Printed photos beat digital Any Day

This week I was pleased to take delivery of my latest Blurb Instagram Books – Volumes 5 & 6. I’ve mentioned them in the past, but Blurb as a great way to bring your digital photographs to life. Having them printed as a set of books also means I can look back on them as a visual journal.

Documenting trips and places in a physical document and being able to flick through them at my leisure is a joy.

I choose the 18x18cm books that are ideal for Instagram images. I also prefer to use the Proline uncoated paper. It’s a bit more expensive, but I love the feel of it. It also suits Scottish landscapes well, especially soft natural tones.

Shadows can lose some detail, I may address this in the future, but its only in the darkest images this happens.

Bespoke layouts or handy templates

You can choose how you want you’re Blurb publications to look. Download the Bookwright software to your own computer and methodically layout every picture the way you want it. Alternatively use the online service via the Bookify software. You can plug in your Instagram, Facebook or any other of the myriad of digital shoe-boxes your photos are hidden away in.

For ultimate control, you can use Lightroom or even download templates to InDesign before uploading to Blurb.com.

Blurb is also available on mobile devices, although I have not tried this service yet.

It’s worth exploring the Blurb.com website first in order to get a grasp on all the permutations you can choose from. They even let you order paper swatches to help you decide.

It’s not the cheapest service, but I find the quality is incredible and the service is prompt.

Before you decide

There is one glitch which I brought up with their support team. Since Instagram now allows none square formats of picture, the online Bookify service crops images from your account. As a workaround, instead of populating directly from my Instagram feed I looked for a service that allowed me to download my feed to my computer. As I didn’t wish to go back through my archives and re-submit I went to Vibbi.com and downloaded a folder to my computer.

I choose the smaller 18x18cm for my Blurb Instagram books as they do not need to be very high resolution image, perfect for my Instagram feed.

Once you have finished and checked your publication, you can even convert to an eBook as well as make the printed books available for sale.

I think I would need to work on the content before I do this though, as I doubt anyone would be interested in perusing my adventures of an evening.

I do like to flick through my books before heading off to bed. They are memories from adventures past as well as an incentive to make new ones.

Try them out at Blurb.com or Blurb.co.uk. European orders are dispatched from the Netherlands, so take no time at all once printed. My two were delivered around a week after ordering.