Lulu.com – not for me.

Over the last six months I’ve seen many photographers offering image collections in the form of self published books from Lulu.com

It seems like a good idea. You package your images into a PDF file, send it to Lulu and they hold it on their server, then print it when a copy is ordered, its called “Print on Demand”. Call me silly but I thought that it might make a nice source of coffee table books or just presents for friends. So I decided to have a go at producing a book from Lulu.

As it was going to be my first attempt, and I thought that it might make a nice Christmas present for Lin, I decided to collect the best of her photographs together and make her a book. “L-von-B 2006” was to be the name.

I collected the images together and arranged them into Adobe InDesign which allows me to effectively create the book,. I also created a cover for the book, and together it took about 4 hours to get it right. I followed the layout and sizing instructions from Lulu, created a PDF and uploaded it to their site. Rather than go for the most expensive package available which would have been a hard-backed book, I decided to go for “saddle stitched” (stapled to you and me). I figured that the first one may need colour correcting and it was better to do that on a cheaper version than the most expensive version. Anyway, there was plenty of time until Christmas so after looking at the colour issues I could just create a hard-backed version and order that.

When the first order came through I was horrified. What they sent through was terrible in the extreme. The potential as a present was nil, and as a form of book that people might buy it was laughable.

First I will say what was right:
1. There were the correct number of pages.
2. They were in the correct order
3. It was stapled (it didn’t lie flat but that probably means it should be perfect bound!)

And what was wrong:
1. The colour is so far off I don’t know how it could be corrected
2. The image quality is appalling, the black and white images have no depth and the actual print quality is staggeringly bad.

Now I don’t expect you to take my word for it, so I decided to scan a couple of pages and let you compare the images directly with the originals, (my scanner is calibrated). If you click on the images here a larger version will open for you to see exactly what I’m referring to.

1. The colour cast:
The image below shows the original photograph (right) with the scanned version (left). You can see that the colour is not even close. I expect that it may be possible to work out a way to colour correct the PDF for this, but the actual print quality it’s so bad I’m not going to bother





2. The print quality:
This is where I was most disappointed. I have dealt with many printers and I’ve never seen anything this bad. The areas of solid colour are not solid at all, they are speckled. There are actual stripes on the pages which I assume are roller marks and the contrast level is way too high, causing all shadow detail to disappear and the highlights to be blown.

To illustrate this I have two images to show you.
Image 1 shows the scanned and original images, after I have tweaked the levels a little to show just how bad the printed version is.



The second image, which you can see by clicking here, shows the original scan against the original photograph with no levels modification.


So you can see why I was not happy, why I won’t be using Lulu again and why I won’t be buying any photo books from Lulu. If any of you are considering Lulu I would recommend that you create a proof print for yourself before you commit to them as a printer. So, does anyone know a good print on demand printer than can do the job properly?

Finally here is the lovely Lynx looking amazing as usual.