RFF Book - What are your thoughts, and any tips w/Lulu?

[PaulN]

Hi folks,
I'm contemplating using Lulu to publish a book of photos. Mostly 75% color, the rest B&W. It is not going to be a book that I'm going to sell, more like an annual archive of favorite images. Lulu has come up a few times, and I've heard good and bad reviews regarding the image quality. I know that a lot of forum members put some time into the RFF book, and I'd like to get some more information on how it was put together.

Starting off, for those who have the book (mine hasn't arrived yet), how is the picture quality? Any jaggies, posterizing, blocky tones, etc? How is the overall quality of the book? How does it feel? Sturdy cover, decent pages, etc.

For those who have submitted pics, what do _you_ think of the quality of the book? It is one thing to buy the book, but to those who submitted, you know _exactly_ what the picture should look like. Did it live up to your expectations? Would you do it again?

For those who put the book together, any advice regarding color profiles, image processing, etc? What did you do to ensure that the pics looked as good as they did on your calibrated monitor? Ideally, I'm trying to make my book on the cheap utilizing Photoshop 7 & Apple Pages for the layout.

Thanks all, I look forward to your responses!

-Paul

 

[DougK]

We have a long thread about the RFF book here. I think the response to the book quality was overwhelmingly positive. I know my copy is great. Ralph and Gene did a great job bringing this project to press.

 

[rover]

Paul, there are quite a few discussions in the verious threads about the book regarding dealing with Lulu. It is a lot of reading I know, but surely you will find some helpful things.

Generally speaking, I think the RFF book turned out excellently. The images were reproduced very well. I have no complaints at all regarding the quality of Lulu's printing.

Pictures were scanned and saved at 300dpi. Lay out and all the hard work was done by Gene W, I believe he used Pagemaker software to create the PDF files. Once submitted to Lulu it was available for sale more or less instantly.

 

[back alley]

i would do it again.

in fact, i hope to do my own smaller version featuring different projects, such as my whyte avenue project and bar portraits.

joe