Comments on: Printing Our Weblog https://www.alananna.co.uk/blog/2010/12/printing-our-weblog/ Tales from a down-shifted family - Making the most of modest means in West Wales Sun, 19 Dec 2010 07:06:34 +0000 hourly 1 By: Alan https://www.alananna.co.uk/blog/2010/12/printing-our-weblog/#comment-19962 Sun, 19 Dec 2010 07:06:34 +0000 http://www.alananna.co.uk/blog/?p=6561#comment-19962 Just thought I’d add to this by saying that the first book (printed by Blurb) came out really well. There are a few little things that I will change for the next one – but they are issues with my layout rather than the printing.

Click here for a preview of the book

]]> By: Alan https://www.alananna.co.uk/blog/2010/12/printing-our-weblog/#comment-19314 Thu, 02 Dec 2010 06:52:47 +0000 http://www.alananna.co.uk/blog/?p=6561#comment-19314 In reply to shem of wales.

Yep, I could use InDeisgn if I still had it, but I’m not about to splash £500 or so on yet more software from Adobe!

Cambrian Printers or y Llofa should do you?

Al.

]]> By: shem of wales https://www.alananna.co.uk/blog/2010/12/printing-our-weblog/#comment-19312 Wed, 01 Dec 2010 21:38:18 +0000 http://www.alananna.co.uk/blog/?p=6561#comment-19312 Would there be any quicker way of doing it using Quark or similar? A
Like the pages they look cool. Im looking at getting a big report printed now, approximately 20,000 words, any suggestions on printers to use?

]]> By: Alan https://www.alananna.co.uk/blog/2010/12/printing-our-weblog/#comment-19304 Wed, 01 Dec 2010 11:25:08 +0000 http://www.alananna.co.uk/blog/?p=6561#comment-19304 Well, the manual approach worked well for the overall layout of the book but I hit problems when it came to submitting the finished pdf file to Blurb:

They insist on a PDF/X-3:2002 formatted pdf and it has to be version 1.3

Now, the Quartz pdf engine built into Mac OSX produces version 1.4 pdf’s so that didn’t work. There is an export to pdf/X option from within the print to pdf settings but that only seemed to work from within Pages for a single page at a time. The document it created was fine for Blurb but I couldn’t get it to do the whole page.

The next thing I tried was converting the pdf to version 1.4 within Adobe Acrobat Pro. Actually, I don’t have Acrobat Pro anymore so Mark Davies at Swansea University kindly converted it for me, but that didn’t work either.

I’ve tried other things now such as creating new profiles within ColorSync on the Mac and using those to produce the pdf but none with any joy.

It seems as though my only options at the moment are wither to use Adobe InDesign for the layout of the book – I don’t have InDesign anymore and it isn;t cheap. Or, use the Blurb BookSmart application to layout the book. I’ve tried this and I don’t really like it as it feels a bit clunky and doesn’t give me the flexibility and control that I want.

In the end I worked out a bit of a kludge to get around it, but it’s a little tedious to do and I’m as yet unsure of the quality it will produce. Here’s what I did.

1. Create the overall layout of the book in Pages
2. Export that as a pdf file
3. Open the file in Adobe Photoshop – This process opens each page as a separate document and rasterises it as it does so.
4. Save each of the pages as a PNG image file
5. Create a blank book within the Blurb BookSmart application with empty, full-bleed picture layouts for each page.
6. Import the PNG images and place them on the relevant pages within the BookSmart application.

Following the steps above I end up with a copy of my book in the BookSmart application without having to do all of the layout in it. I can then use the BookSmart application to produce and upload a pdf file that is compatible with Blurb’s requirements.

I’ve done this with the 2005 edition of ‘A Simple Life of Luxury’ and have ordered one copy. I’ll see what the quality is like before doing any more editions as I’m not sure if the process of creating a PNG file will have reduced the quality of the text.

I’ll let you know how it goes.
Al.

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