Darius Himes clearly describes the judging criteria for Blurb’s PBN contest.

Read more about Blurb’s PBN contest here.

Find Darius Himes book Publish Your Photography Book here.

Visit Darius Himes’ website here.

Learn more in my bookmaking resources here.

Category: Blurb, Books, Contests
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“Pro photographer and book designer Mat Thorne presents an introduction to book design principals. This webinar covers an overview of typography, essentials of cover design, and laying out front & back matter. Mat also shares examples and offers inspiration from published photography books.”

Find more bookmaking resources here.

Learn more in my digital printing and digital photography workshops here.

Category: Blurb, Video
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Now you can seamlessly flow the photos you edit in Lightroom 3 straight into your Blurb Bookify™ books with our new Lightroom plug-in.

Here’s how simple it is.

- Flow edited Lightroom images into Bookify™ (online).

- Choose your book’s layout and style from within Lightroom.

- Stream photo captions automatically into your book’s text boxes.

- Automatically capture file data for the images in your book.

Blurb’s BookSmart is also coming soon to Lightroom.

Find out more about Bookify.

Read more with my Bookmaking online resources.

Category: Blurb
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Blurb recently updated their free bookmaking software BookSmart (3.0).

New feature highlights include …

Change book sizes automatically with one click, making it smaller or larger.

Create two-page spreads automatically.

Read more about the update here.
Watch more about using Blurb in these useful videos.
Learn more in my Bookmaking lessons.

Category: Blurb
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Start a book project with Blurb BookSmart® and invite others to contribute with GroupBook.

Learn more in my online Bookmaking resources.

Learn more in my Professional Portfolio workshop.

Category: Blurb
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Manage color with Blurb’s PDF to Book workflow.

Learn more in my online Bookmaking resources.

Learn more in my Professional Portfolio workshop.

Category: Blurb, Books
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Use Adobe InDesign® to create compliant PDF files by using the Blurb PDF/X-3 Export Preset and the Blurb Templates.

Learn more in my online Bookmaking resources.

Learn more in my Professional Portfolio workshop.

Category: Blurb, Books
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Go beyond the basics of BookSmart. This intermediate webinar explores several design ideas you can use in your books. Part inspiration, part instruction, you’ll get some great tips straight from Blurb’s designers.

Learn more in my online Bookmaking resources.

Learn more in my Fine Art Digital Printing Workshops.

Category: Blurb, Books
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Learn how to: create your book; work with photos, text, and layouts; upload your book; and more.

It’s surprisingly easy to do!

Learn more in my online Bookmaking resources.

Learn more in my Fine Art Digital Printing Workshops.

Category: Blurb, Books
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The cover of your book is your best chance to catch someone’s eye. In this webinar, photography book editor Alan Rapp uses examples from iconic works and Blurb books alike, and shows how the cover draws the viewer in.

Learn more in my online Bookmaking resources.

Learn more in my Fine Art Digital Printing Workshops.

Category: Blurb, Books, Video
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You won’t believe how easy Getting Started with Blurb BookSmart (2:12) is. If you’ve ever made a book traditionally you’ll be amazed. If you haven’t you may be tempted to take this new found ease for granted. The mechanics of making a book has never been easier. The art of making a book (editing, sequencing, designing, etc) has never been more important.

Learn more in my online Bookmaking Lessons.

Learn more in my Fine Art Digital Printing Workshops.

Category: Blurb, Books, Video
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Make electronic or print on demand magazines with MagCloud.

Find out more about MagCloud here.

Find my design resources here.

Category: Books, Software
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Blurb’s Bookify

October 22, 2010 | Leave a Comment

Blurb recently announced it’s new online bookmaking tool Bookify.

“Some projects are simpler, just begging for a streamlined solution. If what you want to create is a beautiful photo book – tonight – then you really should give our new online bookmaking tool, Bookify, a spin. It’s a fantastic new way to make books at Blurb.
Bookify features a specially curated set of our most popular layouts – or you can just drag and drop your photos and the page will design itself. Amazing. Plus, the whole thing is online so you can make a book from wherever you are.
So while PDF to Book is great for more involved projects, Bookify is ideal for simpler work.”

Here’s why:
•    It’s streamlined. Curated layouts and our most popular fonts.
•    It’s convenient. No download necessary. Simply import your photos from Flickr® or your computer, and start making your book instantly. You can even work on your book from more than one computer.
•    It offers all the Blurb goodness – professional quality, stellar image printing, great paper choices, hardcover or softcover, and five of our book sizes – and all at affordable prices.

Make a book with Bookify by November 2 (11:59 p.m. PDT) and save 25%.*

Just type in the appropriate promo code at checkout and you’re set:
•    USD $ coupon code: BOOKIFY
•    GBP £ coupon code: BOOKIFY1
•    EUR € coupon code: BOOKIFY2
•    CAD $ coupon code: BOOKIFY3
•    AUD $ coupon code: BOOKIFY4.

Find more resources in my Bookmaking lessons.

Learn more in my bookmaking workshops.

Category: Blurb
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Last Call by Judith Stenneken

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Congratulations to the winners of Blurb’s Photography Book Now 2010 contest, whose work was selected from more than 2,300 submissions from over 40 countries.

•    $25,000 Grand Prize Winner: Judith Stenneken, Last Call
•    Fine Art Category Winner: Arthur Tress, Barcelona Unfolds
•    Editorial Winner: Anton Kusters, 893 Magazine – The Yakuza in Tokyo
•    Portfolio Category Winner: WassinkLundgren, Portfolio
•    Fine Art, First Runner-up: Justin Schmitz, Mosh
•    Editorial, First Runner-up: Alexey Vanushkin, Merry-Go-Round
•    Portfolio, First Runner-up: Emily Shur, The Woods
•    Fine Art, Second Runner-up: Elisabeth Tonnard, In this Dark Wood
•    Editorial, Second Runner-up: Carl Bower, Chica Barbie
•    Portfolio, Second Runner-up: Lauren Orchowski, Rocket Science
•    People’s Choice, Fine Art: David Beach, Fetzer’s Tale
•    People’s Choice, Editorial: Matt Eich, Carry Me Ohio
•    People’s Choice, Portfolio: Barry Holmes, Entertain

Check out their books in the Photography Book Now Bookstore.

The complete list of Honorable Mentions is available online as well.

Visit the Photography Book Now website here.

Find my bookmaking resources here.

Category: Blurb
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books_orientation
Horizontal, vertical, or square? It can be challenging to decide what orientation is ideal for your photo book.

In cases where all images share the same orientation, choose the same orientation for your book; a horizontal book for horizontal images, a vertical book for vertical images, a square book for square images. (If you’re concerned about how a book fits on shelves at book stores, use square formats cautiously and choose size accordingly.)

If the orientation of the images in a book is mixed, consider two approaches.

If a majority of the images in a book share a common orientation, choose that orientation.

Or, if you want to give all images equal opportunity for size and surrounding space, choose square for the most orientation neutral format.

When in doubt, remember that vertical books generally fit in people’s hands more easily.

Find more Bookmaking resources here.

Learn more in my Fine Art Digital Printing workshops.

Catch my Making Your Own Photo Book seminar today at 12 at Photoshop World Las Vegas.

Category: Books
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books_graphicdesign

There’s a lot to learn about producing books and graphic design.
Find books that will quickly help you learn about these interesting topics here.

Find more Bookmaking resources here.

Learn more in my Fine Art Digital Printing workshops.

Category: Blurb, Books
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books_numberofimages

How many images is optimum for a photo book? Of course, the answer depends on the kind of book being produced and its purpose. There’s no set number; extreme lengths for books vary between as few as 12 to more than 300 images.

There are number of things to keep in mind when making a photo book.

Most photo books contain between 50 and 100 images.

Shorter books can work well if the images they contain are very concentrated, being both graphically strong and thematically related. Short books can leave and audience feeling hungry for more, which is a good thing – but if they don’t create strong presence rapidly they’ll lack both impact and staying power.

Longer books work well if a subject is complex and/or portrays a substantial duration of time. Long books may tire an audience and if not carefully edited and sequenced can seem unfocussed and rambling.

Be careful. It’s tempting to show all of your work. Instead, show only your best work. Avoid including weaker images to make a book seem larger and more important; they just dilute the average quality. And, include only images that relate to one another. Avoid including more images simply because they’re graphically strong; instead, select images that are related to each other. The form of a book will imply and create relationships between the separate items included in it. Make sure a viewer’s attempts to find and understand those relationships don’t go unrewarded. The more interesting and rewarding you can make this search, the stronger your book will be.

One way to find out if a book is too short or too long is to create a prototype and then observe how people interact with it. Do they put a short book down quickly without giving it a second or third look? Do they suddenly increase their viewing speed in a long book or not finish at all? After someone looks at a book, ask them if the book seems too short or too long.

Find more Bookmaking resources here.

Learn more in my Fine Art Digital Printing workshops.

Category: Blurb, Books
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Enjoy the text from my book Condensation.
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Condensation
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Light
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All photographs are about light. The great majority of photographs record light as a way of describing objects in space. A few photographs are more about spaces they represent than the objects within those spaces. Still fewer photographs are about light itself.

Time, space, light. All the things this work is about are ultimately missing from the final product – the print. Put it in a dark room and there will still be no light. Touch it and you’ll find it’s flat. Consider it for an extended time; you’ll change but it won’t. Curiously, these conspicuous absences within the print make what’s missing more intensely felt. How does absence make something more clearly experienced? Perhaps it’s that the gap between representation and reality gives us pause and begs us to more carefully reconsider the world around us and the experiences we have in it, at first as a way of verification but later as a way of celebration. Read more

Category: Statements
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Enjoy the text from my book Correspondence.
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Correspondence

The first thing I do when I walk outside is look up. The next thing I do is scan the horizon. Hopefully, there’s water nearby; no matter how active or still it is, I’m mesmerized by it. I’m always looking at the sky, the horizon, and water for information and inspiration. Sometimes I stare for hours. More often than not, just for seconds or minutes. I consider myself luckier the longer I look. I have no idea how much time I’ve spent gazing at these things, but I’m always rewarded – if not with an image, then with a new state of mind. That’s how these images were made, through the accumulation of a lot of looking. These images are meditations. They’re an invitation to look closely at looking. They’re an invitation to see more fully, more deeply, and in many ways. Read more

Category: Statements
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Ventura_WhiteSands

Barbara Ventura shares here wonder and amazement for one of the most beautiful deserts in the world – White Sands, New Mexico – in her new book.

Find out more on my Alumni blog.

Learn more about my White Sands worshop here.

Category: Alumni, Books
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