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Blurb Bookwright or Integrated Blurb on Lightroom CC

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cedric.olbrechts

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Apr 18, 2020
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Lightroom Version Number
Lightroom Classic 9.2.1
Operating System
  1. Windows 10
Dear all,

I have been using Blurb Bookwright application for many years, mainly by dropping pictures from a photo editor to the program, from one screen to another. Very efficient I thought.
At the time, I was using Picasa and did not edit much my pictures.

I am using this for family album and photo trips around the world (not commercial).

I have Lr CC for 2 years now and I am debating if I should use the integrated Blurb on Lr or export pictures in JPEG high quality and use Bookwright.
It seems to me that Bookwright use is more flexible than the integrated one: more flexibility to arrange the pictures, more possibility to bring pictures from elsewhere (Iphones, web etc)...
But maybe I am missing something here: loose quality ? anything else?

I would appreciate any help on this ! Thanks a lot

Cedric
 
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Hmmm.. seems to me that you are missing out on using the great Blurb functionality in Lightroom..... it doesn’t make sense (to me) that you would use Lightroom to export pictures to Bookwright...... I used Bookwright until I got Lightroom a few years ago and now I do all my books from Lightroom..... I don’t know what functionality is in Bookwright that is NOT in Lightroom - but it would have to be pretty spectacular to even consider your workflow !!

i am not clear whether ALL your photos are in Lightroom - mine are - but if yours are not, I can see that the LR Blurb would not work as efficiently.

Give it a try .... Best of luck, with whatever you decide.
 
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kelvinjouhar said:
Hmmm.. seems to me that you are missing out on using the great Blurb functionality in Lightroom..... it doesn’t make sense (to me) that you would use Lightroom to export pictures to Bookwright...... I used Bookwright until I got Lightroom a few years ago and now I do all my books from Lightroom..... I don’t know what functionality is in Bookwright that is NOT in Lightroom - but it would have to be pretty spectacular to even consider your workflow !!

Give it a try .... Best of luck, with whatever you decide.
Click to expand...
Thanks a lot!
One think I am missing is to drop other pictures into my book from other source than Lightroom... do you know by any chance if I can rework the book that I have done in Lightroom on Bookwright?
Also do you know where this book is saved on the PC?

Thanks
 
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Well - I am not an expert on Lightroom - and if I am wrong, someone will be along soon to correct me...... but my understanding is that if you are working on a Blurb book in LR, the pictures have to already be imported into LR to use them.... I don’t know about re-working the book outside LR.....you can export the book as a pdf.... maybe it could then be imported somewhere else ?
 
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The underlying assumption is that Lightroom is where you manage your photos, so there is no way to use photos which aren't in the catalogue. The book settings are stored in the catalogue, and you can't edit the results outside. PDF is meant is a final product, not something for further editing.

The big advantage of using Lightroom for books is that while laying out a book you can tweak the images' appearance or captions/titles as much as you want, and those changes will be automatically reflected in the book. So you see some photos on the page, decide that the one on the right needs less contrast, and you just go back to Develop - there's no need to export the photos and bring them into Bookwright.
 
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Hi,

A few comments about the above...

1. You'll benefit from much more editing features when using Bookwright, no doubt.

2. In Bookwright you can easily import photos from the Lightroom catalog.

3. Surpringly enough, Bookwright is not color managed. It expects sRGB images. Moreover, it absolutely ignores your display profile. So, the colors you are seeing in Bookwright are not the colors that will eventually be printed, especially if you have a wide gamut display. In that case, the colors displayed in Bookwright will be oversaturated. But the print will usually be correct (see #4, though). So you have to check your images outside of Bookwright in a color managed viewer (or in Lightroom itself - if the exported image looks OK in LR, it should be OK in the printed book). It's just uncomfortable to work with these ugly images. Don't even try to ask the Blurb support about this issue, they won't even understand your question. So, you have to be confident that what you see in Bookwright is not what you'll get. I think that you'll find similar opinions about this problem. You have to trust Blurb.

4. I said "usually" because Blurb delegates printing to subcontractors. You don't even know in which country your book will be printed. All subcontractors work with a unique standard ICC profile that they have to abide with (you can dowbload this profile and do some soft proofing against it). Most of them do, some do not. In which case the result might be unacceptable and involve requesting a reprint. Personally, I recently printed a book with Blurb and the result was acceptable (not top notch, though - CeWe are better).

5. Depending on the country in which your book is printed, additional costs may appear on your credit card (international payment, custom taxes...). I ordered 10 copies of my book and then 20 copies afterwards. Each time, I had to pay 9 euros to my bank for "international payment" although the book was allegedly printed in the Netherlands (I ordered from France). I know people who ordered from France and received the book(s) from the US or even from China. They had to pay custom taxes.

I elected to work with Blurb for only one reason. My book has a lot of text (many pages) coming along with the photos. Bookwright is the only software provided by a printing service that allows the text to flow over multiple pages and to automatically adjust if you make changes. Otherwise, I would have chosen CeWe (not sure in which countries this service is available). If you are in Europe, go with them. The printing quality is vastly superior.

Hope this helps.
 
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Samoreen said:
Documents\Blurb
Click to expand...

Not normally. Other than creating a temporary file for upload, and when the user exports it as a PDF, LR does not save the book outside the catalogue.
 
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I thought we were talking about Bookwright.
 
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