Blurb Photo Book Review

Blurb updated their photo book software in April of 2010. The Booksmart 2.6 release focused on a 50% crash reduction and full support for Windows 7 and Mac OS X Snow Leopard. This review is for the Booksmart 2.6, although the changes are transparent for most users of Booksmart 2.5

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.

Quick Start Book Templates are available to help you design a book using the Booksmart Software. There are over 8 different templates to choose, and there is great Help documentation to help you figure out how to use these templates.

The Blurb Booksmart 2.6 software is downloaded directly to you computer and you work on you book offline. It is a hefty 48MB file and you need 110MB of free space on your computer to install. 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 features missing 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.

Specifications

Paper Weight	Standard - 80# matte Premium - 100# coated
Max. # of Pages	440
Mac Compatible?	Yes

Updated: May 11, 2010

Blurb Photo Book Review

What is the Quality of the Photo Books?

The review on this page only reviews the software that you use to make your photo book. In order to review the quality of the photo book you receive or the quality of any help please go to Photo Book Experiences. Here you will find what other people have said about different printer/publishers. These reviews have been broken out by each individual publisher.

The quality of these comments are only helpful if Make Your Own Photo Books site visitors take the time to leave comments about their experiences. Please pay it forward to other site visitors by taking the time to leave a comment (good or bad)if you have made a photo book.

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