Friday, January 9, 2009

Making a photo book with Blurb


Trees in ice, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Well - I went and did it. I took my collection of photos at Flickr, the recent favorites set, and selected enough photos (of a similar enough content in terms of a theme) from there to fill a 40-page book at Blurb. I used the standard settings for a photo book (Hardcover, Dust Jacket).

The software was really easy to use, although there were a couple of hiccups. I needed to restart the software once, because a page where I deleted a photo refused to accept a new photo.

I didn't do much pondering on the aim of the book, using mostly chronological order for photos from this summer and autumn. I did use the page spreads as building blocks, so there is a sort of coherence. But the book is all photos, only a short intro text in the dust jacket, and titlepage etc. of course.

What I am interested in seeing is how the end result looks and handles as a book - is it a package which feels good in hand? Whether the colors are correct etc. does not worry me so much - I'm not even sure my displays are set up correctly.

This photo is from yesterday and does not have much to do with the book - it is not included.

Update: As I got started, I made another photo book, this time in iPhoto using the family photos as the starting point. It is really easy to make such books in iPhoto. I used about 50 photos to fill up a 20-page medium-size wire-bound photobook. I will be interesting to compare the Blurb and iPhoto books. Of course, they are meant for different audiences, but in principle you can use them as alternatives also.

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