Claustral's Posts

I went through this circus last year: two attempts with a European printer which resulted in two copies with pages flying out within hours of arrival. Then on the third run the printing was done in the USA and the result was stunning. Perfect binding, perfect printing – a delight. Blurb were great in facilitating the reprints too, but I haven’t been back since. 

Why? The trouble is trust. Why should I spend weeks putting together a book only to have a lacsidaisical printer in Europe stuff it up? And it’s more galling when I know now there’s a  printer in the States that will do it right first time, but simply because of where I live I can’t access that until the European printer has has a couple of runs at it.

It  also means I can’t order directly for friends and family . I would never order a book without it coming to me first and then after checking forwarding on. So I check back here now and again looking for news on binding and hoping that something changes. Such as closing the European printer.

I had a long road to a very happy conclusion. The first two copies of my 8×10 hardcover (198pp) had problems with pages falling out almost immediately. The printing was fine, it was just the binding that was hopeless.

Blurb was quick to help with the reprinting. The first reprint was at the original printers in Holland. When it fell apart too, they sent the job to somewhere else in the NE of USA (judging by the UPS tracking). I got this version today and it is all I hoped for. The printing is excellent and the binding has a completely different feel to it. It’s stiched, stable and perfectly aligned. I am very happy indeed.

So that’s one copy right in two months. The question is, can I feel confident that if I place another order I’ll get the quality of this book, or will it be the let down that the first ones were? I don’t know.

I am guessing you see it as 2" square in a photo editing program? The problem is to do with how photo editing programs use DPI (dots per inch) when converting pixels to inches (cm, feet etc). When a program of this sort tells you the size in real world units like inches, what it’s actually  converting the number of pixels to inches by dividing by a DPI figure. The important thing for Blurb is that the DPI doesn’t matter (if you’re using the standard templates). A 2000 pixel image has the same resolution regardless of DPI. The DPI is only interesting if you want to specify a particular print size in inches/millimetres and know the exact DPI of the printer.

Using the Blurb templates and the rescaling function in Booksmart you don’t need to know anything about DPI. Just roughly follow the size recommendations in pixels that the template provides and you’ll be fine. It’s OK to go a bit under the recommended figure, but going over is just wasted storage space.

Hi!

Sad to hear about your dad. Is he a photographer?

Honestly – I was happy with the B&W pages I’ve got. Now, they aren’t up to the quality of some fine art photo books I have, but the blurb printing was almost always completely free of tint and the tonal gradations are quite respectable. Maybe those few with a subtlest of magenta tinge would annoy you? I can’t say. But the first thing I thought when seeing these shots in my book was "wow, these look great" – and I used to spend a fair amount of time in a darkroom, and I do care about quality.

 Hope this helps.

Mark 

Sadly I have to report that my second copy of my first book is having pages fall out of it too. It took 2 days rather than 2 hours with the first one, but it was clear from first opening that it wasn’t going to last.

Blurb were great at quickly arranging for a new copy to be printed after the first failure, and the reprint arrived faster than the first version, but all to no avail. I’ll be reporting this one and see how we go for version three.

BTW, both failures were medium size books with 196 pages, printed in Holland. 

Keeping it a little off-topic, a reply for Winston. The behaviour you describe is neither normal nor necessary with a good scanner, such as the model you mention. Transparencies should scan pretty much as well as negs. I have a Nikon Coolscan V-ED and the if you look at my Flickr account you will not be able to tell which are scanned from neg and which are from transparency (though the tags reveal the answer). I’d suggest that something is probably wrong with the software settings you’re using. If you’re using Nikon Scan, then perhaps the highlight recovery function is adjusted way too high?

The important point is that a Nikon LS2000 should be able to get great scans from transparencies. 

A small point as Blurb makes moves to be more global – referring to something as domestic as a synonym for domestic to the USA is not good ettiquette. Rather than "domestic", say "in the States". "Domestic" is unclear in these circumstances. Small point, but it’s things like this that help to add community.

UPS (and other specialist freight/courier companies) are a pain for private consumers. You pay twice the cost, the goods arrive no faster than normal mail (unless you pay a super premium) and you have to be home to sign for the goods (which often results in me having to arrange leave stuff in the carport after UPS find no one home 2-3 times).

Give me normal mail every time. The tracking is a gimmick for the consumer and is only of interest to the seller to ensure that there is a way of resolving false claims of non-delivery.