Have you ever shot what you believed were superb photos and wished you could print those beauties into a nicely produced hardbound book, found an online one-off book publisher, built and purchased that book, received it and wondered why the colors were a bit different than what you saw on your color-calibrated monitor?

I found myself in this position after using a number of book-publishing services both personally and professionally now available on the Internet [full disclosure: I do contract work for Blurb]. I think I have tried them all: Apple®, MyPublisher, Snapfish, LuLu™, Sony ImageStation™, and a host of others. All of these products provide the ability to produce a pretty nice photo essay of my photos. Did I mention I shoot Bonsai trees semi-professionally?

Well, I’ve used all of these services and each time I tore open the packaging to view my “masterpiece” I was mildly disappointed to see what was on paper just wasn’t what I saw on my nicely color-calibrated monitor nor what I produced on my home Epson® 2200 color printer. I didn’t expect the color reproduction to be the same as my home printer since commercial presses use a significantly different color printing process, but I did expect that things would be “close.” Ah, that magic word: “close.” But what does “close” mean? Well, it wasn’t close enough for me so I decided to do a bit more research to determine whether I could produce something in bound form that matched what I was seeing on my monitor.

My first set of Blurb test books was frankly pretty good. But, I wanted more — better color control — so I did some research to see if I could produce something more color managed than what I saw with all of the other services currently available. What you are about to read is what I discovered and believe can help you to accomplish what I did and get the same response from my customers: “Wow! Those trees look just like they do in my garden. Can I buy a copy of that book?”...

If you are interested in understanding the color management workflow for producing better Blurb books and what I have learned by researching their service then download thePDF at this link:

http://www.bonsai-photography.com/blurb-color-management.pdf

Thanks and I look forward to your feedback.

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Sam Edge