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Blurb’s BookSmart is a Bummer

Posted by Jessica on July 30th 2008  

Blurb logoYesterday I was very excited to try out Blurb’s book layout software, BookSmart.  It looked like exactly what I wanted to create a beautiful, high-quality photo book from my wedding pictures.  Almost as soon as I found it, I signed up for Blurb and was emailed a download link.  I had a lot of trouble downloading it from their site, but I chalked that up to weird bandwidth problems and was eventually able to get it downloaded and installed on my Mac last night.  Strike one against the software already–it shouldn’t take hours to try and download a 30 MB file.  Still, I was excited to get started and I fired it up, anticipating a night of creation–instead I got a night of frustration.

BookSmart is a GREAT concept.  Blurb is definitely on the right track with what they’re offering.  However, the execution leaves something to be desired.  BookSmart is laggy and frustrating.  It’s a Java-based application and it took almost a full minute to open.  That’s two strikes against it before I’ve even been able to use it!  When I finally got into the program, I was expecting something like creating a book in iPhoto, only more customizable and with a lot more bells and whistles.  What I got was something about ten times as frustrating as iPhoto, which made the customization not feel worth it.

Not everything about BookSmart is bad.  It has good integration with your existing iPhoto library–as long as the files are the right format.  I had to export my wedding photos to JPG (they were in TIF) so that I could use them with BookSmart.  This rendered my meticulously organized iPhoto albums pretty useless to me.  BookSmart can also integrate with Flickr and other online photo galleries, as well as pull content from blogs.

My patience with the program came to an end before I got past creating the front cover.  I couldn’t imagine creating twenty more front and back pages of photo and text content at the slow pace I was being forced to move at.  When I would drag an image to a location on the page layout, it would take upwards of 20 seconds to load and display.  I realize that I am using an older Mac, but I have the RAM maxed out and rarely experience problems even with the latest and greatest software.  Perhaps a native application could work a little better, perform a little smoother, and create a better user experience.  Strike three, BookSmart.  I’m out.

In comparison, the iPhoto user experience is great–it’s easy and FUN to create books, cards, and more from your iPhoto library.  It’s incredibly intuitive and natural.  My beef is with the cost of the iPhoto books, which is significantly more expensive than a service like Blurb, and with the lack of true customization for people who want more than a canned theme might offer.  I’m going to continue to try to find a happy medium between ease of use and customization, but I’m pretty bummed about Blurb.

under: camera
Tags: blurb, digital, iphoto, photographs, self-publishing
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9 Comments Received

canon d10
March 25th, 2009 @11:08 pm  

so in another word, don’t use blurb ?

aquascottk
April 6th, 2009 @9:36 am  

Booksmart software has been great. It downloaded immediatley, and has been simple and fun to set up and create. I have since done 2 books and sent out some as presents which have been received with praise. I highly recommend this program.

Roger
April 24th, 2009 @8:01 pm  

This software flat out stinks. I’ve been working on a 40 page book on this and everything you pointed out is what I’m going through. It freezes literally every 3 seconds so something as simple as moving the type cursor will be a chore. If you’re just going to plop in photos, this software is fine. If you intend to have text as well, be prepared for MAJOR frustration.

TikiPundit
June 20th, 2009 @11:17 am  

Ditto. The download of Booksmart was fast, and that was the last fast I saw. I’m looking at a soft-cover book of 150 pages, and the Booksmart application is just not going to cut it.

Something has changed. I built and printed a book using earlier versions of the Mac OSX and Booksmart, and it was palpably fast.

Now, with new versions of both, the Booksmart app is disgustingly slow. I’m on the verge of deleting the app and trying for a book-publishing service elsewhere.

Really — it’s like using PageMaker in 1992 on a Commodore.

tunedin
July 23rd, 2009 @4:36 pm  

Blurb is fantastic on a PC. I bought a mac book Pro to use Final Cut Pro. Its only ok with 2gigs ram. The Blurb download was slow, but the the screen on the mac is not suitable for colour balance anyway so I’m staying with my pc. The common denominator of all the complaints is Mac not Blurb. Keychain password popups are a major nuisance, I’v tried everything to get rid of them with no success. I thought spending a load of cash on a mac would smooth my digital world but now I think my Dell pc rules.

Jessica
July 23rd, 2009 @4:57 pm  

@tunedin It’s great that the PC version runs well for you. However, I feel that if a company is going to put out multi-platform software, it should perform the same on every platform. I hate Java-based software as a rule…I’d much rather have things programmed natively for a platform because you are much less likely to run into issues like I did with Blurb.

The common denominator of my complaints are NOT due to my Mac. I have no trouble running ANY other software on my Mac. That includes Final Cut Express, the Adobe Suite, etc. Blurb was a major disappointment, not just from a performance level but from an ease of use level. I’m very intuitive with computer programs–have been all my life–and Blurb is just not very user-friendly in its current incarnation.

tunedin
July 24th, 2009 @3:51 pm  

Thanks for comments Jessica. The print quality, hard cover and binding on my only Blurb book so far is superb. If you know of a publisher package with the variety of sizes and styles that Blurb offers, and runs well on a Mac please let me know. Unlike my desktop PC I can take my Mac to anywhere in the house and work away on-line. Unfortunately I cannot say I’ve been intuitive with computers all my life, valve radios maybe.

Dan
December 13th, 2009 @9:58 am  

I’ve done many books with Blurb and I agree with another poster…something has changed. I’m trying to do a book now with the latest version of Booksmart 2.5.1 and it has slowed to a crawl. Loading an image to a page takes like 10 seconds. This wasn’t the case in the past. Maybe it has something to do with Snow Leopard? I run an Imac 2.16 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo with 4GB of ram. That should be more than enough system for BookSmart. I’ve used other online book makers and Blurb’s products have been best but if my experience continues I’m going to have to start looking for another vendor. And I won’t be buying a PC.

Tony Stewart
January 2nd, 2010 @6:52 pm  

Indeed. I am creating a 250 page BLOG to BLURB Book. The blog coversion was rubbish for a start but what can you do. The software is painfully slow but I am committed now. I have transferred and formatted January to May and need to get it finished. I am not starting again. I am using Snow Leopard on a 2.93Ghz dual core iMac with 4Gb RAM which is plenty. The software is disgustingly slow.

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