there are other threads about this. 1.9.2 has serious performance issues to the point where it is practically unusable on various machines. for instance i installed it over 1.8 on my old PC and 1.8 used to run extremely smoothly - very quick indeed. 1.9.2 rendered it virtually useless. i have since installed a fresh copy of 1.9.2 on a *brand new* PC and it's still unusably slow. For instance right now I'm trying to simply duplicate page layout (ctrl + shift+ D) for a *blank page* with a project that has 0 images loaded (so literally just the interface and an empty book) and it's taking about 10 seconds to duplicate the blank page! At one point I did think the performance problems were down to a memory leak in the gallery but it's obviously just a general problem with the entire application. It's using 108mb of RAM right now with NO images loaded into it! 108mb!! there are serious programming errors in this release.blurb need to address this issue immediately and release an update or they are going to lose customers. an example of this in practice - i recommended blurb to my folks last year and they just finished making a holiday snaps book - they received it last week and are dead chuffed with it - they produced it using 1.8. They have since upgraded to 1.9.2 and now find it completely unusable. They are now using Lulu..... I wonder how many other blurb customers are doing the same.It's a shame since Blurb is clearly the best option for everyone but if their software, the core of their production success, is faulty then they will have serious issues retaining and gaining customers. Other competitors have equal or superior printing quality (I know this because i have invested a lot of time trying out different companies' products) but Blurb have always been onto a winner with their software. And now it's broken... A simple patch is all we ask....  there are other threads about this. 1.9.2 has serious performance issues to the point where it is practically unusable on various machines. for instance i installed it over 1.8 on my old PC and 1.8 used to run extremely smoothly – very quick indeed. 1.9.2 rendered it virtually useless. i have since installed a fresh copy of 1.9.2 on a *brand new* PC and it’s still unusably slow. For instance right now I’m trying to simply duplicate page layout (ctrl + shift+ D) for a *blank page* with a project that has 0 images loaded (so literally just the interface and an empty book) and it’s taking about 10 seconds to duplicate the blank page! At one point I did think the performance problems were down to a memory leak in the gallery but it’s obviously just a general problem with the entire application. It’s using 108mb of RAM right now with NO images loaded into it! 108mb!! there are serious programming errors in this release.blurb need to address this issue immediately and release an update or they are going to lose customers. an example of this in practice – i recommended blurb to my folks last year and they just finished making a holiday snaps book – they received it last week and are dead chuffed with it – they produced it using 1.8. They have since upgraded to 1.9.2 and now find it completely unusable. They are now using Lulu….. I wonder how many other blurb customers are doing the same.It’s a shame since Blurb is clearly the best option for everyone but if their software, the core of their production success, is faulty then they will have serious issues retaining and gaining customers. Other competitors have equal or superior printing quality (I know this because i have invested a lot of time trying out different companies’ products) but Blurb have always been onto a winner with their software. And now it’s broken… A simple patch is all we ask….

2008-02-20T11:58:40Z

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Oh sweet irony....Installed 1.8.1 thanks to Lee (many thanks again!) but it still runs like somebody is dragging an elephant through a thick rosebush. Maybe it's a problem with GeForce cards, maybe not. One thing is for certain and that is that this software is unbareably slow. I'm way beyond caring now, at this stage. Thanks again to Lee and others offering help.  Oh sweet irony….Installed 1.8.1 thanks to Lee (many thanks again!) but it still runs like somebody is dragging an elephant through a thick rosebush. Maybe it’s a problem with GeForce cards, maybe not. One thing is for certain and that is that this software is unbareably slow. I’m way beyond caring now, at this stage. Thanks again to Lee and others offering help.

2008-02-11T18:10:50Z

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LeeThank-you! Blurb community to the rescue!Much appreciated!Alex  LeeThank-you! Blurb community to the rescue!Much appreciated!Alex

2008-02-11T18:05:31Z

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Nobody has come forth with a 1.8.1 installer for Windows yet. Somebody out there must have one on their machine somewhere and would be willing to upload it temporarily. I have just installed the latest 1.9.x on a brand new computer, brand new windows installation (this time XP pro 64-bit), newest drivers etc and I'm experiencing the same almost unusable performance only this time the interface is slightly more responsive (no doubt down to a much better CPU). This tells me that the issue is with the software itself rather than any clash with another package or piece of hardware. most likely an issue with displaying images in the gallery, since the UI is fairly responsive when you have no book project open (i.e. no images visible). Once again I appeal to the Blurb user community to provide a 1.8.1 Windows installer so that I and others in my position can continue to use Blurb rather than going to competitors, as, frankly, 1.9.x is utterly unusable on multiple machine configurations, different OS and different hardware/software combinations.Thanks in advance to anybody willing to supply a 1.8.1 win installer!  Nobody has come forth with a 1.8.1 installer for Windows yet. Somebody out there must have one on their machine somewhere and would be willing to upload it temporarily. I have just installed the latest 1.9.x on a brand new computer, brand new windows installation (this time XP pro 64-bit), newest drivers etc and I’m experiencing the same almost unusable performance only this time the interface is slightly more responsive (no doubt down to a much better CPU). This tells me that the issue is with the software itself rather than any clash with another package or piece of hardware. most likely an issue with displaying images in the gallery, since the UI is fairly responsive when you have no book project open (i.e. no images visible). Once again I appeal to the Blurb user community to provide a 1.8.1 Windows installer so that I and others in my position can continue to use Blurb rather than going to competitors, as, frankly, 1.9.x is utterly unusable on multiple machine configurations, different OS and different hardware/software combinations.Thanks in advance to anybody willing to supply a 1.8.1 win installer!

2008-02-11T11:11:56Z

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Having gone back and forth with Blurb support about this issue we have reached a wall whereby Blurb are not able (willing) to release the 1.8.1 installer for windows (or mac) to customers unable to use 1.9.1. Not impressive, frankly. It would therefore fall to the Blurb community to help out with this.If anyone is willing to supply me with the installer I would be hugely appreciative, otherwise, as I explained to Blurb support, I will be forced to use a competitor, which I really do not want to do.Thanks all,  Having gone back and forth with Blurb support about this issue we have reached a wall whereby Blurb are not able (willing) to release the 1.8.1 installer for windows (or mac) to customers unable to use 1.9.1. Not impressive, frankly. It would therefore fall to the Blurb community to help out with this.If anyone is willing to supply me with the installer I would be hugely appreciative, otherwise, as I explained to Blurb support, I will be forced to use a competitor, which I really do not want to do.Thanks all,

2008-02-07T08:54:55Z

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Tony (and Orchids) many thanks for pointing me to that link! very useful indeed.Tony, I also use Lightroom as first port-of-call with my photography - process/adjust/clean-up/re-expose etc. I do *not* adjust crops or rotation corrections in Lightroom (not enough control). I then take the adjusted image (exported to JPG) into Photoshop, correct verticals or rotate as necessary, draw my crop rectangles (simple colour-filled rectangles on a new layer), and export the final JPG (cropped). i then make a new copy of this final output that is resized for Booksmart/elsewhere. This way you always have 1) your original RAW 2) your original adjusted RAW 3) your original adjusted PSD uncropped and the original full resolution 4) your final full resolution output 5) a downsized version for BookSmart or elsewhere. At any stage if I need to re-expose or adjust something at RAW level I am able to do so with 0 problems. I do exactly the same process for non-photographic images (i.e. digital, 3D renders etc).orchids - based on the info from tony's link - it is the pixel dimensions (ie. resolution) that matter - the crop is irrelevant. therefore you must resize your image to the optimal resolution - the crop is simply an artistic/practical choice. many people confuse pixel resolution with PPI/DPI and with physical print size and with cropping - four very different elements that all work together to produce a final image for various uses. generally speaking you do the following:1) crop (for aesthetics only or aspect purposes to fit a particular physical sized canvass (book page, print etc)2) check the PPI/DPI required by the printers for your particular media (say, 200 or 300 for example)3) tell photoshop that you need to print at a certain physical size and with a certain fixed DPI (often called "resolution" which is highly confusing!)4) photoshop will tell you exactly the pixel resolution your image will need to be to print at that size and at that PPIObviously for many occasions you will not want to resize a "final image" - you should always retain an original final image at full resolution. You would make a copy of this file as resize as necessary for print. Indeed there will be times where you want to find out exactly how big you can print an image based on it's pixel resolution and the DPI required for your print media - Photoshop will tell you this.The key is to know that the four elements, crop, pixel resolution, PPI and physical print size all work in tandem together. Hope this helps.  Tony (and Orchids) many thanks for pointing me to that link! very useful indeed.Tony, I also use Lightroom as first port-of-call with my photography – process/adjust/clean-up/re-expose etc. I do *not* adjust crops or rotation corrections in Lightroom (not enough control). I then take the adjusted image (exported to JPG) into Photoshop, correct verticals or rotate as necessary, draw my crop rectangles (simple colour-filled rectangles on a new layer), and export the final JPG (cropped). i then make a new copy of this final output that is resized for Booksmart/elsewhere. This way you always have 1) your original RAW 2) your original adjusted RAW 3) your original adjusted PSD uncropped and the original full resolution 4) your final full resolution output 5) a downsized version for BookSmart or elsewhere. At any stage if I need to re-expose or adjust something at RAW level I am able to do so with 0 problems. I do exactly the same process for non-photographic images (i.e. digital, 3D renders etc).orchids – based on the info from tony’s link – it is the pixel dimensions (ie. resolution) that matter – the crop is irrelevant. therefore you must resize your image to the optimal resolution – the crop is simply an artistic/practical choice. many people confuse pixel resolution with PPI/DPI and with physical print size and with cropping – four very different elements that all work together to produce a final image for various uses. generally speaking you do the following:1) crop (for aesthetics only or aspect purposes to fit a particular physical sized canvass (book page, print etc)2) check the PPI/DPI required by the printers for your particular media (say, 200 or 300 for example)3) tell photoshop that you need to print at a certain physical size and with a certain fixed DPI (often called "resolution" which is highly confusing!)4) photoshop will tell you exactly the pixel resolution your image will need to be to print at that size and at that PPIObviously for many occasions you will not want to resize a "final image" – you should always retain an original final image at full resolution. You would make a copy of this file as resize as necessary for print. Indeed there will be times where you want to find out exactly how big you can print an image based on it’s pixel resolution and the DPI required for your print media – Photoshop will tell you this.The key is to know that the four elements, crop, pixel resolution, PPI and physical print size all work in tandem together. Hope this helps.

2008-02-05T22:19:54Z

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Jeremy (and Craig from customer support) - thanks for clearing up a few questions.I would like to confirm, however, that my issue is with the Windows version of 1.9.x - so the problem is not OS-dependent. As Jeremy and others have confirmed, Blurb are not able to offer previous releases of BookSmart. If anybody with a windows version of the installer for 1.8.x would be kind enough to e-mail me privately through this site I'm sure, as Jeremy mentioned, Blurb might just tactically ignore my quiet request for the installer. I feel sure other users unable to use 1.9.x at all on Windows (or otherwise) would also be very grateful indeed.Regards,  Jeremy (and Craig from customer support) – thanks for clearing up a few questions.I would like to confirm, however, that my issue is with the Windows version of 1.9.x – so the problem is not OS-dependent. As Jeremy and others have confirmed, Blurb are not able to offer previous releases of BookSmart. If anybody with a windows version of the installer for 1.8.x would be kind enough to e-mail me privately through this site I’m sure, as Jeremy mentioned, Blurb might just tactically ignore my quiet request for the installer. I feel sure other users unable to use 1.9.x at all on Windows (or otherwise) would also be very grateful indeed.Regards,

2008-02-05T22:01:42Z

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So unless Blurb is willing to put up a link to v1.8.1 (think that was the previous release?) in public on the site (or perhaps private...) then I and many others will be totally unable to produce any books for the forseeable future, that is until they release an update which fixes this show-stopping issue, which of course could be many weeks or months away.Any assistance from Blurb on this issue would be greatly appreciated. So unless Blurb is willing to put up a link to v1.8.1 (think that was the previous release?) in public on the site (or perhaps private…) then I and many others will be totally unable to produce any books for the forseeable future, that is until they release an update which fixes this show-stopping issue, which of course could be many weeks or months away.Any assistance from Blurb on this issue would be greatly appreciated.

2008-02-05T17:36:47Z

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thanks for the warning. however in this case i will start again from scratch in 1.8. at least i will be able to finish it in 2008 :) i could quite easily see myself still editing text well into the new year with 1.9...does anybody have 1.8 linked somewhere? would be greatly appreciated. thanks for the warning. however in this case i will start again from scratch in 1.8. at least i will be able to finish it in 2008 :) i could quite easily see myself still editing text well into the new year with 1.9…does anybody have 1.8 linked somewhere? would be greatly appreciated.

2008-02-05T16:15:51Z

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just realised this should probably have been posted in the Printing subforum.. never mind!I would really appreciate an answer to this soon as I will be adding upwards of 300 images to a book this evening and would love to not have to re-do them all once I resize them!Regards,  just realised this should probably have been posted in the Printing subforum.. never mind!I would really appreciate an answer to this soon as I will be adding upwards of 300 images to a book this evening and would love to not have to re-do them all once I resize them!Regards,

2008-02-05T15:05:57Z

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I started a new book this morning in the latest BookSmart (today's latest release) and I, too, find it unusably slow, not just with text but images, simple zooming in or panning around layouts, dropdown menus - the whole UI is completely unresponsive.Does anybody have a link to version 1.8 so those experiencing the problem can continue to work on their books? It would be very useful if Blurb could have an archive page for old versions of their software in case this happens again (which of course it shouldn't but the programming world is a complicated and unpredictable one!). Regards, I started a new book this morning in the latest BookSmart (today’s latest release) and I, too, find it unusably slow, not just with text but images, simple zooming in or panning around layouts, dropdown menus – the whole UI is completely unresponsive.Does anybody have a link to version 1.8 so those experiencing the problem can continue to work on their books? It would be very useful if Blurb could have an archive page for old versions of their software in case this happens again (which of course it shouldn’t but the programming world is a complicated and unpredictable one!). Regards,

2008-02-05T14:50:01Z

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Hi all.I produced a book a few months back which was thr 7"x7" option. Every image on every page was 3888 pixels across or high (full 10mp digital photos) set to full uncropped (taking up the whole page). When the book came back from Blurb I was obviously extremely happy with the results overall but noticed that there was very visible artifacting along diagonal/angled edges on every image.I know from experience working with prints that certain image resolutions result in these "jaggies" in print due to uneven downsizingby the printers at certain print sizes. This is because the printer isn't dividing exactly by an even percentag (i.e. dividing by 2.1 instead of 2 - the difference is not antialiased properly by the printer). In these situations I have always downsized the images myself to an even value such as 3000 across or 3500 perhaps, allowing the printer to downsize efficiently, resulting in smooth, antialiased lines. At least I imagine that's what's going on at Blurb in this case.  Please correct me if not.If this is the case, is there an optimum image resolution for full 7"x7" page? I.e. I would be happy to downsize my images from 3888 to something like 3000 or even less if the downsizing process during print would result in smooth diagonals.Any help with this would be greatly appreciated, as currently my images are really not printing to the quality I know Blurb is able to offer.Kind regards,  Hi all.I produced a book a few months back which was thr 7"x7" option. Every image on every page was 3888 pixels across or high (full 10mp digital photos) set to full uncropped (taking up the whole page). When the book came back from Blurb I was obviously extremely happy with the results overall but noticed that there was very visible artifacting along diagonal/angled edges on every image.I know from experience working with prints that certain image resolutions result in these "jaggies" in print due to uneven downsizingby the printers at certain print sizes. This is because the printer isn’t dividing exactly by an even percentag (i.e. dividing by 2.1 instead of 2 – the difference is not antialiased properly by the printer). In these situations I have always downsized the images myself to an even value such as 3000 across or 3500 perhaps, allowing the printer to downsize efficiently, resulting in smooth, antialiased lines. At least I imagine that’s what’s going on at Blurb in this case.  Please correct me if not.If this is the case, is there an optimum image resolution for full 7"x7" page? I.e. I would be happy to downsize my images from 3888 to something like 3000 or even less if the downsizing process during print would result in smooth diagonals.Any help with this would be greatly appreciated, as currently my images are really not printing to the quality I know Blurb is able to offer.Kind regards,

2008-02-05T11:30:13Z

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