The highlight of February so far has been receiving my 2015 photo book in the mail. I'm so pleased with how it turned out. Out of the six yearly photo books I've completed so far this one's definitely my favourite, all thanks to Project Life. Now I'm even more motivated to finish my 2014 book so I can have that printed as well, so that's what I've been working on these past few weeks.
Technical details:
Company: Blurb.
Size: 12 x 12.
Number of pages: 193.
Design software: I make all the pages in Photoshop and create the book through Bookify on the Blurb webpage.
Paper: Matte premium.
Cover: Wrap-around.
Okay, first of all, are you KIDDING me?! This is what Project Life dreams are made of! It is so stunning and so up my alley, I just can't take it! lol. No joke though, its so gorgeous. Your photos are THE BEST, but I love your choice of PL cards - simple and complement the photos perfectly. Just love!! And thank you for adding the "Technical Details" because I will use that for reference. Two questions if I may, is it the page templates you used that give you the stitching look between the pics? And second, did you sharpen your pages for printing? When I'm going to print photos, I always edit my images in Photoshop to make them look their best and then save my edit. Then I use my edit to crop to the size I want to print with the final step being a sharpen filter that is tried and true for me. But for printing with Blurb, would I still treat my final image as I do my prints and use a sharpen filter? And the color, is it what you expected? Darker, lighter, duller, more saturated? Sorry for all the questions! Yikes! I probably should do a book with a small number of pages and give it a try to see what I get before ordering a whole year's worth like yours. Thank you. I just adore your work.
ReplyDeleteThank you so much for your kind words, I'm so glad that you like my work so much :)
DeleteThe templates I use are digital page protectors by Valorie Wibbens. I love that they have such a realistic look. Of course nobody's going to mistake photo books pages for physical page protectors irl but I've had people ask me online if my spreads are photos of physical spreads or digital ones :) One thing to remember is that you need to add padding to the templates if you want to use them in a photo book because the edges get trimmed off. I added 75 pixels all around which came out just right.
The way I work on my pages is that I edit + sharpen each photo separately before I add it to the template, but I don't sharpen the final page. I think that worked out well in the book since I saved the pages in the 12x12 resolution.
I am happy with the colours, I would say they come out a little bit darker than on a computer screen but nothing that I think takes away from the final result.
Good luck with your book if you decide to have one printed!