HiDez wrote:
I just finished taking a month long workshop on creating photo books and Blurb's BookSmart tools were used throughout the class. I used the Blurb icc profile in Photoshop. Colors that appeared very flat in the icc profile did not print that way, they are more vibrant in print then they appear in the profile. I viewed the photos with and without "simulate paper" checked just to see how it looked. All of the images were converted to sRGB and jpeg as per the instructions.
Again, I've never used BookSmart or LR's Book module to create an actual printed book. I use InDesign CS6 with Blurb's InDesign plugin and the results have been very good. I have used the Blurb.icc profile to soft proof, but saw no need to change any of the image files.
Question: Is your monitor calibrated with a hardware device (i1 Display, ColorMunki, Spyder)? If not there's no way you can accurately soft proof your book images with sRGB or ANY color profile.
HiDez wrote:
Viewing those same photos in Photoshop, LR and posted online they do not appear over sharpened. The only place they look that way is in BookSmart and now a few in print (but definitely not as much as viewing in BookSmart). The interesting thing about the test print is the one photo that looks the most over sharpened as printed is not one that appeared the most over sharpened in BookSmart. So is it possible there is something on their end with the sharpening when the photos are printed? Not a clue.
In my post #16, "It looks like Blurb is using nearest neighbor algorithm to create the screen previews." This resizing algorithm can make images appear "over-sharpened, so I would NOT make any sharpening changes to the image files based on what you see online. Sharpening needs to be applied in two-steps, Capture Sharpening in LR Develop module Sharpening panel at 1:1 Zoom View only and Output Sharpening in the Export module when using Image Sizing> Resize to Fit.
In order to help you with the pictures that appear over-sharpened please provide ALL the settings used in LR's Develop module 'Detail' panel and the Export module 'Image Sizing' and 'Output Sharpening' panels