Comments on: Making a High-Quality Picture Book

By: kim@picture qualty

kim@picture qualty — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 01:44:35 +0000

Outstanding! I can enhance more the quality of the photos that I have taken trough this article. I will install that software on my computer.

By: John C

John C — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 22:24:12 +0000

Hey Rudy,
I recently did my third project on Lulu, a 200 page B & W memoir in the trade paperback (6″ X 9″) format w/ about 45 photos, many of which were old. Anyway, I’m a pretty high-skilled user of WORD, but find it runs out of gas for fine controls. I own an old version of InDesign but didn’t want to face the learning curve or the hassle of running Adobe’s gauntlet in transferring it to my newer computer. Anyway, I found an authoring package SerifPro. It lists for under $100. And with their deal of the day, I got it for substantially less. It is page-oriented like InDesign (or Publisher for that matter.) I found it easy enough to learn. I was flummoxed by “optical justification” defaulting to “on,” which causes punctuation to escape the fully justified margin, but figured that out and again was impressed with the fine controls.

Also, for your saddle-stitched poster, I have a 44 page color project which Lulu does for me in the “crown quarto” format. It is for my rental tenants and is nice enough. The paper is coated but not “glossy.” The colors are a bit saturated. Most of my photos are of “snapshot” quality so this isn’t a good reference point for a photo or album book.

In most cases, I find learning up on these options is a great first start, but nothing beats ordering a book and seeing first hand.

Nice blog, lively art. Best wishes.
John

By: Rudy

Rudy — Sun, 28 Nov 2010 15:52:27 +0000

Roberto, if you install Acrobat Pro on your machine (this is the product you have to buy, as opposed to the free Acrobat Reader), you will automatically be installing Distiller on the machine as well. I’m not 100% sure, but I don’t think the methods I describe here will work unless you have Acrobat Pro.

By: Roberto

Roberto — Sun, 28 Nov 2010 08:54:55 +0000

Great article Rudy,
thank you for sharing; just one think: You need Acrobat distiller to save a .joboptions file, isn’ it?

Your illustrations are so beautiful, express joy for life.
Thanks again

By: chewy

chewy — Sat, 01 May 2010 19:31:32 +0000

Thanks for replying to me, Rudy. I will get myself one copy first, before I order several.

By: Rudy

Rudy — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 22:31:09 +0000

Chewy, the Lulu paper quality is fine. On Blurb you have an option for slightly heavier paper which is perhaps a bit nicer. I can’t remember if Lulu has this option. But, really the Lulu books on the standard paper look quite professional.

Go ahead and order one and see how it looks. Inevitably you’ll find something you want to change, so it’s best at first to get one printed at a time before ordering a larger run.

By: chewy

chewy — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 19:19:30 +0000

Hi Rudy,

I’m considering Lulu to publish a small 6×9 in. color book of my paintings, 24-36 pages. It says saddle-stitched has 100# cover stock with 80# matte white text stock. – Were you satisfied with the paper quality from Lulu?

By: shawn

shawn — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 18:24:13 +0000

Hey great article.
thanks for sharing.

I have a question about the softcover quality.
do you have any experience with this?

I really want to do a 8.5″ sq saddle stitch as a small promo
I don’t want it to feel like a book, I want it more soft and personal
but the images I will be using are high quality color images and I don’t want then to look
like garbage…

I can not find any examples on lulu’s site or other where you can get a sense of what this looks like so I am looking for opinions from those who have used their services…

any thoughts?
thanks

By: Rudy

Rudy — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 07:54:35 +0000

Comparing Lulu and Blurb, I recently did a fresh revision of my BETTER WORLDS art book, and ordered copies from Lulu and from Blurb. I list the price breakdown below. Bottom line: Lulu is cheaper. I haven’t yet seen the Blurb book, but will add a note about the image quality later on. Note that the Blurb book pages have about 30% greater area, so it’s not unreasonable that their book price is about 30% more.

On BLURB, standard landscape shape, paperback 10 inches by 8 inches,
which is 80 sq. inches per page.
My book came to 92 pages..
Book: $30 (or $35 with premium paper)
Tax: $3.30 (or $3.90)
Shipping: $7
Total: $40.30 (or $45.90 with premium paper)

On LULU, standard landscape shape, paperback 9 inches by 7 inches,
which is 63 sq. inches per page.
My book came to 94 pages.
Book: $23.30
Tax: None
Shipping: $4
Total: $27.30

By: Alex

Alex — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 13:58:56 +0000

For book layout, the ideas of Jan Tschichold
are hard to beat.

His “Van de Graaf canon” should appeal to the Mathematician in you.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canons_of_page_construction