Digital BW, The Print

I think the better paper is a necessity. I took a blurb class with Susan Thelwell, and she said that the standard paper will show bleed through.

I just got back my very first book, some bright color abstracts on upgraded luster paper (they call it gloss, but it is a luster). I'm very happy with the color fidelity. I soft proofed in Photoshop (convert to sRGB, view using the blurb .icc profile they provide, then use hue/saturation and curves to make the image look as good as I could) - note my intense cyans could not be printed, but by soft proofing I was able to work around it. The cover of my softcover book was way off from the soft proof, but the images inside were spot on, or at least as close as any monitor can show a print.

In BW, though, I don't quite know how to proceed. Maybe I should order a book (the first one is only a draft anyway) with a BW target included and make a profile? Or convert to sRGB and use their profile? Or just tone the image so it is a color image in fact if not in concept?

Susan Thelwell said that you shouldn't try to use a gray background on your pages because the tone will vary from page to page. That doesn't sound good for BW images. She also said that for really gorgeous, neutral BW one should try MPIX, and showed us a book made using them, and yes it was gorgeous.

  - susan

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "mrjimbo" <mrjimbo@...> wrote:
>
> I will check out their software this weekend.. Kinda excited to do so.. I have used other publishing main stay software for years ...and I do mean years... LOL.. I'm really glad this was brought up on the group.. (for all the wrong reasons of course)..
> In truth books are going away and will continue to do so .. but many books are still purposeful .. or a hands on way of sharing..
> Mark you asked if any one has stepped up to the better paper  .. I think..  can anyone speak to that? I guess I'm trying to gain an understanding of how "good" can you go.. I figure what I nee dto do is just buy a couple of books that exist and then do one...yeh!!!
> 
> jimbo
>   ----- Original Message ----- 
>   From: Mark Savoia 
>   To: DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com 
>   Sent: Friday, December 10, 2010 12:22 PM
>   Subject: Re: [Digital BW] Re: Blurb and B&W
> 
> 
>     
>   I use their software but design all the pages in Photoshop and save each as a single file, then just import the whole page (file) for each page of the book, allows for all kinds of customization, text or photo drop shadows, weird photo borders, page numbering, rotated off 90 photos, etc. You can do anything!
> 
>   Mark
>   http://www.stillrivereditions.com
> 
>   On Dec 10, 2010, at 1:43 PM, mrjimbo wrote:
> 
>   > Do you send PDF's or use their software..
> 
> 
> 
>   
> 
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>