Andrea Taurisano
il cimento
Hi everyone.
Many of you saw either or both of my Blurb books "The Japan book" and "-9289-". For both of them I chose the so called "trade book" solution, where the same "rough", off-white paper used, say, for novels is utilised for photobooks. This makes it very cheap, affording the auhor to buy a number of copies to give away and even making it possible to sell a number of copies at a rather modest price. However that paper has the drawback of not rendering the blacks as deep and punchy as many of us would like, thus resulting in overall lower contrast than some would have liked. If you think of any book by Daido Moriyama, for example, I can assure you that no matter how much you contrast your shots in the first place, you can forget that contrast.. Still, the result is pleasant and particularly suited to gritty, grainy b&w work.
Now, I just received test copies of the same two books printed on another type of "trade book" paper, the one Blurb offers for color trade books. The result is very different. The color trade book paper feels slightly thinner than the B&W one, but that may be due to its surface being significantly smoother (I'd say almost wax-coated) as compared to the porous B&W trade paper. The contrast is indeed more pronounced, with deeper blacks and, well, real whites (as opposite to the off-whites enabled by the B&W paper). When observing the same pages side by side, the black & white photos printed on color trade book paper have a significantly colder tone, almost looking blue-ish compared to the warmer toned B&W trade book. Another thing I can definitely see is that the color paper makes the film grain less pronounced, while the rougher B&W paper emphasizes it.
Considering that the price of the same book printed on color paper is 2 - 3 times higher than printed on B&W paper, I am far from sure that I would go the color way for my next book. The cold tonality it gives all b&w images is the major flipside IMO, while I guess the apparent smoothing of the grain can be compensated for by a little increase in LR before one uploads to Blurb.
Hope this can help those of you who are considering trade books for their work. I'll try to take photos of the two books open side by side to see if the difference shows, in which case I'll edit this post and add them, but can't promise success in this.
PS: should you know of any other nett based self-publishing companies offering more paper options, please do share..
EDIT: here is what I managed to get, but difficult to render the different paper tonality. The difference in contrast should however be visible.
Many of you saw either or both of my Blurb books "The Japan book" and "-9289-". For both of them I chose the so called "trade book" solution, where the same "rough", off-white paper used, say, for novels is utilised for photobooks. This makes it very cheap, affording the auhor to buy a number of copies to give away and even making it possible to sell a number of copies at a rather modest price. However that paper has the drawback of not rendering the blacks as deep and punchy as many of us would like, thus resulting in overall lower contrast than some would have liked. If you think of any book by Daido Moriyama, for example, I can assure you that no matter how much you contrast your shots in the first place, you can forget that contrast.. Still, the result is pleasant and particularly suited to gritty, grainy b&w work.
Now, I just received test copies of the same two books printed on another type of "trade book" paper, the one Blurb offers for color trade books. The result is very different. The color trade book paper feels slightly thinner than the B&W one, but that may be due to its surface being significantly smoother (I'd say almost wax-coated) as compared to the porous B&W trade paper. The contrast is indeed more pronounced, with deeper blacks and, well, real whites (as opposite to the off-whites enabled by the B&W paper). When observing the same pages side by side, the black & white photos printed on color trade book paper have a significantly colder tone, almost looking blue-ish compared to the warmer toned B&W trade book. Another thing I can definitely see is that the color paper makes the film grain less pronounced, while the rougher B&W paper emphasizes it.
Considering that the price of the same book printed on color paper is 2 - 3 times higher than printed on B&W paper, I am far from sure that I would go the color way for my next book. The cold tonality it gives all b&w images is the major flipside IMO, while I guess the apparent smoothing of the grain can be compensated for by a little increase in LR before one uploads to Blurb.
Hope this can help those of you who are considering trade books for their work. I'll try to take photos of the two books open side by side to see if the difference shows, in which case I'll edit this post and add them, but can't promise success in this.
PS: should you know of any other nett based self-publishing companies offering more paper options, please do share..
EDIT: here is what I managed to get, but difficult to render the different paper tonality. The difference in contrast should however be visible.
