Yesterday 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.