The London Look Blurb Photobook

By Sponsor Last edited 102 months ago
The London Look Blurb Photobook

This is a sponsored post on behalf of Blurb.

Blurb asked us to try out their photobook making service for this post. We were daunted at first but then had a brainwave. We would try and make a photobook of the superb photos from the London Look photo challenge currently on display at the Horniman Museum. Here's how we got on.

Our Blurb book cover
Our Blurb book cover
A collage of some of the shortlisted entries in the back of our book
A collage of some of the shortlisted entries in the back of our book
BookSmart in action
BookSmart in action

Getting started checklist:

  • Excellent high res images? Check.
  • Text & captions to explain the photos? Check.
  • Creative and technical skill? Er, no. USELESS at this sort of thing usually.

So, we kept it simple to start with and investigated the online Bookify tool. This is actually a breeze to use, offering you helpful templates and connecting directly to Flickr, SmugMug, Picasa, Zenfolio, Facebook and Instagram so that importing and selecting the images you want to use is a doddle. We created a book with standard sized images in minutes and felt our confidence grow.

However, we wanted a bit more control over the design so downloaded the free BookSmart software. It took us a while messing about with templates and editing options but suddenly we got the hang of it and were customising and tweaking individual pages and experimenting with layouts and colour schemes. An hour or so later, we had something that looked like a photobook and that wouldn't shame the fantastic photographers who'd entered their work into our competition. Ordering the book was also easy, although at £12.95 a copy we created a free eBook version too.

If the printed books look as good as we hope they will once in our sweaty paws, we will offer them to our challenge winners as modest mementoes of the challenge.

Blurb lets you create hardback and soft cover books in a wide range of sizes, as well as eBooks. It also integrates with Adobe InDesign if you're a professional type. If you're commercially inclined you can even sell your books through the Blurb bookstore.

Find out more at www.blurb.co.uk

Last Updated 18 September 2015