Uploading to Blurb – if it stalls….
Yesterday and again today I tried uploading a book to Blurb. Each time the progress bar never moved, and I was forced to cancel.
So what was wrong? There seemed nothing odd about the images, and I could generate the book as a PDF. The book + cover wasn’t huge, 12×12 inches and 50 pages amounting to roughly 180mb as a PDF, but in any case I am on a fast internet connection (200/20 mbs) and Lightroom was certainly communicating with Blurb as it was able to get the price info from them. It wasn’t clear where the problem lay.
As I know the Lightroom SDK, I eventually decided to edit the preferences file and zap the relevant preferences (mentioned here):
- Blurb_Currency
- LayoutModule_blurbUsername
- pw_pw_com.adobe.lightroom.layout.blurb_blurb_accounts_generic_username
Restarting Lightroom, I tried to upload the book and this time I was asked to enter my Blurb user details and password (which have never changed). The upload then proceeded normally and sent Blurb the book.
Clearly it is unacceptable to leave the user wondering why upload isn’t happening. Equally, assuming the fault is in Lr, I can’t see Adobe putting much time into Book. So if you do apply the above method, make sure you take care – by backing up that preference file before you hack away!
John, Would be great if you could expand on how you proofed the book and what profile you used etc. Your restart tip was great, but a fuller workflow would be useful to others. Perhaps you may want to wait until you get the book first though!
Fair point. I’ve printed q a lot of books through Blurb and experience counts for a lot, so I feel I’ve a fair idea of what looks wrong when I get the printed book. The main risks have been overall brightness and blocked shadows, and one big part of my unscientific process is to carefully review each photo. I use a white background in Lightroom and ensure the picture’s whites are indeed close to white, and that there’s detail in the shdaows – I often open them up a bit. I’ll then do a soft proof against the sRGB profile because it also picks up the risk aspects. Again, unscientific yet tested by experience.
We can’t apply Blurb’s CMYK profile in Lightroom, so I often export the book as JPEGs and review them in Photoshop. In this case, I didn’t have time – I wanted to take up their 50% discount and had bigger problems sending the book. Yet consider the value of soft proofing for Blurb when they only supply a single CMYK profile. You don’t have to be a colour calibration expert to question how well a single profile can represent all their presses. While they are all HP Indigos, they are run by different vendors in different continents. I know we’re in a post truth world where observable scientific facts are labelled controversial, but I find it hard to believe their presses operate within such tight tolerance. Let’s say that they are though. Then what about the paper type? One CMYK profile for four quite-different papers? So I question the value of soft proofing for Blurb in Lightroom, even if one could do it.