FAO: Blurb fans

[bramley]

Just received my first ever Blurb book, and I'm disappointed with the quality tbh. There is visible banding on a few of the images. Most are fine but some are quite poor.

It's a 10x8 landscape, hardcover with dust jacket, premium paper, 44 pages.

I know a few people on here have used Blurb, so my question to you, is have I got a duffer or is this to be expected? I'll be contacting blurb about this, probably asking them to reprint it, as having heard nothing but good things about them on here and other forums, I'm pretty disappointed with the repro quality.

Interested to hear what others opinions are on the repro quality of their books.

ta

[paul911]

I did a Blurb book a couple of months ago, 166 page family holiday snaps in hardback standard landscape. The print quality was fine with mine, actually quite chuffed with it. Iv heard that Blurb are quite fair and efficient at reprinting it for you.

[squirrel2007]

I had some books done by blurb recently and I wasn't blown away with the quality. It certainly isn't portfolio worthy as I'd hoped. A friend showed me one he'd done using apple's service and although it was more expensive the quality was far superior

[Klankie]

Must be a bad batch!!

http://www.talkphotography.co.uk/forums/showthread...

[bramley]

squirrel2007 said:

I had some books done by blurb recently and I wasn't blown away with the quality. It certainly isn't portfolio worthy as I'd hoped. A friend showed me one he'd done using apple's service and although it was more expensive the quality was far superior

Interesting as my book was as a test for use as wedding albums/portfolio. Will enquire about the apple one, that might suit me as I'm using Aperture so should be nicely integrated.

Klankie: LOL! Quite a few people on here (GetCarter springs to mind) have been very complimentary about Blurb so wanted to compare feedback from here and TP

[CVP]

We have had three books done now, of which one had to be reprinted due to printing issues on one page. Customer services were pretty qucik on the free reprint authorisation for us.

On the whole the books have a similar cost to buying an album and printing images to put in it yourself, so at that price level I am happy. However as a downside, even using the premium paper option the paper is a bit thin feeling and the pages not as glossy as I would like.

Overall not bad but if there was a supplier giving a higher quality product at not an outrageous price I would certianly consider switching.

I'm going to give one a try from the Apple book service and see how that compares.

The one thing that really helped our quality was to design the book and then make sure each image was appropriately sized and sharpened for the final layout we had decided upon. Blurb resizing seems to cause issues with image sharpness worse than when we did a book with Bob Books.

Chris

[Fordo]

bramley said:

squirrel2007 said:

I had some books done by blurb recently and I wasn't blown away with the quality. It certainly isn't portfolio worthy as I'd hoped. A friend showed me one he'd done using apple's service and although it was more expensive the quality was far superior

Interesting as my book was as a test for use as wedding albums/portfolio. Will enquire about the apple one, that might suit me as I'm using Aperture so should be nicely integrated.

Klankie: LOL! Quite a few people on here (GetCarter springs to mind) have been very complimentary about Blurb so wanted to compare feedback from here and TP

I used apples service a few months ago, and was seriously impressed with the qaulity. Didnt have to much about with colour profiles either.- my monitor is set up well, and the prints where near identical to the screen, the the brightness/ contrast was just right. Deep rich blacks, but detail wasnt lost in low luma areas

my workflow- I tweaked the photos in aperture, brought them into iphoto where i laid them out as i wanted- theres where it gets a little restrictive, sometimes you cant quite layout the photos as you like, but it was good enough for purpose.

But, it does get very pricey through apple when you have lot of pages

[GetCarter]

Well it is I guess a lot down to expectations. I've ordered books from photobox, Lulu and Blurb, and Blurb blow the others away quality/price wise. I've seen more expensive books that are much better quality, but Blurb are the only ones that make financial sense if one is selling.

The 'blues' are where Blurb fall down IMO, and I have told them this. They said their new printers would help graduaition, but I haven't seen it yet.

In the past 2 years I have sold *literally* hundreds of Blurb books... so even though not perfect, the punters don't mind them.

I have to say, if you think the quality isn't up to the mark, I bet they'll reprint FOC. They are pretty keen on keeping us happy.

Good luck

[bramley]

Thanks for all the comments chaps.

I emailed Blurb this morning and attached a picture of one of the affected pages.

Nine minutes later I had a reply apologising for the problem, and giving me an order number for the replacement book that had been ordered for me.

Now that's what I call customer service!! Fingers crossed the quality is better on the next one.

[CVP]

Customer Service is top notch from Blurb, I just wish they would take another few days in getting the product right in the first place, all the reprinting must hurt their profits

Chris

[recalluk]

Had the exact same issue with Blurb (Netherlands Printer it seems).

Contacted customer support so watch this space. Fingers crossed its a good one.