Review of my first book: the trip to the 3.

[nms]

Dear MyPublisher,
Thanks for wonderful result of my first book: the trip to the 3.
I just received them. here's my review:

The package is wonderful. It's tight blue box with MyPublisher print on it.
And it's FAST!!!! I ordered it on Wednesday night with Standard Fedex, today, Friday they're here!!!!

The jacket was awesome even though the print has a banding on it. But it's much better than blurb's cover.
Sadly I can't do more creative with MyPublisher provided layout.

The first page of the book is made by some kind of transparent paper which is great. I really love it.

The prints of the whole book is marvelous. The color balance, saturation, lighting is superb. But it is slightly darker than the original pictures, which is normal for printing.

The paper is thick and it is a semi-gloss paper.
You can feel the quality when you're touching it.

And also, the customer service is friendly and wonderful.

My cons are:
The book only available for 100 pages. So my creativity was stuck. Trying to fit all the pictures into it.

Need more layout.

Limited fonts and the font size option (for the book and jacket)

Limited cover jacket option (on the back side and the flap)

That's all. Overall, I would rate MyPublisher 4.5 out of 5.

It's not 5 stars just because the cons I mentioned above about the software.

Here's the link to my book:






Well done MyPublisher!!!!

Message was edited by: nms

[creativelkj]

Fantastic book Nate. Thanks for sharing. Please explain how to superimpose text over the photos. I would enjoy doing that also. It's quite effective.

[nms]

Hi.
Thanks.
I did it with Photoshop CS2.
Create a blank page (or with background color), make a text on top of the first layer (background), and the other text after.
Put it on the full-bleed layout of MyPublisher BookMaker software.
Done.
Hope it help.

[Cruiser]

On the pictures you sent me, did you use a filter of any kind because the pictures looked like I was almost looking through a smoky haze. It is very effective and looked great in your book. I understand how to use layers in PS for adding text but I'm curious about the special effects you used on the final pictures you imported into your book for your text pages.

[ingtaylor]

You book is truly amazing;
I understand you created Photoshop; could you please tell me how you created the photos that span 2 pages.
Thanks

[Marti]

I should mention that I am a 63-year-old grandmother who is not terribly computer-literate. So, that being said, here are my comments:

nms is absolutely right on with every single thing she stated! This site has so much more potential regarding fonts, font manipulation and color, and layout options. I'd love to see MyPublisher add a lot more of everything.

I just ordered my second book and I think it's even more beautiful than my first one. I definitely recommend putting a beautiful high resolution photo on the jacket - it makes all the difference! My first book was entitled, "The Best of Europe 2005" and had 93 pages (a rather expensive one at $114 including the jacket). It is so beautiful, though, that I created a second book entitled, "Southern Comfort - The Master 2007". This one is to be a gift to my sister-in-law and brother-in-law to memorialize a trip they made to South Carolina and Georgia for The Masters golf tournament. When I received it, I was just blown away with how fabulous it looked. My husband couldn't even believe it. I know my relatives are going to be so happy with it. It is a 33-page book and cost $55 including the jacket - and the jacket makes the whole thing!

One more thing, I love the ability to click on the tool bar while I'm creating a book to see what it's going to cost. And, I'm thrilled with my 3-5 day turnaround. The box it arrives in is lovely. The packaging is perfect. I've done a couple of books in blurb.com and it takes them over 2 weeks to deliver.

Thank you, MyPublisher! I'm in love!

[Cruiser]

Marti,

I've had a problem with my pictures looking flat and dull. My colors don't match what I see on my screen. Do you do any post-processing for your high resolution photos? Do you use the camera sRGB or do you change to RGB as recommended by MyPublisher. Also, what resolution and dpi are your photos?

You could help me make a better book with your answers.

[Marti]

Hi Cruiser,

Well, I'm not very sophisticated when it comes to all this, but I'm using a Sony Cybershot 7.2 Megapixel camera. It's set on "largest" (I assume this means picture size) and "fine" (for resolution). According to the properties of the picture that I used on the cover of my last book, it was a JPEG image, width 3072 pixels, height 2304 pixels and 72 pixels per inch (DPI). Those are the measurements of the photo right from the camera; I did not manually alter the size.

All the photos I've used so far in my books are digital, not scanned. I haven't adjusted any RGB's, so I'm assuming I'm using what is recommended by MyPublisher.

I use software called Digital Editor to enhance photos, but I mainly use it to make a photo slightly brighter or to straighten the image. I found that if I cropped it, it wouldn't produce a clear image in the size I wanted on a full-bleed page or for the cover. So I never crop; I maximize and minimize in MyPublisher instead.

The quality of the photos on the pages in my finished books are exactly like what I see on my screen; not darker or lighter. They're bright and vivid on the page just like on my screen.

But I can empathize with "flat and dull" pictures. I make books using blurb.com, too. It's less expensive. Today I received a 200-page book from Blurb costing $53.33. The same book would have cost about $225 from MyPublisher, so there's no comparison in price. I'm thrilled with the number of pages, the layout options, and the space for text. But using the same camera and the features I mentioned above, the photos in this book are flat and dull, just like you describe. Course, "you get what you pay for". Blurb's paper isn't as high a quality as MyPublisher and their packaging isn't as nice.

Hope all this helps. If you have more questions, let me know. And maybe someone else out there who is far more computer-intelligent than I am can also give you some tips. Good luck!