Thanks Paul - that will be a useful reference.
The FotoFusion site mentions that they have customers who have
successfully used the program on a Mac under VMWare (the Windows
emulator). I use VMWare on my office Mac because some of the sites I
need to connect to (e.g., travel, personnel) have special super-duper
secure access which requires a program installation on one's own
computer, but they don't provide such programs for OS-X. And
occasionally Office file compatibility across platforms is not that
good, and I need the Windows version to be able to do print-ready
PowerPoints or Docs which will work well on my colleagues' machines.
(PDF is not an option as it makes it too difficult for them to make
any additional changes.) So I emulate Windows when I have to, but I
am not prepared to buy VMWare and a copy of Windows to install on my
Mac at home. So I'll struggle through with Blurb, and the site you
referenced will give me help in by-passing the Blurb templates when I
really need to.
stan
On Oct 3, 2008, at 1:10 PM, Paul Sorenson wrote:
Ann and Stan -
Yes, you can do pretty much the same thing in Elements. FotoFusion
does, however, make the process simpler and more flexible, as well
as having a great rendering engine if you want large format output.
You might also look at this blog -
http://tinyurl.com/yq55ek
http://theartofengineering.wordpress.com/2008/01/23/want-to-make-a-
blurb-book/
She has a good discussion on making your own templates for Blurb
books and includes some that she has created as free downloads.
-p
ann sanfedele wrote:
Paul -
seems to me I can do what you do just using Elements...
Stan thanks for more detail
I'm being a hostess this weekend can't spend too much time here or
on my projects
ann
Stan Halpin wrote:
Thanks Paul. However:
"FotoFusion photo layout software is currently not available for
the Mac."
Oh well.
stan
On Oct 1, 2008, at 11:58 PM, Paul Sorenson wrote:
Stan -
You may want to look at FotoFusion, by LumaPix.
http://lumapix.com/
Create your pages, including text and single or multiple images
they way you want the layout to look, with the canvas sized for
the full BookSmart page size. Save the pages in native format
if you think you may need future editing, then export the page
to a jpg file. Then pull that jpg into BookSmart using a full
page template. You can create unique layouts then that you
can't get in BookSmart, with probably less work and anxiety
than the workflow you outlined below.
There are three versions of FotoFusion (and three price
points). Unless you need output larger than about 13 x 19
(inches) the mid version (Enhanced) should work well.
-p
Stan Halpin wrote:
Some more info on working with Blurb...
I imagine you'll get better quality if you size the photos in
good photo-processing software rather than let Blurb do it for
you. That is what Blurb says, and it makes sense. So you have
a bunch of 3000x2000 images on your hard drive or maybe
1500x1000 images on SmugMug. But they need to be re-sized...
My work flow working with photos on my drive:
a. Decide on the general content of the next page or two
as the story unfolds.
b. Go into Lightroom, find the 3-8 images I'll be using
next. E.g, next I need one of the better hummingbird shots,
one or two butterflys, maybe a shot of one of the group
members in the butterfly farm. [Images previously
appropriately sorted into order and rated 1-5 stars; thus,
related images are together, and I don't need to revisit the
question of which of several similar shots I should use.] Note
whether vertical or horizontal, deserve full page/full bleed,
a 1/9th of the page, or somewhere in between.
c. Go back to BookSmart. Spot a template that allows me to
use my one good vertical and a couple of moderately good
horizontals on the next page. Mutter about the fact that the
template puts the vertical near the fold, the two horizontals
on the outside, and I had wanted something the other way
around. Mutter some more. Decide to live with it. Make a note
to fire off a note later to Blub asking once again for
increased flexibility in their templates, such as the ability
to flip them horizontally or vertically. Recall their forum
discussion on this issue where they basically said: "live with
it." Move note about firing off a note to Blurb into the Don
Quixote file.
d. Note that the Vertical is 1113x1630 pixels and the
Horizontals are 1113x680. [You do this by mousing over the
page template, a popup window appears for three seconds with
the "ideal size" information.]
e. Go back to Lightroom. Crop, sharpen etc. as required.
Export to file with a resize to 1113x1630 or 1113x680.
f. Go back to BookSmart. Import the pictures from file.
[If using Smugmug, I expect this step will take longer than
reading from your local disk.]
g. Drag-and-drop the photos into the template. Note that
one dimension or another will be cropped (since my original
aspect ratio does not equal 1113:1630). Zoom and or slide the
image so that the 1113x1630 window frames an appropriate part
of the image.
h. Note that the aspect ratio of the 1113x1630 template
just doesn't allow me to crop/compose the image the way I
would like.
i. Find another template for the vertical shot. How about
1488x2475? Just use it on its own and save the horizontals for
another page?
j. Go back to Lightroom, re-export with new resizing
parameters....
k. Repeat 1-3 times for each of the other pages.
It really is not as bad as it sounds, flipping back and forth
between Lightroom and Booksmart. But if the images were on
Smugmug, do you need to pull them back down to our system to
work on them? Then export back to Smugmug after you've
resized? Then import from Smugmug into Booksmart? Unless you
have a very good strong fast connection, I can see lots of
coffee break time.
On the other hand, what I am describing is a book where the
pages vary quite a bit, partially on the theory that better
shots deserve more space (but the less good shots may still be
required to tell the story), partially on the theory that some
variety in formatting from page to page makes it less like an
old-time photo album with four or six same-size photos on each
page, over and over... If you have one consistent size photo,
then much of the processing/resizing can be done in batch.
stan
On Oct 1, 2008, at 9:51 PM, Stan Halpin wrote:
I did one (my Venice shots), helped my wife put one together
(her step-mother's 70th Barnard College reunion), and have
just finished editing a third (120 pages total, 375 images
plus a bunch of text to document our church's trip to Costa
Rica this past June. Images from 6 different people with six
different types of cameras - I decided not to get too fussy
with exact color balance consistency or I would never finish
the beast!)
I find their templates too restrictive, their text handling to
be primitive (in short, it hoovers), and many of the details
like backgrounds and borders and captions and headers/footers
are somewhere between a royal pain and totally impossible to
work with.
Having said that, the quality is good. If your project
doesn't demand too much, it is a good source. If you like
everything to be just right, all of the text to line up,
etc., you'll do a lot of fiddling.
On balance, I will continue to use it for the several projects
on my to-do list.
stan
On Sep 29, 2008, at 9:33 AM, ann sanfedele wrote:
I was browsing around smugmug stuff for their calendar
prices (looks like they stopped offering those) and came up
with a page on BLURB for making books - Anyone here try it?
ann
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