Today was the day …
The Family Travel Book of our Trip to Portugal we have been working on for the last 6 months and sent to Blurb for printing two weeks ago did arrive today at the post (here in Sweden UPS delivers to the Swedish Post, so I could see on the UPS tracker it was printed in The Netherlands and on Swedish Ground since Friday).
So, off we went to pick up the package, and took it home for some closer inspection (*).
(*) Let me upfront excuse myself for all the possible color offset in the images as taking pictures on a white table of a book always has been a challenge for me, especially when you dont have a battery of softboxes set up (which I do not have yet). So any and all ugly colors you may spot on your screen are mine, and mine alone, and not the responsibility of Blurb.
The book was nicely fitted in its package, and inside packed in another plastic folie of UPS to prevent fingerprints on the hardback cover when taking the book out (we had our gloves on, but appreciated this extra form of protection).
The envelope did a good job in getting the book safely overhere and no damage was detected.
I must say that I was happy that I had a pair of gloves on, as I am not sure that the matte finish on the black cover will stay spotless when it has gone through some hands in the upcoming party we are having, and the book will be on the coffee table (where it was designed for).
We will report back on this once we have tested it, but the matte imagewrap looks very impressive.
When I opened the book I was really taken by surprise of the great colors and sharpeness, and was very happy surprised with the result.
We decided to give most of the images a bleached wash, to tone down the colors, and … it worked.
Really... not kidding.
We went through the whole book (105 pages) with great care and we did spot one printing error, where we have a blue color spot on the page.
But besides this ink error I must say I am very impressed by the detail and result of the printing as a whole, and actually this error lifts up the overall quality in a kinky way.
This really felt as a real book.
The images were as I wanted them (did it help I created the Blurb on a iMac and not on my laptop ?) and I must say that was for me really the big challenge, as getting from screen to print, is just such a big leap (and the below does not reflect the colors, as our table is white ;-))
Even big black areas were nicely filled and images did not turn out to be too dark either as we read on another blog.
And even the more colorful pictures we included were spot on as I wanted them, and Aye, the lens flare was there, and on purpose.
So, can I recommend Blurb ?
Yes, they do get a big 4 Stars on this one …
The only downside one could see was the rather high price tag for this beauty (but hey our pictures do deserve the best).
Almost a hundred Euro (or 95 € to be exact, shipping included), but given that the result was really above my expectations, it was a 100 well spent and for sure there will be a next book, with a larger target audience (we took the easy way out and had a family audience in mind for this one with a twist).
Now, which book should I try to make next ?
The winning suggestion gets a signed copy 🙂
