Time to Vote for Volume 4 of the Great POTN Photo Book

Any idea how long Blurb take with their side once they have the "raw material"?

I'm not impatient, rather just interested in the whole process, which fascinates me. I see they have a Blurb UK subsite.

once it's uploaded it's ready to print, they ship fast too!

Lowner wrote in post #13498815
Any idea how long Blurb take with their side once they have the "raw material"?

I'm not impatient, rather just interested in the whole process, which fascinates me. I see they have a Blurb UK subsite.

When finally uploaded, it hopefully will no longer be raw material, but the finished and polished product. My understanding is that Blurb is primarily an online printing service and not a publishing house. This puts most of the publishing responsibilities on us. They do, however, provide support, guidelines, and helpful information.

My main concern now has shifted to insuring that the page layout doesn't stray outside of the printable area, that the margins and bleeds are correct, that we maximize the space available for photos and have good continuity in style across all of the sixteen sections.

This is not a trivial task when all of the team members are spread around the globe and communication is mainly through email and PM. Because of the necessity of typing almost all communications, it slows things down a bit and encourages brief messages. For folks like me who don't type very fast (my avatar kitty, Mr. Squeak, tries to help by tap dancing on the keyboard, nosing the monitor, draping across my shoulder, and demanding tummy tweaks), the necessity of typing all communications is a drudgery. I think that there might be better ways to do this.

We proof read each others work because a fresh set of eyes will quickly spot things that otherwise escape notice. However, the necessity of typing all review comments is a major obstacle -- especially in my case since I tend to approach things with a very focused intent, you might even say that I am occasionally nit-picky (OK, often).

Bill, as long as the box is checked for display trim guidelines and the images stay within those red guidelines the page layout will print fine, only thing to be careful with is that images don't get to far in the well (center of the book)......yes, once it's uploaded, that is the finished product, might be a good idea to have whoever uploads it to order 1 copy make sure all is good and then make it public....I have published two books of my own using Blurb and it's pretty much "what you see is what you get"...I would be glad to help if needed

Barb W wrote in post #13500784
Bill, as long as the box is checked for display trim guidelines and the images stay within those red guidelines the page layout will print fine, .....

Well not quite-- we don't want to have images and text crowding the page edges.

The actual trimmed page size is 9.5" wide by 8" tall. There is a 1/8" bleed on the top, bottom, and outside margin, but obviously not the inside page margin since it is printed as a two page spread. The print area is a box that is 1/4 inch from the top, bottom, and outside margins. The inside edge of the print area is 5/8" from the inside margin. We also must maintain margins beween text boxes and images. Blurb requirements state that those are the minimum print margins (except for the case where images purposefully go into the bleed area, but we are not doing that). I am doing the page layout in Adobe InDesign and using Blurb's InDesign template for our page size. The Photoshop template that POTN has been using probably since volume 1 has incorrect dimensions for margins and bleed area. I am also of the opinion that trying to use Photoshop as a page layout program is like driving a square peg into a round hole. It can be done, but it is inflexible and it is a chore to edit and the file sizes are huge.

Oh wow, I understand the concern now...makes me wonder now how the LightRoom plug in works??? maybe I'll just stick with doing it the old way!

I don't think there is actually a plug-in for Lightroom or Photoshop, or if there is, I am not aware of it. What I have seen is just a PSD file which serves as a template, but the dimensions are all off by a small amount and I am not sure that it even shows the allowed print area. Anyway, I have been using InDesign for several years and used PageMaker before that for doing the page layouts and other printing stuff for the Woodturners of North Texas. One of the nicest features of InDesign is the scaling of images -- because the original full size version of the images are retained scaling is always smooth and without any loss of IQ. I don't believe that Photoshop/LR have the ability to do that. This also means that when the page is converted to a vector based PDF file, the image scaling is based on the original full sized image rather than the reduced size image. Of course, not everybody has or uses InDesign or similar programs so we have to use whatever tools are available to each of us.

there is a plug-in available now for LR but have not explored it yet, I don't think there is one for photoshop

Nature section is now done and email notifications asking for your review have been sent out. If you know that you have an image in the Nature section that was selected for inclusion in the book, but have not received the notification, let me know. It could be your spam filter or maybe an error in the email address or perhaps a change in your email address since it has been over a year and a half since the project began.

Thank you guys for not giving up on this one. I'll have at least 4 of these books on order, once released.

Grimlock wrote in post #13507178
Thank you guys for not giving up on this one. I'll have at least 4 of these books on order, once released.

+1!!

Any idea on the likely timescale?

I imagine the publisher/printer will not waste time when they receive the final product from POTN.

In fact timescale and price?

Lowner wrote in post #13572745
Any idea on the likely timescale?

I imagine the publisher/printer will not waste time when they receive the final product from POTN.

In fact timescale and price?

I would guess sometime late winter, early spring latest. Maybe Ed or Bill could add to that if needed. I think IIRC Bill said the price would be about $60.

Allen,

Many thanks for that. You sir are a gentleman.

Ed and I are splitting up the work on the last section that needs to be done.

Some other sections need to be tweaked to fit within the Blurb page layout format (for example, there are some instances where the page numbers are outside of the print area).

Then there are all of the nits that need to be checked like spelling, typos, consistency in nomenclature for cameras and lenses, margin sizes, bleed areas, and a bunch of other little details that may not seem like a real big deal, but added together can make a difference between so-so and great. One thing that we are pretty much leaving alone is the photographers narratives other than fixing obvious spelling errors. Since the narrative is just as much a part of the artistic expression as is the image, it is not prudent to interject our own version. In the few cases where this "rule" was broken, it was with the coordination and consent of the author.