Blurb Photobooks with Lightroom

Since version 4 Lightroom has included the Book Module which has allowed you to create your own fantastic photobooks using self publishing company Blurb.

Blurb is currently available in:

• Canada
• United States
• United Kingdom
• Australia
• Brazil
• Italy
• Netherlands
• France
• Germany
• Spain

The Lightroom Book Module offers a great way of creating professional looking high quality photobooks with the convenience and ease of your Lightroom workflow.

Lightroom features numerous templates that enable you to create attractive page spreads. These include double page spreads, multiple photos on a page, as well as combing text and photos or pages of just text. You also have the ability to modify and save the existing built in templates to further personalise your book.

Creating a Blurb photobook in Lightroom involves the following steps:

• Using the Library Module import photos into your Lightroom catalogue
• Edit your photos using the Develop Module, this may involve:
  • Colour correction and tone adjustments
  • Cropping and resizing to create your ideal composition
  • Retouching photos (e.g. camera sensor dust removal)
• Using the Book Module:
  • Select Blurb as the output format in the Book Settings panel
  • Decide upon your book format and paper options
  • Add your photos to your book layout using the built in templates
  • When complete send book to Blurb
• Process book payment through Blurb
• Receive your completed book/s in the mail!

I recently used Lightroom to create a photobook of some my cycling photos that I took at the 2009 and 2010 Tour de France and have included some screenshots of the workflow from Lightroom as well as some images of the finished product that I received below to give you an idea of the results that can be achieved.

Blurb offers a number of different book options in terms of format (landscape or portrait), binding (hard or soft cover) and a variety of paper types (matter, lustre, pearl and uncoated). Before my first order I purchased a swatch kit (sample pack) of paper types and end sheets from Blurb’s website so that I could decide what paper type would best suite my images. Blurb will refund the cost of the swatch kit against your first and I highly recommend ordering one to ensure you get the results you want, the swatch kit is a useful reference too for future projects. As of the time of writing the cost of the swatch kit is $7.95 USD.

The options that I went with for this book were:

• Size: Standard Portrait (8″ x 10″)
• Cover: Hard cover image wrap
• Paper type: Proline Pearl Photo

If you have photos that you’d like making into a photobook or perhaps would like to learn the skills to make your own photobook using Lightroom please get in touch via my contact page.