Blurb Photo Book Review

Blurb is a photo book printer that is used a lot by people who are creating a book for sale or use their own photo book software to design their book. When I originally reviewed Blurb the software they provided was not as full featured as that of many photo book printers. Then they create Booksmart 2.0 and it was a full-featured software program that the average person could use. They have followed that up with Booksmart 2.5 and it is even getting better. This photo book review is based on the Booksmart 2.5 software.

There are many different types of books you can make. A really cool feature is the ability to turn your blog into a book. This process is a little different than making a regular book, but something an avid blogger may love to see. It is also very easy to create text-based books -- all text, guest books, and journals. The variety provided should cover every type of book that you'd like to make.

It is very easy to upload a pdf to create a book that you have put together in another software. Since the focus of this website is the average user - the people who don't have the software to put together on their own - we will not review that process.

The Blurb Booksmart 2.5 software is downloaded directly to you computer and you work on you book offline. It is a hefty 43.1MB file. When you have a finished book you then upload it to Blub and place your order.

If you like to really get into the software there are several tutorials that you can watch. This way you can really take advantage of all the functions offered. Uploading your photos is very easy, and getting photos from some social networking sites is integrated in the photo upload process. If you are collaborating on a project you can request people to add photos to your project too -- this would be an awesome help if you were making a yearbook.

You can now add a picture as a background, one of the shortcomings with the original Booksmart. You can make an unlimited number of layouts as you can add picture boxes and text boxes at will. A really nice new feature is that the picture will automatically fill the container that you have chosen -- in the past you might have to make manual adjustments to achieve this. You cannot do any picture editing within the software, so make sure you do that if you have some pictures that need a little bit of work. Great software upgrade! Updated: October 7, 2009

Blurb Photo Book Review

Comparative Photo Book Software Review

Background Themes	Wide variety
Layout Variety	Wide variety, can create you own too.
JPG as a Background	Yes - must be done manually, but it works
Digi-Scrapbooking Friendly	Yes
In-book Editing	Only flip, rotate, crop.
Text - variety and Full Page	Great variety
Embellishments and Corners	Very limited.
Full-Page Bleed	Yes
Final Grade	A

For an explanation of the Feature Set Review

Photo Book Sizes

The prices given are based on a 20 page book with printing on both sides of the pages. Additional pages are available for an extra charge. The price given is the lowest price for that size category.

Hardcover
5x8	16.95
7x7	22.95
8x10	29.95
10x8	29.95
12x12	59.95
13x11	54.95
Softcover
5x8	4.95
7x7	12.95
8x10	19.95
10x8	19.95

For a more detailed pricing, please visit Photo Book Covers and Sizes

Learn about more photo book publishers