Film Road Trip

Tag: Blurb

  • London Zine

    London Zine

    I finally got around to creating a zine from my London images, and this time  I created it in Adobe InDesign, rather than the Lightroom Book Module as I had in the past. The Lightroom Book Module is really easy to use and you can export your completed book to .pdf, .jpg, or upload it directly to Blurb for printing. I wanted to print with Mixam this time, and given the differences in sizing, I opted to design it in InDesign to meet Mixam’s  specifications.  I taught myself how to use InDesign for a work project earlier this year, so it was time to give it a try to create a zine.  Although I made a very simple design of one image per page,  InDesign is incredibly powerful and there are so many things you can do which cannot be done using Lightroom.  

    InDesign for zine layout

    I am printing a few copies of the zine using Mixam based upon the recommendation of members of the Negative Positives Podcast Facebook group.  I selected the 8.25″ square, stapled  (perfect bound was not available with 24 sides), 100# text paper, uncoated, with a 130# satin cover, matte laminated.  I should receive those copies next week and I’ll report back on the quality compared to Blurb and MagCloud with whom I have printed in the past.

    Flip PDF Professional for Mac for online book viewing

    Here is the book for viewing online, created with Flip PDF Professional for Mac and easily uploaded here via the software’s ability to create a WordPress plugin quickly from the software’s exporting/publishing menu. You can easily add video and hyperlinks to your books, which is a really nice feature. 

    [flipbook id=”2″]

    What software have you used for creating and publishing your zines?

  • My First Zine

    My First Zine

    Listening to my favorite film photography podcasts, I occasionally hear of people creating zines, essentially simple magazine-style booklets of their photographs to share with others. Coming off a Labor Day trip to San Francisco, I had a good set of photographs of Chinatown, which I thought would make a nice collection, so I made my first zine!

    I used Blurb Books to create it.  I am quite familiar with Blurb and use the Lightroom to Blurb book creator tool to create photo books of family trips.  Sadly, that book creation tool in Lightroom, does not work to create magazines, so you have to use the Blurb BookWright application to lay out your zine.  It’s easy enough to use, but I love the templates I’ve created in Lightroom, and feel restricted by the BookWright offerings.  Perhaps this has been remedied with Lightroom Creative Cloud, but I haven’t broken down to go to the cloud yet.  I like both Lightroom and Photoshop as standalone applications.  I can use my templates in Lightroom and export as a .pdf to upload too BookWright, so it’s not tragic, just not as easy.

    Blurb offers two options for its magazine, economy and premium.  The economy magazine offers 65# covers in semi-gloss finish and 70# glossy pages.  The premium has an 80# semi-gloss cover and 80# matte finish pages.  I opted for the premium magazine with the perfect binding and I’m really pleased with the final product.  It feels more like a slim book than a magazine.  Blurb is not cheap, and the coupons they offer oftentimes do not include the magazines.  There is a price break when your order larger quantities, 10% off 10-19 magazines, 20% off 20-49 magazines, and 25% off 50 or more magazines.

    It is always great to see your images in print!

    Our friends, Andre Domingues and Mike Gutterman, share their impressions of the zine on the November 1 and October 25, 2018 episodes of the Negative Positives Film Photography Podcast.  It’s a great podcast for lovers of film photography.  Subscribe here!