Post processing for Blurb books?

rhubarb

rhubarb

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Giles
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Hi all, I've just had a book printed by blurb, and on the whole I'm very pleased with it. My only criticism is that a few of the photos have come out quite dark. On my screen they are fine (calibrated with a huey pro) and don't look overly bright, but just supprised at how dark they are.

For those who print photobooks, is there anything special you do, do you increase the brighness beyond what you normally do?
 
Which size photobook did you print? I had the same issue when I printed a small one to see what the quality was like, but apparently the larger books are much better. I've yet to order another to test that though.
 
The Huey doesn't really do anything about brightness when calibrating so the chances are you have a fairly new monitor which came from the factory set to "stupidily" bright. Unfortunately with the huey there's no easy way to find out the actual brightness in terms of cd/m2 but it could be around the 200 mark - for print matching you really want it around the 120 mark.
 
Oh crap! I am about to do one and want to try and get it right first time.

pxl8 said:
actual brightness in terms of cd/m2 but it could be around the 200 mark - for print matching you really want it around the 120 mark.
Click to expand...

Whoosh!

Ok, wanna try and run that past me again in English? ;)
 
68lbs said:
Ok, wanna try and run that past me again in English? ;)
Click to expand...

It's how "bright" your monitor is. You see it a lot in specs for LCD monitors/TVs and you see that they often far exceed the brightness level you need to simulate a print on paper which is typically around 80-120 depending on the ambient light levels.

As the latest LCDs have a cd/m2 that goes up to 1000, sometimes more, so it's not hard to realise that at their factory state the brightness is far greater than what you're trying to simulate.

The Huey doesn't allow you to see or calibrate to a particular cd/m2 so you need to be aware of where your monitor is at in order to get a decent match.

More expensive calibrators let you specify a target level as part of the calibration process.
 
Right, I've just googled too and found that my iMac here at work is 280 cd m2.

Can I assume that knocking the brightness down to approx halfway would change it to 140 cd m2, or is that over simplifying it?
 
Slight sidetrack... but isn't it funny how your eyes get used to brightness. I knocked my iMac here down to 50% from anout 90%. Just got back from making a cuppa and having initially thought 'ewww', it now looks fine. Think i'll keep it on this level.
 
68lbs said:
Right, I've just googled too and found that my iMac here at work is 280 cd m2.

Can I assume that knocking the brightness down to approx halfway would change it to 140 cd m2, or is that over simplifying it?
Click to expand...

I doubt very much it's a linear response but it's probably closer than it was before.
 
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