Self-Published Photo Book - LuLu.com Experience

[greentraveler]

I recently decided to publish a collection of my photos and used LuLu (http://www.lulu.com) to do it. I became aware of them through JPG Magazine and Noah Grey's book "California"...both of which look great and are printed through LuLu.

The great thing about LuLu is that you can totally dodge the massive initial investment self-publishing has traditionally required, like this (http://www.luminous-landscape.com/essays/100-books.shtml). Assembling the book, creating a cover, and uploading it all was easy. And LuLu even does order fulfillment, with me deciding the final selling price and their system handling everything else. You get royalty payments once a month.

I know that PP is all about blogging, but this is a service I'll bet a lot of the photogs would use if they knew about it. Publishing a book of photographs is something I'd dreamed about for a while and Lulu made it an easy one to fulfill.

I am in no way affiliated with Lulu beyond my role as customer...but I understand if my tone is excited enough to create suspicion. I just love what I got out of this experience and wanted to share it. :D

[se.nsuo.us]

Did you get a proof copy? I have heard complaints about the greyscale images having tints of blue or magenta to them....

[greentraveler]

I did get a proof and the black and white photos came out beautifully. But they weren't greyscale images; they were RGB files converted in CS2 to B&W, so I can't really answer your question accurately. Noah Grey's book "California" is mostly B&W and looks fine, too. But I doubt he was using greyscale, either.

I've found using greyscale instead of converting to B&W via channels or filters to be very poor quality by comparison. Not with Lulu, just with digital B&W images in general.

Sorry I can't answer more thoroughly! :D

[se.nsuo.us]

Oh! by greyscale I meant RGB images looking like Black and White - thanks. Yes channels are anytime better than just desaturation

[greentraveler]

I just flipped back through my book and Noah's. I didn't notice any off-tones or inappropriate hues in the B&Ws.

That said, the only real way to get consistant color in prints is to use the actual printer profile when preparing your images. And, despite a lot of interest, Lulu doesn't offer this. They subcontract out to a bunch of different printers which makes it impossible to offer one profile.

Which can most certainly lead to differing results. I had to batch boost the brightness up 30% on all of my photos to make up for the CMYK conversion Lulu does.

I wrote an extended article about this exact subject over at photo.net (http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=00GNQk&tag=). Hope that helps!

[blinking8s]

I'm pretty interested in this...I've been working on a project for the last 3 months, I'd like to get a book printed up at the end of summer, volume 1 of the project I guess...lulu wasnt on my list of places to check out, although I am a JPG mag junkie somewhat...two issues behind at the moment because of lack of $ while in school though.

[ehmotion]

Thanks for reminding me about LuLu.

I got a bunch of books printed last year for Christmas from www.futurephoto.com which I think are pretty amazing. They're 8.5x11.5 landscape books in a variety of hard cover materials. I went with the suede. A really nice feature is the cut-out on the cover showing a small photo through. A 20 pager goes for about $35 CDN and a 40 pager for $50 CDN.

I went with them because I use to work for Future Shop and got a sick discount but even at the above prices they are an excellent value. I'm going to order a copy from LuLu though to compare the quality.

Also, has anyone ordered Apple's iPhoto books?