Best materials for scanning for a Blurb book.

[2F/2F]

Mate, I think you've got 2 different posters confused.
I don't want to get involved.

You're right; I do. I am sorry. It was tkmamiya who made the post about the fact that scanning discussion for APUG gallery-related issues is ok.

So, redirect my comments on that line of reasoning to the other guy. Again, I'm sorry for my mistake.

[tomalophicon]

Eric, thanks for that. I would like to scan the prints, as I suck at photoshop and I'd like to keep this project as traditional as possible.
Thanks for all the advice.
Flatness is important. do you think it's possible for RC to look like fibre (e.g. I prefer the look of FB to RC, but I suppose you could manipulate the latter digitally)?

4F, don't sweat it I had no idea what he meant when he said the APUG book...

[K-G]

SuzanneR, is there another company that would offer a better product, that you know of?
I'll definitely be scanning from prints.

In their issue 127 ( August 2011 ) the British magazine Black+White Photography had a test of six different photo book publishers. They were :

Blurb
Albelli
Bob books
Pixum
Photobox
Yophoto

Of these six, Pixum was named Best in test but the overall ratings were rather good also for the other five. If you can get a copy of the magazine I think it can help you. I'm enclosing a link to them.

Karl-Gustaf

http://www.thegmcgroup.com/pc/viewCa...idCategory=698

[ozphoto]

I've put together a few Blurb books and scanned both fibre and RC matt and RC Glossy for inclusion.

I found the slight "stipple" on the paper's surface, gave me (at least) a less than perfect result. A little soft, and for colour images refraction that looked woeful, so decided to print up all images to be included on RC glossy.

Cleaner scans resulted in better images - I can never seem to get negs looking right when scanning, so really prefer to print RC, scan and drop into the software.

Published books:

http://www.blurb.com/my/book/detail/1609721
http://www.blurb.com/my/book/detail/1609666
http://www.blurb.com/my/book/detail/828859

All RC and scanned on Agfa Duoscan 1200.

And Suzanne's comments regarding consistency are spot on too - have had some beautiful books from Blurb and some that look as if they had been printed on an Epson scanner with dirty, misaligned heads!! :O

[bdial]

The fiber paper "look" is an artifact of the paper the image is on. In your case that will be the paper in the book. Unless you're using a textured paper for the prints (don't!) fiber or RC will scan fine, but RC glossy, for the reasons stated, will probably give you better results. KIS (Keep it Simple).

[erikg]

Flatness is important. do you think it's possible for RC to look like fibre (e.g. I prefer the look of FB to RC, but I suppose you could manipulate the latter digitally)?

I print on Ilford most of the time and I can get RC and Fibre prints to match pretty well. On the other hand, if you have a drymount press or just put your prints under weight for a couple of days you can get an 8x10 fibre print pretty darn flat, so either way.

Don't worry about print color, what I would do is scan RGB, desaturate in photoshop, and at the end convert to the CMYK profile Blurb recommends. If you want to give the image a tone, I would do so with a curve adjustment layer, but you may be asking too much of this type of printing to get a subtle color tone exactly right. Neutral is probably safer.

I like Blurb, but I have also seen nice books from Adorama and A&I.

Best of luck, it's very satisfying to hold a real bound book of your own creation.

Erik

[Mark Layne]

When I recently asked a similar question it was unceremoniously deleted. I haven't participated in the site since

[jnanian]

John, thanks for replying.
What does 'deep fix' and 'rz' mean?
Cheers.

hi ...

erkg beat me to it !

scan-deep
... scan 2x or more the resolution you want your final to be
so when you fix / dust &C it won't be evident ...

rz down
... save it at a lower resolution + the size you want it saved for your publication

its like skng and saving things for the gallery here,
you wouldn't skn anything at 6x8 @ 72dpi ... dust &c
but you would skn it at 300 or 600 so you can remove the dust &C
and when you shrink it down to 72dpi your "fixes" are not visible ...

have fun !
john

[tomalophicon]

Thanks everybody. I'll be starting the quest soon and will post some results if worth posting.
Tom.