I do my own printing on fine art paper with pigment inks and this is the greatest revolution of the last few years. Pigment inks can be used on any primed paper – I personally use Hahnemuhle’s ‘William Turner’ and ‘Torchon’. What is more these new K3 inks don’t fade – or at least they shouldn’t for well over a hundred years.

The printer I use is the Epson 9800 which will print up to 110cm wide by as long as you like. But you don’t have to own one yourself, practically anyone who does own a pigment printer will be happy to print for third parties. I for example  print for others and use a simple formula to calculate cost based on the size of the print in square cms. This includes the minimum of work necessary to bring the photographer’s file up to  a  printable state. Anyone can send me a file for evaluation and I can send a print back in a tube. That said, it’s useful to be there leaning over the printer’s shoulders, so you might be best off trying to find someone local who can also show the papers he uses.

I personally like to print BIG! I have a photograph of the British Museum hanging on our wall here in Italy (top) that is 200x80cm  which covers an entire wall. It is dry mounted and framed without glass. This is the other revolution: you don’t need to use glass frames so there are no nasty reflections and even a big picture is very light to hang. Dry mounting is best left to the framer – I’ve tried doing it myself with double-sided tape – disaster. The mounted print is easy to take in and out of the frame – I ask him to leave the print loosely stapled into the frame. So you just take your old print out and tack in a new one with a few staples or nails.

If you are worried about the picture being unprotected you can apply a protective laquer, or more creative still, wax them. Waxing is a technique I cover in another post.

You can find out everything you need from their site but here are some of the things I’ve learned about Blurb over the last 3 years.

• The quality of the printing is excellent especially if you go for the double weight paper. That said I hardly ever do! The reason being that I print 50 or so copies at a time and I want to keep  costs down but anyone who wishes to donate a book to someone the heavy weight paper is a must.
• A book is a great PR tool and what’s more can be constantly updated. In the old, pre-digital days you would have to have printed hundreds if not thousands of copies of a book to keep the individual costs down but the printing bill was huge. I print usually ten big books and 50 small ones. More than ten you get a discount. When I have new pictures  I bring out a new book and call it a new limited edition.
• The software Blurb provides free is easy to use and intuitive even for someone with no page-making experience. That said you can use InDesign which has considerable advantages especially if you are thinking of turning your Blurb book into a ‘real’ book at a later date.
• There are five formats. I personally use the smallest (Square 18x18cm, 7×7″) and the second biggest (Large Landscape 33x28cm, 13×11″). They also have soft and hard cover options, plus a slightly more expensive option called wrap around which is ideal for albums that will be looked at over and over again
• The price goes up by about 20% when you exceed multiples of 40 pages. I seek to keep my books within 80 pages. If you print on  heavyweight paper your book will be a lot thicker. My biggest sellers are the softcover 18x18cm books, 80 pages, normal paper, 10 copies:  £11 each plus VAT (tax) if applicable, and postage.
• Don’t forget to save your photos in sRGB before you import them into Blurb. If you don’t the result will be washed out, de-saturated pictures.
• You can import any unusual type face you may have acquired into Blurb over and above the scores they already have. You can also use not Latin type faces like Arabic.
• Once you’ve produced a book they’ll inform you from time to time of  their special offers such as: free delivery, double weight paper for the price of single, and even 15% discounts.

Blurb do not as yet provide ISDN numbers although you can add your own. You can’t sell on Amazon, Book Depository etc without one.

My books are Belle here, and landscape photography Tuscia here. You can preview the complete book which is another nice feature.