Blurb BookSmart 1.9 is now available. UPDATE: Patch released Oct. 11

UPDATE: New patch released Oct. 11

Thought you’d all like to know that we issued a patch to BookSmart 1.9 late yesterday. The patch should resolve some of the issues that many of you encountered with our new build. Thanks to everyone for their great feedback and bug reports.

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We are very happy to announce that Blurb BookSmart version 1.9 is now available. Not only have we listened to your feedback by focusing on stability and flexibility, but we’re also pleased to introduce some new tools to help with book design and collaboration.

Forum users are seeing this first. We’re not going to publicly announce this version until we’ve given everyone in the Forums an opportunity to give it a good run. We know you’ll have feedback that’s both good and bad and we want to hear it – let us know your thoughts in this thread.

Please keep in mind: While we did a rigorous amount of testing, there may be some issues found in this release. This is true of any initial version release of any software. We will immediately announce any necessary patch releases here as needed.

As requested, here’s a quick list of some of the features that are new to 1.9:

• Community Book – Blurb authors can now invite contributors to share content and contribute to a community book project.
• Page Layouts – We’ve added over 45 new page layouts to each book size. Modern designs, photo collages, yearbook pages, and more.
• New design elements – 60 new color-customizable backgrounds, ornaments, and borders are available in all trim sizes.
• New themes – 12 new book themes are included in nearly all trim sizes to help you get a jump start on Wedding books, Travel books, and Cookbooks.
• SmugMug Slurper – Slurp your SmugMug photos directly into BookSmart
• More Metrics – BookSmart now shows additional book measurements in metrics.

Download Blurb BookSmart version 1.9.0

Running it now. Loving it so far and the Community Book is going to really be great. I’d been thinking of a way to do that for some time.

Questions:

I imported my 1.8 produced book.. have noticed a couple problems. Then started a fresh book to see if the same problems were there.. they were not. Should I post here? Or would you prefer I email direct?

Also, you still have the watermark on the preview to pdf. Is there any way to turn that off?

I understand you’re not charging for the software because you want people to buy books from Blurb and not just lay them out in your free software and have them printed elsewhere. I do understand that. But what about allowing a non-print quality version to be output without the watermarks "For Proofing Only" line?

Still no way to move text around on the page.  Not a biggy since you offer so many layout options. But it’d still be nice. Any chance of that coming in the next release? Or, have I just missed it and it’s already there?

Lots of very cool additions for sure! Can’t wait to layout another book! Great job and it seems faster too! It’s just that there seems to be a problem with functionality using my already laid out 1.8 version. Will post here if you like, or by email. Let me know. 

all i have to say is FINALLY….now if you could only fix your printing issue because Im still waiting on a response about pages that BLURB forgot to print.

I just sent the alleged bug report and details via email to technical support. I don’t want to post them here since I’m not absolutely certain it’s not user error on my part.

I just tried my original book in v1.8. Went to print, and print to pdf. The resulting file was only 50MB instead of 800MB v1.9 generated when I did the exact same thing. Appears to be a glitch/bug in v1.9.

Hi skiphunt –
The PDF is much larger in v1.9 b/c it is now outputting as a high-resolution PDF. We had customer feedback that text and some photos were being visually degraded when the PDF was saved out in previous versions of BookSmart. While heavier, this will provide more accurate and legible output for proofing.

If desired, Adobe Acrobat Pro will let you downsample as one of the Save As.. options.

Thanks – Chad, VP, Product Design

btw – nice avatar. looks like we were out on similar blue-sky days :-)

In a word – Great!

In a few more words… Nice upgrade to 1.8. Seems faster. Integration with iPhoto 08 makes such a BIG difference – no more exporting, then looking for files, and clogging up my HD with duplicate photos, etc. Many new backgrounds to choose from which are great, and i like how you can customise the individual colours – same for the new ornaments which are a nice touch. There are a few new page layouts, but nothing spectacuar IMO.

Obviously, i haven’t been using it for long, but so far i am pleased with what i see. However, i would have liked a bit more flexibility with individual photo layout. For instance, in iPhoto there are photo borders which are tilted – which can look really nice, and one particular effect i love is many small photo frames that house only one picture. This can also look great, please tell me if its in 1.9 and i’ve missed it, or just take it as a suggestion for the next upgrade!

One other point – I bought my first Mac 2/3 months ago – Mac Mini 2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 2GB RAM, and its a powerhouse. Only once has it crashed – if you can call it that – iPhoto unexpectedly quit, but that’s it. HOWEVER, today, after 5 minutes of using BookSmart 1.9, I get a daunting message on my screen – Mac OS X needs to Restart. Now of course this could be a coincidence, but it seems very odd. Once i restarted, it said Mac OS X had a problem, rather than singling out BookSmart, which is good – i think. I’ll just keep my fingers crossed that was the only "bug"  i’ll ever come across using 1.9!!

Anyway – sorry for going on! In short, i’m very impressed with the new version of BS… (probably shouldn’t call it that, right?). Not so much many NEW features (new places to bring in photos and a collaborative tool) but existing features are much more expanded and customisable, which will be very beneficial to me.

Well, I only found out about Blurb 2 weeks ago, after realising iPhoto was far too expensive. Since then, i ordered a test book, which turned out amazing. And i have just bought 3 more books. The ONLY thing that slightly tinged the Blurb experience for me was the delivery charge of at least £9 to the UK. This has now changed to about £3! And now the software has just been updated, so i feel like i have joined the Blurb community at just the right time!

P.S. i ordered an Apple iPhoto Book anyway, before finding out about Blurb, and it still hasn’t arrived. I ordered on 23rd September… On the other hand, my Blurb book arrived in 7 working days.

I know i’m a little off the topic now, but i’m just showing my appreciation for all the hard work the Blurberati have put in to offer such great services, software and products, at such riduculous prices!

Thanks again,

Regards, James

I just had a quick look though the upgrade last night and was a bit disappointed.

My recollection was that over the last 2 months since I found Blurb, a lot of people were asking for a way to change the default font – unless I’ve missed it, I don’t see that that has happened, although some of the themes have different fonts than previous. 

Also, although there are now more  layouts, many were asking for customizable layouts – the ablility to move, rotate and resize photo boxes. I also haven’t seen that in the new release. In other words I see more choice of the same old  ideas, but little in new funtionality.

If anyone who has spent more time in it than I has found something really new that I’ve missed, please let me know.

Dale 

I want to ask a couple questions/requests regarding your 1.9 software that I’d prefer to ask via private email. Is there someone I can email direct for a couple specific questions/requests?

The two books I ordered yesterday and this morning I’m told will take 11 calendar days in production.  That seems excessive.  It that normal?  It is slower than my previous experience.  I was expecting 3 days.  I need the order much faster.

I was one of the unfortunate souls who had a large project 2/3 completed when the system started locking up. I have been waiting for over two months for the update to complete the book. Last night, I used the new software for the first time and was very impressed. The software worked almost perfectly and was much faster than the previous version. Thanks so much for taking your time to release this version. I encountered one small glitch  which might have been user error. When I tried to change some of the text in a header, I received the standard error message saying something like, "Booksmart was forced to shut down, etc." I went back in and everything worked fine after that. I will admit that everything I have done using the new version is pretty basic because I am just trying to finish the book I started several months ago. However, I am very pleased with 1.9 so far. 

Jack;

What problems does the update patch resolve & is it a patch file – or a new download of the full file?

Thanks & Cheers;

Lee

So I checked the version from my download last night -  # 1.9.0.20357 and then followed the instructions above to download the release with the patch.

When I open the "new" download, the version  number is still the same. Was there a revised 1.9 or not????

Dale 

Dale,

The original version was 1.9.0.20247 , so you obviously downloaded after the update.

regards,
David