book review: mexico 2008
5th-aug-2008 - posted by dtra
ok, first book review for tonight, my blurb book arrived, at the short end of the 7-15 business day delivery cycle i must say. alf's arrived on the long end, so there isn't much to say about that, pot luck i guess. anyway, it cost $40 bux, i got the image wrap hard cover and had 76 pages. as the old saying goes, first impressions last (i think that's a saying), i will just say that i was a little underwhelmed after removing the book from the package. the front cover appears more purpley and darker than it does on my calibrated monitor, and there are some bits of damaged (minor) plastic. the hard cover feels nice and all, but you know. one thing i noticed about alf's book, was that it really doesn't open up much, maybe i was expecting too much, but it's the same with mine, so full bleed pictures probably are only good if the inside section is not important at all, don't even bother with panoramas.
as alf noted, the pictures showed up darker than he expected in his nz book, he also has a calibrated monitor might i add. if you have images with lots of black in them, probably better not to put them in, or really lighten them up. contrast (possibly because of the photos appearing darker) seems to be a little less than i was expecting. apart from the aforementioned covers, and one over-saturated photo, colours seem fine to me. after looking through it a couple times, the quality of the prints seems pretty good to me.
so in conclusion, will i use blurb again? maybe, depending on if there are other options. regarding the photos, my advice is make sure that your photos are bright but not over-saturated, keep the amount of black (shadows) to a minimum (unless you have bright subjects), grey is fine, the right hand page seems flatter. full bleed is fine, but make sure that nothing ends in the middle, and obviously the edges. and i wouldn't bother with panoramas, nor stretching full res pictures across two pages, you'll have to crop or resize to a smaller version, the pages just aren't flat enough to look at a picture stretched across properly. at least i have a reference now (or two if you count alf's book) for future books if i go that way, and yes, i'd recommend the hard cover over the soft cover for sure, it does feel cool 
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quick picture i took of the front cover, haha, the picture i took makes it looks worse than it actually is, i couldn't be bothered using the flash, or processing it properly.
#33 dtra (david tran)
Last edited at 5:00 5th-aug-2008
tags/bookmarks
notes
well i've complained to them via email and with a sample.
so we'll see what they have to say.
dtra
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0:16 9th-aug-2008
they replied and didn't really answer my questions regarding the cover, but did give me a discount for my next purchase, which will probably be an upgraded and hopefully fixed version of this book. i will probably start working on the new version when i get the answer i want regarding the colour of the cover. if not, then i probably won't bother with them again.
dtra
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22:28 11th-aug-2008