Digital BW, The Print

Gary ,
I don't know that much about Blurb.. but that'll change soon. But because I'm new to service houses like Blurb doesn't mean I have not been exposed or involved in publishing, commercial printing or book making.. 
I have been working with print houses a long time as have many here I'm sure. One of the biggest things I've learned about working with them is to learn their equipment and how to talk to it.. I'm in an odd area..  we seem to have an abundance of graphic designers here.. nice work for home business's I guess.. Over time you get to see all their work.. Aside from their technical skills doing their thing.. what you really see is how it's printed .. a small few always have their stuff look good all the time. That is certainly not an accident.. 
Anyway .. yes I agree with you that if your after true fine art prints then Wal-Mart ain't the place to go.. but I think you said you had several hundred dollars tied up in your widget.. that just doesn't work all the time and that's a fact of life..

Anyway to sum up.. We have what was sort of the mother ship of all the on line printing places right out here in ole Montana ... Andrew's "Printing for Less".. Their a machine, they have rules, they don't like to listen to what you need that's outside the box (although they say they do) .. Do you know that places like this relineurize their printers at a certain value.. just knowing that opens a huge quality door. Anyway what I'm trying to say is these places can do a great job ..you just got to help them do it for you.. The extra effort just could mean the job that was never gonna happen ....did.. and / or you end up doing something for yourself or others that would have just not been possible...

Ok everything above was kind of a rant..  but lets turn it around.. maybe what a better conversation might be is... What can I do or what do I need to learn such that I can get a higher level of quality from these new low cost or low volume on line print houses.. Media as we know it is changing so fast that it's almost scary.. This is not a time to be stuck in our own thinking; harnessing creativity I feel goes well beyond our own walls..  plus it's kinda fun if one can figure out or squeeze in working it in. Admittedly a pain in the ass when doing the ho hum daily stuff that consumes us.. It all lives in the box man..

A last remark.. promise...LOL.. I havin fun with this I guess.. As an individual I'm an artist .. I work hard ...no kidding.. so I have to market and sell my own work.. Then I have another hat ..  that's basically about service to others. Sometimes that one is tough to wear.. Most of the regulars on this group must figure I'm some kinda goon or something.. My standards for my own work and where I set my bar get confused sometimes as I try to give them to others.... That was a tuff learning curve for me as a person. Still at it in truth... It's just listening.  Sometimes people just want to say something.. they need to do that .. it's a good thing.. The crime would be to quite the voice over silly standards or rules..  The person that has something to say and uses Blurb today may move to a totally different place if their "watered" properly.. Along with the service that we do.. isn't that our job? 

jimbo
 
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Gary Brown 
  To: DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com 
  Sent: Saturday, December 11, 2010 10:58 AM
  Subject: Re: [Digital BW] Re: Blurb and B&W


    
  I'm sorry to be such a spoil sport, but the fact is it is almost impossible to get good quality B&W images from Blurb or any other
  print on demand book seller. The way they print is just not set up for B&W. If you think that by soft proofing or altering your images in any way
  you can approach the quality of the images you see in "Lenswork" for example, you have delusions of grandeur. This group has spent years
  of discussion trying to improve the quality of B&W. The printing process used by the on demand printers is not much better than what was available
  when we were trying to print B&W images from a printer with a four color cartridge. If you are satisfied with the quality you can get from these printers,
  more power to you.

  I'm in the middle of making a book in honor of a 90th birthday. The only way to achieve the quality worthy of this project, is to print all of the images myself,
  on my choice of paper and have a bookmaker bind them into a book. The bad part is that by the time I am done I will have spent several hundred dollars.
  If I could find a printer that would print books up to my standards, that could be purchased one at time, I would gladly use them.

  Gary

  baffin@...
  www.garyallenbrownphoto.com

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