Blurb Books – The Photo book

I can’t believe you do not know about photobooks, they have been around for a few years now and the quality and range keeps improving. I have made books using different suppliers for a number of years. My first was an iphoto book, later I tried a Photobox book, then an Aperture book and recently YourPhotobooks. I have moved around with suppliers to get an idea of the quality they produce and the ease of book assembly. This week I completed a second book on my trip to Laos over Christmas and the new year and this time I went for Blurb Books. It is possible these are the market leaders although I am not sure how you could work that out. Their overall quality is excellent and their technical sophistication, explaining colour space, providing icc profiles etc far exceeds those of the other suppliers I have tried.

Blurb Books a photography book by Keith Barnes about Laos

If you are interested to look inside my book click on the cover and it will take you to the Blurb site where you can preview it’s content.

I decided to go for the largest size available and as I had shot rather a lot of images whilst away it has a lot of pages. I tried using the templates for pages supplied but found this didn’t suit the layout I wanted. One of the very nice things about Blurb is that you can create your own page templates and save them so it is possible to define something unique to your purpose. Not only do you have choice of book sizes but also cover types, hard or soft back, wrap around or dust jacket, there are about 5 different paper types you can select also. This really is as close to a bespoke service as you could want.

The cost reflects the service, I always budget about £1 a page for an A4 photobook, this is pretty cheap if you think you can get several images per page. I probably have about 200 images in my Laos book and even at the cost of £70 for the 150 pages that is still only about 40p per image and many are full A4 in size. I decided not to try to make a profit on my book but Blurb allows you to set your own price and make profit on the difference when someone buys it. You can also put your books in their library for the world to peruse and choose to buy if they like your work.

Why am I telling you about this, well I have always thought of photography as something that has a point when it becomes physical. Viewing on screen on line is OK but if you want to collect your work into something that actually reflects your portfolio then prints or books are a must. You will be surprised at the reaction from family and friends when you show them a book(s) of your work and you will always have something to hand to show, no need to boot up the computer.

 

40+ Amazing Mac Apps for Photographers

“If you are running on mac, you can find a lot of apps all over the web. There are many Mac apps for photography available for download now but finding the good ones is not easy. You have to sort them from the rest which are not good based on your requirements.

Thus, we come up with a list of amazing mac apps that you can use to enhance your digital images. This is to narrow down the list from which you choose the best apps you need for your photography. For those who are looking for nice mac apps without spending a buck, you can get the free items here. If you are a more serious photographer on the other hand, and you don’t mind taking a cheaper option, you can get premium mac apps here for as low as $0.99. Others of course, cost more than that, but that depends on their features and capabilities. You just have to visit their websites to learn more about them. Either way we believe that these apps have cool and great features ready to meet your photo editing, sharing and photo organizational needs. Enjoy!”…..MORE from Tripwire Magazine

1. Snapheal

It’s a snap to fix bad pictures with Snapheal. You will be able to erase unwanted objects, fix skin imperfections and more in a matter of clicks and seconds. This app does magic.

2. Pixelmator

Pixelmator is an inspiring, easy-to-use, beautifully designed image editor built to help you create stunning new images and edit your existing photos. Pixelmator takes full advantage of the latest Mac technologies, giving you speedy, powerful tools that let you touch up and enhance photos, draw or paint, apply dazzling effects and just have fun with your pictures.

All the amazing apps here