Wednesday 4 November 2009

A photo book?

Protege over at "Life Through Reflections" very kindly suggested I publish a book with the pictures in my blog. In fact I did try this exact thing a few months ago, a simple photo book using Blurb but the result wasn't what I'd hoped for. I don't think it was anything to do with Blurb, but the quality of the photos in the book were quite poor which I'm sure was down to the pictures I used.

Since then I think my photography skills have improved a little bit so I'm willing to give things another try. One of the problems, though, is that I'm on a dialup at home so using a web-based photo book publisher is a little tricky. In fact it's hair-pullingly frustrating. If possible, I'd prefer to download the software in a one-off painful experience, edit the book the way I want and then upload the result, again painfully, once I'm done.

It seems most of the top-rated photo book publishers only offer online publishing software which is horrendous to use over a dialup. If anyone has any suggestions or recommendations I'm listening!

What's the picture above? It's a view from just outside the CFHT at sunset. Cinder cones to the left, a hint of the earth's shadow above the cones (and also to the extreme right), cloud tops at around the typical inversion layer and the shadow of Mauna Kea's summit to the right. I hope you like it and the picture gets bigger if you click on it!

5 comments:

Zuzana said...

Do not stop trying Tom. A book with your pictures, once in the future with the best quality, would be a wish on my list.;)

parv said...

Tom, meet Eric. He published a book through Blurb by creating PDF file locally[0] & uploading them on the Blurb website, tweaking things along the way. He used LaTeX (from TeXLive software) to generate the PDF files.

[0] If interested, then you should start from the oldest entry as the second link shows results in reverse chronological order.

Hilary said...

I'd suggest editing your photos and text as you need to at home, putting all onto a flash drive and doing the uploading at a library or internet cafe.

From what I understand, Lulu.com has an excellent reputation in the self-publishing industry.

Beep said...

I would love to see a photo book created by you. I can only hope to be able to afford an autographed copy :)

Tom said...

Protege - you're embarrassing me! For the moment I've made a calendar and will see how that goes.

Parv - thanks for the info. Is latex available for Windows? I haven't checked. That would definitely provide a little control.

Hilary - I did consider that but really wanted to play with the book and images on my own computer, but now I have broadband the point is a little moot! Thanks, though!

PS. Now I can see those beautiful pictures on your blog with no trouble at all!

Beep - Now I'm really embarrassed! I don't think my pictures are that good to put an autograph to them!

Tom