When I got the second edition, color, contrast and saturation were MUCH improved. I then adjusted images to punch contrast and color to bring these softproofs closer to the original intention. So I tried all the profiles installed on my computer and softproofed several images to select the profile that was most closely matching the printed copy I had in hand. When I received the book, colors were quite muted compared to what my screen was showing and midtones were too dark. But the quality achievable through lulu using SWOP is better than what I see in most glossy magazines (thicker paper), surpasses print quality of many older books about photography (better than book in the Kodak Library of Creative Photography printed by Time Life in the 1980's), but still falls a bit short from more recent photo books (like Learning to See Creatively by Bryan Peterson).įor the first edition of my book, I did not softproof my images and use sRGB on my calibrated monitor as instructed by lulu. I can still do better with my Epson R800 on good paper with printer/paper specific profiles. Print quality I got for this second edition is clearly better than what I got from My Publisher the first time around, and there is a world of difference and improvement compared to my first edition with lulu. Basically, compared to the sRGB version I had to increase contrast mainly by lightening highlights, and increase saturation. Using this "color space", I had to adjust every image. I have now received a printed copy of the second edition of my photo book (This time around, I adjusted all images by softproofing them using the profile: i have a calendar from shutterfly that appears to be from a better printer with less visible artifacts so i may try them next. The problem is these books are printed on digital printing presses, not photographic equipment. i consider lulu and sharedink and similar companies that require you to do all of the page layout yourself in a different league i'm not sure i'm ready for. i'm considering their major competitors to be ofoto, shutterfly, snapfish, etc., the companies that have "assisted" layouts with templates that make it relatively easy to design a book. Still, they are the only one of the "easy" publishers that can do full-bleed pages. the font is very small (and cannot be changed), probably too small for older folks to read. i think some of the online sites do a better job with this.Īnother issue i have is the size of the font used for captions on the small books (the only kind i have ordered so far). I find the mypublisher software frustrating to use and not particularly intuitive. I was extremely disappointed with the printing quality at first but as mothers day gifts the books were a big hit for, as you say, less discriminating users.īut it has made me think twice about using their service in the future, or forking out the money for one of their deluxe books. regarding shipping, it is annoying that each unique book is treated as a separate order and shipped separately, racking up substantial additional charges. My experience with mypublisher is similar to yours (except for the pricing in the u.s. If I want better quality, I will rather print myself and assemble an album than pay extra for MyPublisher and only get marginally better results. I will be using lulu rather than MyPublisher in the future for cheap books. However, lulu says that their booka are not archival. Considering that, for the same price, I get about 10 times as much printing with only slightly lower quality, then I consider lulu to be a better deal. My 190 pages 8.5x11 book with cost $43CDN. My 40 pages MyPublisher 6x8 inches book costed me close to $50CDN by the time I got it. uses the cheaper USPS (takes a week) and has free shipping for orders above $25 or so. MyPubliser only uses FedEx (takes 4 days) which is expensive and has outrageous brokerage fees. Print quality is slightly better for my MyPublisher book, but not that much, and the total price is much more than for for someone like me in Canada. However, my parents and my wife, who are less discriminating and critical of the print quality and focus more on the contents, are quite impressed with both books. Neither service provide profiles so you are in for a disappointment when you first get to see the result. Prints I produce on my Epson R800 or have produced on a Frontier are much better than what MyPublisher or produced in my books. With lulu, you are on your own to produce a pdf with the tools of your liking. MyPublisher software is easy to use and allows relatively simple and efficient rearrangements (within the limits of the provided templates). The second one is for a friend, and I had it printed at. The first one was a wedding present and was created using MyPublisher.
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