Response From Lulu Re: Purple Tone in RFF Book II

[T_om]

I received a response from Lulu.

Here it is:

Dear Tom,

The problem that you describe is caused when you elect to have your black and white images printed on the color grade paper but fail to set them to greyscale.
We at Lulu want you to be happy with your order. If you can provide us with scans or digital images of the problem we can see about compensating you for all or part of your order. Just hit reply to this email and attatch the images to your reply.

Please feel free to contact us if you have any additional questions



It seems they are trying to shift blame to our industrious production crew.

Brett, can you ring in on this one?

Tom

 

[John Robertson]

Tom,
My book arrived here in the Scotland about an hour ago, it came very well packed. I looked at my own prints first, (not an ego thing, trust me! ) and compared them to original prints I have in the house. They compare extremely well, with no detectable colour shift, I personally am very pleased with the results. So perhaps the thread originator was just plain unlucky.
Thanks again for the work.

 

[Byuphoto]

Tom, thats what it sounds like to me. They did not tell them to use grayscale for the B&W photos just RGB

 

[Gabriel M.A.]

It wasn't just "the thread originator that was just plain unlucky", other people, like myself, have the same issue with the books we got.

Thanks, Tom, for the follow-up. Yes, it does seem like they are trying to shift blame. If some copies are poorly printed, and others aren't, it follows that the problem is with the prints at issue (the ones with B&W photos + purple tint), not the source file.

 

[rover]

We will have to look at a correction. I am sure Brett will see this post, I will bring it to his attention for comment.

 

[JoeFriday]

"The problem that you describe is caused when you elect to have your black and white images printed on the color grade paper but fail to set them to greyscale. "

that's completely contrary to what Lulu's instructions are on their website.. they very explicitely say to make ALL images RGB, as using grayscale images has been known to result in pixelation

there are many threads in the Lulu forums discussing their insistence on RGB and the problems that have arisen.. we're by far not the first group to have this problem

I can easily (well, not easily, but with little trouble) convert the b&w photos to grayscale and resubmit the file if that is what we want to do

 

[T_om]

"The problem that you describe is caused when you elect to have your black and white images printed on the color grade paper but fail to set them to greyscale. "

that's completely contrary to what Lulu's instructions are on their website.. they very explicitely say to make ALL images RGB, as using grayscale images has been known to result in pixelation

there are many threads in the Lulu forums discussing their insistence on RGB and the problems that have arisen.. we're by far not the first group to have this problem

I can easily (well, not easily, but with little trouble) convert the b&w photos to grayscale and resubmit the file if that is what we want to do

Brett,

If you would like to address this with Lulu, the "Trouble Ticket Number" is LTK31025240356X, the "Order Number" is 469429.

It seems that me taking it any further with Lulu (beside requesting a refund) is not going to help as I had no hand in the files submission.

I can give you the complete email they sent (which is, indeed, quoted above) as well as their headers if you like.

Tom

 

[Goodyear]

I got my copy today. SOme images show quite a pronounced tint, whereas others are more in the order of the not-too-bad hint of magenta in my copy of Book 1.

Once image in particular (FrankS's dad) shows a quite nasty magenta-yellow-magenta-yellow banding.

On the whole, though, most images are acceptable.

I like it - well done to all involved. I fell quite humbled to be included among so many fantastic artists.

 

[vladhed]

I got my copy today. SOme images show quite a pronounced tint, whereas others are more in the order of the not-too-bad hint of magenta in my copy of Book 1.

Once image in particular (FrankS's dad) shows a quite nasty magenta-yellow-magenta-yellow banding.

I haven't gotten mine yet, but how does that photo compare with mine ("Asha and her bestest girl Sala" and "Alana") where the JPG I submitted were gray scale?

I guess one solution ($$) is to make a test_book with different settings for the same photograph on different pages and see what it comes back like. Might vary depending on where it is actually printed tho...

When my club (nnphotoclub) did a book, we went through 4 versions including typos and gamma correction (+0.2) - I think only 1 or 2 copies of the "perfect" book got ordered coz we all copies by then!! But yes, one photo was a high-contrast B&W picture of a grain elevator that had an obvious yellow tint to it despite the original JPG having 255,255,255 as the pixel values.