Stan -
You may want to look at FotoFusion, by LumaPix.
http://lumapix.com/
Create your pages, including text and single or multiple images they way
you want the layout to look, with the canvas sized for the full
BookSmart page size. Save the pages in native format if you think you
may need future editing, then export the page to a jpg file. Then pull
that jpg into BookSmart using a full page template. You can create
unique layouts then that you can't get in BookSmart, with probably less
work and anxiety than the workflow you outlined below.
There are three versions of FotoFusion (and three price points). Unless
you need output larger than about 13 x 19 (inches) the mid version
(Enhanced) should work well.
-p
Stan Halpin wrote:
Some more info on working with Blurb...
I imagine you'll get better quality if you size the photos in good
photo-processing software rather than let Blurb do it for you. That is
what Blurb says, and it makes sense. So you have a bunch of 3000x2000
images on your hard drive or maybe 1500x1000 images on SmugMug. But they
need to be re-sized...
My work flow working with photos on my drive:
a. Decide on the general content of the next page or two as the
story unfolds.
b. Go into Lightroom, find the 3-8 images I'll be using next. E.g,
next I need one of the better hummingbird shots, one or two butterflys,
maybe a shot of one of the group members in the butterfly farm. [Images
previously appropriately sorted into order and rated 1-5 stars; thus,
related images are together, and I don't need to revisit the question of
which of several similar shots I should use.] Note whether vertical or
horizontal, deserve full page/full bleed, a 1/9th of the page, or
somewhere in between.
c. Go back to BookSmart. Spot a template that allows me to use my
one good vertical and a couple of moderately good horizontals on the
next page. Mutter about the fact that the template puts the vertical
near the fold, the two horizontals on the outside, and I had wanted
something the other way around. Mutter some more. Decide to live with
it. Make a note to fire off a note later to Blub asking once again for
increased flexibility in their templates, such as the ability to flip
them horizontally or vertically. Recall their forum discussion on this
issue where they basically said: "live with it." Move note about firing
off a note to Blurb into the Don Quixote file.
d. Note that the Vertical is 1113x1630 pixels and the Horizontals
are 1113x680. [You do this by mousing over the page template, a popup
window appears for three seconds with the "ideal size" information.]
e. Go back to Lightroom. Crop, sharpen etc. as required. Export to
file with a resize to 1113x1630 or 1113x680.
f. Go back to BookSmart. Import the pictures from file. [If using
Smugmug, I expect this step will take longer than reading from your
local disk.]
g. Drag-and-drop the photos into the template. Note that one
dimension or another will be cropped (since my original aspect ratio
does not equal 1113:1630). Zoom and or slide the image so that the
1113x1630 window frames an appropriate part of the image.
h. Note that the aspect ratio of the 1113x1630 template just doesn't
allow me to crop/compose the image the way I would like.
i. Find another template for the vertical shot. How about 1488x2475?
Just use it on its own and save the horizontals for another page?
j. Go back to Lightroom, re-export with new resizing parameters....
k. Repeat 1-3 times for each of the other pages.
It really is not as bad as it sounds, flipping back and forth between
Lightroom and Booksmart. But if the images were on Smugmug, do you need
to pull them back down to our system to work on them? Then export back
to Smugmug after you've resized? Then import from Smugmug into
Booksmart? Unless you have a very good strong fast connection, I can see
lots of coffee break time.
On the other hand, what I am describing is a book where the pages vary
quite a bit, partially on the theory that better shots deserve more
space (but the less good shots may still be required to tell the story),
partially on the theory that some variety in formatting from page to
page makes it less like an old-time photo album with four or six
same-size photos on each page, over and over... If you have one
consistent size photo, then much of the processing/resizing can be done
in batch.
stan
On Oct 1, 2008, at 9:51 PM, Stan Halpin wrote:
I did one (my Venice shots), helped my wife put one together (her
step-mother's 70th Barnard College reunion), and have just finished
editing a third (120 pages total, 375 images plus a bunch of text to
document our church's trip to Costa Rica this past June. Images from 6
different people with six different types of cameras - I decided not
to get too fussy with exact color balance consistency or I would never
finish the beast!)
I find their templates too restrictive, their text handling to be
primitive (in short, it hoovers), and many of the details like
backgrounds and borders and captions and headers/footers are somewhere
between a royal pain and totally impossible to work with.
Having said that, the quality is good. If your project doesn't demand
too much, it is a good source. If you like everything to be just
right, all of the text to line up, etc., you'll do a lot of fiddling.
On balance, I will continue to use it for the several projects on my
to-do list.
stan
On Sep 29, 2008, at 9:33 AM, ann sanfedele wrote:
I was browsing around smugmug stuff for their calendar prices (looks
like they stopped offering those) and came up
with a page on BLURB for making books - Anyone here try it?
ann
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