A lot of you, especially professional photographers, want to know how to get color reproduction in Blurb books that’s closer to what you see on your color-calibrated monitor at home or via different color printing processes.
Well, a contractor of ours, a semi-professional photographer who shoots bonsai on the side, has compiled a number of tips for those who wish to improve the color in their books.
Blurb uses the HP 5000, which is used in a number of commercial book- printing businesses, and an output device I know well. It is a “workhorse” for producing good image quality at a high output rate. The HP 5000 uses a CMYK ICC color profile and I did some research to determine that I could download an appropriate ICC file for soft-proofing my images.
You can check out his post at dpreview’s forum thread “Blurb Book Talk 2007” at dpreview.com or download the a pdf of the how-to.
We hope to post more tips and how-tos throughout the year. If you have workarounds or tips you’d like to share with fellow Blurbarians send us an email at blurberatiblog at blurb dot com and we’ll post it.
Big thanks to Sam for all the research and the tips!
23 Comments
This may have been answered previously. I want to know if Burb supports blog printing. So far what I have seen and read makes lurb the perfect tool to design a personal book. What about downloading my blog’s content to make a book with it?
If Blurb uses the HP 5000 then why not make the ICC profile available to your customers so that we can have a color managed workflow with your product?
Yes, we suppport blog-to-book with our Blog Slurper. If you use TypePad or WordPress.com, BookSmart slurps in all of your content. Check out our blog page for more information and let us know when you turn your blog into a book.
In the article on color management, it mentioned the ICC profile to use for the HP 5000: HP Indigo Press 5000 Semimatte. I can find it using Google. Can someone post the URL to site where it is located or added it to the Blurb site, or just email it to me. It would be big help.
While Sam Edge was able to obtain the HP5000 output profile, it is a copyrighted file and Blurb can’t post it without the permission of Hewlett Packard Corporation. I’ve made contact with them to see if they will allow us to post it.
Because of normal variations in output devices I suggest using the U.S. Web Coated v2 profile in PhotoShop as Sam mentions to get a good idea of how your images will look once converted to CMYK and printed. Unless you are working in a closed-loop workflow, color management is generally an “80% accurate” game so we still suggest printing some books to see how the output of our hardcover and softcover books look in comparison to your native files.
One caveat to using advanced color management…profiles and such can set the wrong expectation of output if they are not used properly. Please read up on best practices for color management before making adjustments to your files. There are a lot of great resources out there if you Google away.
You can find the ICC profile at http://www.bonsai-photography.com
Thx,
Sam
I am planning on putting together a book and after going through the troubleshooting, it was suggested to calibrate your monitor. Sorry, but I am new to this so how do I color-calibrate my monitor?
I recommend reading the entry on Wikipedia for color calibration. It offers insight and links to devices you can purchase. The link is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_calibration
hi is there a way to get a 1 page proof
Hi…new guy here. After reading all the posts concerning image quality issues/color management, I was afraid I was gong to have to start from scratch, deleting and uploading my images again. I checked my color settings in PS (v.6), and found I had been working with the US Web Coated v.2 profile. After DLing the HP profile, I felt a lot better, not seeing too much difference in images. BUT…since I’m using the “Darkroom” theme for my book, I checked the “Ink Black” box for paper simulation. Glad I did. BIG difference. Should I go ahead and tweak my images accordingly, or leave that “Ink Black” box unchecked?
I reckon I should add that I’m shooting a Nikon D40 in sRGBIII, and do not assign a profile when I open images in PS6. Images look good in the book preview…it’s just that simulation thingie has me concerned.
Hi Dave,
Thanks for the great questions. I suggest you post your comments to our Forums: http://forums.blurb.com/. You’ll get a quicker response from the community at large than from me, and you’ll get a lot more suggestions.
Hope that helps.
– Kathy
I am wondering about the paper color. When I assign the HP5000 color profile to my images they look really bad. I expected the color to shift but not this drastically. In selected the profile, should I or should I not select “Simulate Paper Color”???
Thank you!
How long does it take a book to get printed and dispatched. Anthony
Hi Anthony. Here’s a link to our shipping information:
http://www.blurb.com/create/book/pricing#shipping_rates
Once a book is made, uploaded, and ordered, it is printed and shipped in approximately 7 to 10 business days.
-Allison
Hi Jacqui. All of our information on color profiles can be found in our Help section. Just search the FAQs.
We also encourage you to post this question in the Forums: http://forums.blurb.com/. The community will chime in with their insight and suggestions.
-Allison
sorry, but I don’t find the answer I’m looking for… what about CMYK ? I’ve found I had to export in sRGB. (I’m doing my own layouts from Indesign and will export them)…please explain…
Hi,
I typed CMYK into our FAQ search box and came up with several FAQs that answer your question. You can find out more about CMYK here and here .
Hope that helps.
– Kathy
yes, perfect ! thanks for your help.
It would be tremendously helpful if Blurb would just provide a 1-2 page summary of basic specifications for preparing your own files & templates. I’m currently hunting around all these blogs and Q&A forums for basic information that should be compiled in a single place. If everyone started with the same set of facts, it would decrease the number of Q&As.
how can I solft proof my images using LightRoom.
Hi Tony, there is no soft proof ability in LightRoom. Don’t know if LightRoom V2 has it. But this feature is a must do, if you want to have absolute ability to ensure your image will look right in the book or on prints on your printer at home.
I agree with Gene above (putting a 1-2 page summary together of basic operations) would be a tremendous help for users.
Here is my workflow:
1) Copy my processed TIFF images (shoot and processed in Abode RGB space) to a new location on my hard-drive (I call it ImagesForBlurbBook)
2) Open all images and convert to sRGB and save it. Use Edit->Convert to Profile in PS
3) I now have all my images in sRGB color space. I open each image and start to soft-proof each image using the HP Indigo Press 5000 profile provided by Sam Edge. In PS use View->Proof Setup->Custom
Viewing the soft-proof image and correct the image using curves, levels, saturation, etc… until the image looked like the one I have initially.
4) Flatten the image with all the adjustment, convert to 8-bit (if you edit your image in 16-bit). Do a Save As and select JPEG 12. This will ensure a high-quality jpeg file
5) Import the image into BookSmart
Hope this helps…..
What kind of printing paper blurp offers, like weight and son on….
JC