi (10MP). They are all sRGB already, but have horizontal and vertical dpi of between 72-180 (depending on the camera) The resolution on the pics is very good, are you saying that I need to re-save images for Blurb at around the 300dpi mark ? Any suggestions as to a tool that can do this ? The pics print extremely well at 6×4, so I was a little suprised to see the requirement for 300dpi. Unless I’m looking at the wrong file property :) TIA
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Hello vampyre – and any others who are wholly confused by the DPI issue… The 72 or 180 you see is simply for screen resolution / display purposes… it has NOTHING to do with PRINT resolution, and you do NOT need to re-size your images before importing them into BookSmart… (Re-sampling is another – totally different – issue…) Many users are totally confused by this, but the concept is VERY simple… ALL that matters is your pixel count! E.g. If you have a 10Mp image, it will be approx. 3900×2600 pixels. At 300 DPI (dots per inch) you would have an OPTIMUM printed image size of c. 13"x9"... (3900/300 : 2600/300)... However, you can safely print a good image at 250 DPI, so you would get a printed image size of 16"x11"... (3900/250 : 2600/250)... From here on it’s easy to do the maths for your 4Mp & 8Mp images… Neither your 10Mp or 8Mp images should need to be re-sized at all. Even your 4Mp images should be OK at sizes up to about 9"x6"... Easiest way to test this is simply to print one image locally at whatever size you want to stretch it to, and see if it’s acceptable (quality wise) to you! If you don’t have your own photo printer, any imaging store can do a single print very economically… Cheers; Lee
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Thanks Lee, that makes much more sense to me. Very clear and simple :) Adam.
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Just to reiterate – as long as your pictures are from a decent resolution camera, DON’T RESIZE THEM! The book I’m putting together is with 5-6 year-old digital pictures which were taken on a 2mp camera (which was a very good camera for its time, Olympus C-2100). I have done test prints without resizing and they print just fine right up to the point where the yellow warning triangle comes up. For full-bleed pictures, all I did was double the pixel count from 1600×1200 to 3200×2400, and they print great! So yes, even a 2mp camera can give great full bleed 10×8 results, AS LONG AS it’s a good camera. Somehow the marketing people have convinced most consumers that megapixel count is the be-all and end-all of image quality. It is not! With a good lens, 2mp or 3mp can still give great prints. With a shoddy lens, 10mp will still give you junk – after all, 35mm film is said to be equivalent resolution to around 30 or 40 megapixels, but a cheap point-and-shoot camera will still not give you good blow-ups, because the image will be soft!
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robkingston,
What you said about your insight and information could be true. But when you say, “with a shoddy lens, 10mp will give you junk…” it is simply untrue. It is matter of personal preference and a specific mission for a project for that person.
I am afraid that you are a bit biased against 10mp or related topic. But you have different perspective about 2mp vs 10mp digital cameras. If you are totally happy with with your digital camera, go for it. Good for you that you are happy with what you have achieved with your digital camera.
But technology in digital cameras since 2MP digital cameras were developed/marketed has changed quite dramatically. It is important that people understand the real meaning of MP resolution, and what it meant to be and what is not. But you are true that marketing people use fancy marketing project. That is how it is in marketing industry about just everything. That is to say, it is responsibility of consumers to do the homework and research and they can decide what they want to purchase based on their desire, want and on budget.
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Brian, I know digital cameras have moved on a lot since the 2-megapixels days. I have moved on, too – the book I am making at the moment is of a trip I took in 2002-03, when the 2mp camera was all I had. I currently use a 5mp camera and that does me fine at the moment. What I am saying, though, is that the number of pixels is not the be-all and end-all of quality. The sensor can only capture the image that falls on it, and if the glass isn’t up to scratch, then the image will likely not be good enough to make all those pixels worthwhile! I am not biased against 10mp at all – if I had the money to spare, I’d no doubt buy a 10mp-plus digital SLR. With all other things being equal, sure I’d rather have 10 megapixels that 5 megapixels. But a sensor is only part of the issue. Some mobile phones nowadays have 5mp cameras, but I’ll wager that with their tiny lenses (and tiny noisy sensors), you’d be very unlikely to get a better photograph with them that I could have got with my 2mp Olympus. (Which sadly is no more.)
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Brian stated this earlier: "For full-bleed pictures, all I did was double the pixel count from 1600×1200 to 3200×2400, and they print great!" How do you do that? I have PS 7, can I do that in it? There are times when I know I have to crop wayb down but still would like to have the pixels up higher, would doubling the pixels aid in that? I am also a "Newbe", working on my first book for my Mother-in-law. I am compiling all the children, their spouses, grand children, great grand children, and others that are clinging on to the family vine. I thought it would be soooooo easy. Yeah, RIGHT!!! I can use all the hints I can get.
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I have a later version of Photoshop but I’m pretty cerain that in this area things haven’t changed. If, in Photoshop, you go to Image…..Image Size and then select Resample Image and Constrain Proportions and then enter the pixel size you are after, Under Resample Image there is a drop-down, use that to select Bicubic-Smoother (if you know what you are doing you might choose one of the alternatives) That should do what you are after. If your version of Photoshop looks a littel different come back and I’m sure someone with version 7 will jump in and help. ........Tony .
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Thanks Tony, I am at work right now but will look for the "Resample Image " when I get home. I don’t remember seeing that before, but then, I wasn’t trying to just resample. I think I saw the "Bicubic-Smoother" or Bicubic something before. Thanks again. Ken
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Hi Ken,
Actually, I want to clarify something about what you said, “Brian stated this earlier:
“For full-bleed pictures, all I did was double the pixel count from 1600×1200 to 3200×2400, and they print great!...”
Actually, it is quoted by robkingston.
Thanks.
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