Creating my first Lightroom book: a few questions

[CromCrom]

Whilst I'm a reasonably experienced Lightroom user I have never created a book before!

I spent a few hours collating some images and arranging them in templates and saved the book. It sensibly gave me the option to create virtual copies of the images as the processing and even the profile is likely to be different from what I use normally. However, I then added a bunch more photos and forgot to create virtual copies of each one as I imported. Now I am left with a mess of images some virtual and some not.

1. As the create virtual copies option appeared when I saved the book I looked for the option to save the book again, it’s not there. As the book is really a collection I guess I can just select all and create virtual copies but then I have to go through every image and swap the original for the virtual copy in the book – OMG! …is there any way to avoid this?

2. I’ve read a number of reviews that indicated that the quality of the finished photos using Blurb was less that satisfactory – either down to the paper used or the finished print. With the exception of one (http://martybugs.net/blog/blog.cgi/creativity/Lessons-Learnt-From-Printing-A-Blurb-Photo-Book.html) there seems to be negativity towards Blurb and I’m interested in whether this is justified and whether taking the easy route by using Blurb from Lightroom is going to be a waste of time? Clearly this is subjective and it should be noted that most of the reviews I’ve found appear to use the standard paper which I would not be interested in.

Can anyone recommend an alternative (great quality being the prime decision point) UK-available printer that will accept the PDF generated by Lightroom?

Thanks for any help/opinion you might offer.

[john beardsworth · Accepted solution]

re 1, there's no quick way to do this. For what it's worth, I've created a lot of books and never bother with virtual copies in the way you describe..

re 2, I think you can read a lot of negative comments if you go looking for them, and I agree there is some negativity, but it's difficult to beat the combination of quality and price (I'm also in the UK). I have occasionally done small test books before larger and more costly versions, stick to the Proline Uncoated, and over time I'm pretty confident with the approach that I described in a reply here (copied below).

John

I’ve printed q a lot of books through Blurb and experience counts for a lot, so I feel I’ve a fair idea of what looks wrong when I get the printed book. The main risks have been overall brightness and blocked shadows, and one big part of my unscientific process is to carefully review each photo. I use a white background in Lightroom and ensure the picture’s whites are indeed close to white, and that there’s detail in the shdaows – I often open them up a bit. I’ll then do a soft proof against the sRGB profile because it also picks up the risk aspects. Again, unscientific yet tested by experience.We can’t apply Blurb’s CMYK profile in Lightroom, so I often export the book as JPEGs and review them in Photoshop. In this case, I didn’t have time – I wanted to take up their 50% discount and had bigger problems sending the book. Yet consider the value of soft proofing for Blurb when they only supply a single CMYK profile. You don’t have to be a colour calibration expert to question how well a single profile can represent all their presses. While they are all HP Indigos, they are run by different vendors in different continents. I know we’re in a post truth world where observable scientific facts are labelled controversial, but I find it hard to believe their presses operate within such tight tolerance. Let’s say that they are though. Then what about the paper type? One CMYK profile for four quite-different papers? So I question the value of soft proofing for Blurb in Lightroom, even if one could do it.

[CromCrom]

Thanks for your comments and assistance. I have created a feature request!

Your soft proofing info was invaluable John - I have just finished and the results are hopefully (you never know until you get it back from the printers!) much better than if I'd skipped that step...now, my eyes need a rest!!

[john beardsworth]

In fact I just received a book back today, and I was very happy with the colour and brightness. The only glitch was a stupid typo

If you're interested, you can see the printers used by Blurb in Europe in this video from 2012.

[99jon]

The easiest method is to right-click on the saved book in the collections panel and choose “set as target collection”

To add extra images to the book collection, choose thumbnails in the library grid and select from the menu: Photo >> Create Virtual copies. Then press the B key and the VC’s will be added to the saved book. You can then drag each new addition from the filmstrip to new pages.

Sorry I don’t know any alternative print labs that accept the PDF’s.

[john beardsworth]

CromCrom wrote:

Can anyone recommend an alternative (great quality being the prime decision point) UK-available printer that will accept the PDF generated by Lightroom?

The PDFs are only useful to Blurb, but you can output the book as JPEGs which other vendors could accept. You could always reimport the JPEGs and export cropped versions to suit their book dimensions.