Blurb Coffee Table Book With Adobe Lightroom 4 | A Review

© 2013 Wazari Wazir | My Blurb Book Arrived in a Box Delivered by FedEx

© 2013 Wazari Wazir | My Book Inside a Plastic Wrap

© 2013 Wazari Wazir | Front Cover of My Coffee Table Book

© 2013 Wazari Wazir | The Opening

© 2013 Wazari Wazir | Blurb Book

Finally my first coffee table book printed by Blurb arrived today, 3rd June  at 12:20PM at my house. I was at the office at the time. Actually the estimate delivery date is on June 7, but I’m surprise to know that it will arrived early after I check the tracking number of my parcel at FedEx.

Before I go further, please don’t judge the output through this picture, you can only get half story looking at my image here because it will never be the same physically. Firstly the gradation of colors is quite good, smooth gradation unlike some of the photograph above. Anyway I’m not going to make an in depth review about this book since I just have it today but overall I’m quite impress with the quality. This is 10×8 inch coffee table book (Standard Landscape), Hard Cover ImageWrap, 338 pages in total.

Actually I’ve always wanted to make a coffee table book of my family especially for my son HaiQal since 2007 but procrastination gets in the way, and even after we’ve a second child, Raphael which is now closer to two years old, nothing materialise, so when we came back from Istanbul February this year, I decided no matter what, I must make a coffee table book for my family, I don’t want to procrastinate anymore.

The other thing is that, since Blurb announce that they now have collaborate with Adobe Lightroom 4 to streamline the bookmaking process, I got really excited, now I don’t have to use Blurb bookmaking software “Booksmart” to make my book, I can do it at one place and I can always reedit my pictures if I want to without going to another platform and the process of making a layout was quite easier, just drag and drop and you can always change the layout anytime as you wish.

I choose a standard landscape 10×8 size with ProLine Uncoat paper, this paper have texture on it, some people call it as “egg shell” texture and just like what they mention on their website, this paper will never give a rich black and white and the colors is not saturated, I choose this one over much more expensive ProLine Pearl Paper because that one is a bit glossy and the colours is more saturated than this one and if you wanted your black and white pictures to look richer, deeper black, then you should choose ProLine Pearl Photo Paper finish over Uncoated Paper like what I’m using here.

My black and white photo here does not turn out to be rich in black and white, it is a bit on the lighter side but it was expected and my photograph doesn’t turn out to be rich in colors either, that one is also expected because you can’t get rich colors on texture paper like this one comparing to a glossy paper. This is more on art paper, you can feel the textures with your fingers.

If you don’t like using Blurb to print your picture, need not to worry, you can always use Blurb bookmaking inside Lightroom 4 and then save it as PDF file and you are free to send it to your favorite printers and then you also don’t need to have a Lightroom 4 to make this book, you can also use Blurb bookmaking software which is called “Booksmart”, download it to your computer and you can use it, just drag and drop the pictures, the templates is already there and you can make few customisation. Actually I’ve download a “Booksmart” before but I think it is a bit cumbersome to use compared to what I can do with Blurb bookmaking module inside Lightroom 4.

Anyway I’m not promoting Blurb here, in fact there are few other choices out there if you wanted to make a coffee table book, this one that I’ve is not like a regular wedding album or photo book which normally take around 40 to maybe 100 pages, this one is 238 pages in total, so it’s quite heavy.

I think the best way to judge a book, I mean the best way to judge the quality of a coffee table book, especially photography related is that you must view it physically, you must touch it, feels it, feel the paper, feel the texture. My photographs here will never give you a 100% accurate reproduction about the actual things. Watching something on your computer screen, especially if you have a “retina display” will never gives a true colors of the physical book. So if you really wanted to get a better view of it, make an appointment with someone who have done so and judge for yourself.

If  you ask me whether I like the result, I will have to be honest, I’m not 100% satisfied, some due to my problem, there is something that I didn’t like but that one is my problem like using a bigger font than whats appropriate. I wish I make a better layout and I wish my pictures in the book came out just like a normal printed photograph that I can get from a normal photography lab but then I must be realistic, this book is not made of a photographic paper, so it will never match those genuine photography paper result.

But then take my advice, if you wanted to get a sharper picture, richer colours, deep black and white, then choose ProLine Pearl paper over Uncoat paper like what I’m suing here. My photograph here does not appear to be razor sharp, maybe because of the textures or the “egg shells” but then when I try to compare to some of the coffee table that I’ve in my house, they are more or less the same, just don’t compare a printed pictures in a book to a printed photograph on a genuine photographic paper. They are made for a different purpose.

But then if 238 pages were printed on a truly photographic papers, do you know how much it will cost you? So you get my point, and my point here is that we should at least try to print some of our pictures, don’t let your photograph sitting inside your hard disk, you will never know when your hard disk will fails, so a printed material of your memory will be safe a bit, if you have a printed version and even if you don’t know which photographs to print, start with a photograph of your family members. You can always go out and shoot a sunrise or sunset every week but your son will never get a chance to photograph back your little child when they grows up.

So before your family pictures on your hard disk gets into “trouble”, why don’t you prints some of them and a coffee table book is something nice that you can do for your family.