Book Module

[fergalo94229330]

Anyone recently created a book on the book module.

I haven't for years. I found it very frustrating in the past and it was much easier to use Blurbs own upload program.

Regrettably I've used it again for a very large book (240 pages).

The whole design of the book module is rather on the stupid side and its surprising that its not been improved significantly

Its just a poor design, there is no reason why, it should be easy to get it user friendly.

It's symptomatic of Adobes reluctance to make Lightroom significantly better

Once you save a book and come back to add more photographs its absolutely daft what you have to do to be able to add more photographs.

It's like making it the most complicated and unintuitive way possible.

Anyway in the end I did finish the book and can download as a PDF to the computer.

My problem is uploading it to blurb.

I can't tell if its frozen or not.

It doesn't say (on a Mac) what % is loaded. It looks by the bar to be around 70% but its hard to tell if its stopped or moving.

If its moving its at a snails pace. It's about 16 hours uploading now.

My internet is not particularly fast but still 16 hours is a long time.

Is there anything I can do to check that its not actually working and that it has stopped uploading and is just sitting there.

It's not appear on the Blurb website.

It did fail and give me to option to resume and it did seem to resume uploading but there has not been much movement for a few hours.

Should I just give up?

[fergalo94229330]

I've clicked the upload bar and it says "waiting for Blurb Server Processing"

Any idea what that means?

[Rob_Cullen]

My comments, as another infrequent Book maker-

a very large book (240 pages).

Yes, 240 the maximum page count for 'heavy' paper types. (and likely to upload slowly)

The whole design of the book module is rather on the stupid side and its surprising that its not been improved significantly

Its just a poor design, there is no reason why, it should be easy to get it user friendly.

Book module was an 'Add-in' feature of LR-v4 maybe to attract more buyers? Perhaps made 'simple' for ease of use?

It's symptomatic of Adobes reluctance to make Lightroom significantly better

Maybe they want you to buy Adobe InDesign to be really creative! (I think the price for the CC Photography plan is very generous for what is provided!)

Once you save a book and come back to add more photographs its absolutely daft what you have to do to be able to add more photographs.

It's like making it the most complicated and un-intuitive way possible.

I find it rather easy! In the Library Grid, drag 'more' photos onto the Book Collection and in the Book module there they are on the Filmstrip to place on new pages. How easier could it be? What do you suggest?

My problem is uploading it to blurb.

I can't tell if its frozen or not.

It did fail and give me to option to resume and it did seem to resume uploading but there has not been much movement for a few hours.

Should I just give up?

I have same problems- 'progress slider' often seems to stall, but I always set the upload going and go to bed for the night. So don't give up, just persevere. Often the last portion of the 'progress slider' seems to go faster (after it stalled), and you will see the Blurb site show up when the upload has finished.

"waiting for Blurb Server Processing"

No, i have never seen that message, but it sounds like a hold-up at Blurb's end, and not with Lightroom.

I hope it goes better for you in future.

[fergalo94229330]

After about 24 hours loading it just says its failed with no explanation or message as to what went wrong.

It seems to be loading and it is connected to the Blurb website.

Really that's pretty poor. The software should give some explanation when it fails or should give an indicator earlier its failing.

I"m going to give up on the book module and never use it again.

Whether its Blurb or Lightroom is the problem is unclear and as its a collaboration between both it should be clear.

It's obviously still not up to scratch.

Just on the point of adding more pictures to a book once it has been saved its far from straight forward. You have to set the book as a target collection and then go into your pictures highlight them and press B to send them to the target collection. It should be way more easy and obvious than that.

In general I like lightroom but Adobe are really doing nothing significant with it. Now that its bundled with Photoshop anyway could they not put a proper correction tool on it (i.e. the Photoshop version)

[Rob_Cullen]

I sympathize with the failures. I agree there could be more informative feed-back.

If you can export the book to a PDF, then could you investigate sending the PDF to Blurb (or another Book printer)?

Or export you photos to a working folder and use Blurb's 'online' program (BookWright?) (or another Book printer)

Re new photos for the Book- You do not need to make the Book Collection a 'Target Collection', not necessary!.

You can mouse-drag any selected photos in the grid view onto ANY collection in the Collection Panel, and that includes a Book Collection.