Book printing with Blurb. Bug ? New interface ?

Question

Book printing with Blurb. Bug ? New interface ?

Hello, all.

As I am trying to use the newest version of Aperture for the first time I am finding that the program is somewhat unresponsive. I just attempted to add one more page to a 100-page book and the application became unresponsive. The screens shows the book now as having 1098 pages but how did this happen if all I did was add one single page ? Is there a bug ?

I also noticed the new interface. The icons are monochromatic and so are all other visual elements. Is this normal ? I am assuming they are following Lion's interface design. Quite frankly I think I liked it better the way it was before.

One question:

I am trying to print a book. I have given up on printing the book using Apple's own service due to the many limitations the biggest one of all being the 100-page limit imposed to books. Adobe's Lightroom uses Blurb, which offers more options. Books printed from Lightroom can have up to 280 pages and there are choices of papers as well as choices of cover materials the user can select when ordering books. Their books do look better.

Having said that, I have found that Aperture makes the process of creating books much simpler and it is actually easier to design a book in it when compared to Lightroom. This may change in the future as they improve this feature since this is the first version that includes the book design module but for now I think I will continue to use Aperture.

Has anyone used Aperture with Blurb's printing service ? In case you have would share any tips ? I am assuming I can print an Aperture book as a PDF file and then provide it to Blurb so that they can print the book. Is this true ?

Any help or suggestions you can share will be appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

Posted on Jul 5, 2012 9:36 PM

Reply

Answer 1

bjurasz

Level 1

72 points

Jul 6, 2012 11:08 AM in response to apple_customer

I'm not sure, but I'm wondering if your problem is due entirely to trying to add that 101-st page to your book. Though if true, that would be bad of Aperture to hang, rather than warn you and not let you do so.

As per publishing with Blurb, I use outside book vendors often, while still using Aperture to design the book. When you hit "Print book" select the "PDF" button (lower left), and either print a PDF, or choose one of the "Save PDF to folder JPG" options. I use the latter. I get a single JPG for each page of my book, and then use that in the ordering software for my book vendor.

These "Save PDF to folder JPG" options are just PDF Services Automator scripts. Search the forums about this. I modified one to suit my needs. I believe they reside in /Macintosh HD/LIbrary/PDF Services. Double click on one to edit. I made mine output a 300 DPI file in the sRGB color space. Save as a new file name.

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Answer 2

Riclic

Level 1

5 points

Jul 6, 2012 6:30 PM in response to apple_customer

I followed these instructions and it worked.

http://matthewplummer.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/blurb-and-apertures-custom-book-lay out.html

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Answer 3

bjurasz

Level 1

72 points

Jul 6, 2012 6:59 PM in response to Riclic

Nice find! The book vendors I use don't take PDFs so I never had to go that route.

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Answer 4

Jul 7, 2012 3:14 PM in response to Riclic

bjurasz,

The instructions aren't all that difficult to follow and thank you for sharing them.

However, I noticed just now on Apple's website a list of several book publishers that have been added as possible sources of Aperture books. They seemed very high-end and are quite expensive (of the ones I looked the least expensive started at $345).

Having said that, I am wondering if Blurb offers a plug-in for Aperture. I noticed they have one for InDesign and have also used the Blurb book module in Lightroom 4 but couldn't find one for Aperture.

Is anyone aware if there is a Blurb plug-in for Aperture ?

Thank you in advance.

Reply

Answer 5

Jul 7, 2012 3:18 PM in response to bjurasz

Hi, bjurasz.

As I went back and revisited that option on Aperture's interface I realized the problem was caused by my improper selection. Instead of choosing the add page option I chose by accident another option that adds pages with the remaining unused photos. In essence Aperture simply followed my instructions and used all photos I still had available in my library to populate book pages, hence the 1098-page book.

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Answer 6

bjurasz

Level 1

72 points

Jul 7, 2012 4:39 PM in response to apple_customer

Blurb does not offer a plug-in and I doubt that will ever happen. Blurb is basically a direct competitor to the Apple photo books. Graphi Studio and the other three are significantly up-scale from Blurb and Apple both. (I've used Graphi once, they are quite nice, but quite pricey).

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Answer 7

Jul 7, 2012 4:54 PM in response to bjurasz

Hi, bjurasz.

Despite the realy high price I liked GraphiStudio and its books. One of the things that caught my attention was their offer of a large 16 in x 12 in book in landscape orientation. This is the largest I have seen from any publisher and I don't know any other that offer this size. The only problem (the same I have found with Apple and that made me switch momentarily to Lightroom) I found with GraphiStudio is the same limit of 100-page books also imposed by Apple. Blurb allows books to be printed from Lightroom with up to 260 pages. This makes a big difference.

Do you know of any other publisher that offers books with more than 100 pages and/or prints books in 16 in x 12 in (or slightly larger) ?

Thank you again for your help.

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Answer 8

bjurasz

Level 1

72 points

Jul 7, 2012 5:21 PM in response to apple_customer

Black River Imaging, press printed photo books 12x12 or 11x14 up to 140 pages is the best I know of. Most these high end vendors cater to the wedding crowd. They aren't getting 200 page albums in a 16x20 size...

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