Photobook for my 2020 Astro images

[Tulloch (Andrew)]

Hi there, I was thinking about putting together a printed version of some of the images I took this year into a hard cover bound book, and after looking around at some options, I bit the bullet and did it.

I used these guys to create a 24 page book, and after a few tries I'm now very happy with the result (it took a few goes to get the colour cast right, but I'm pretty particular when it comes to colour ). The option I eventually took was the Pro Lay-Flat Photobook which is printed on photographic paper and comes up really well, especially the black background. I found I needed to brighten up the images with a 1.25 gamma to make the planets pop, which reduced the colour contrast a little but the overall effect was better. Here's a link to a deal they currently running, I bought a 20 page 8x11" voucher and the extra pages were about $1 each. The other options are cheaper, but significantly lower in quality.
https://www.photobookshop.com.au/pro...#sr-PROLAYFLAT

Here's the final result, it looks better in print than this low quality webpage, so if you are thinking of printing your images, I would recommend this company (in Pro LayFlat only).
https://u3729665.ct.sendgrid.net/ls/...-2FzNrvFT5k-3D

Andrew

[Alchemy (Clive)]

well I’m impressed.

Couple questions

How hard did you find it from going from screen to page with contrast, colour etc ( calibration from monitor to page ok?)

Is flat the style of book or Matt paper, what’s the thickness and quality of paper

Time from start to finish, I’m assuming you uploaded online, and then got a delivery.

If you could give us a bit more detail how the whole process went for you, so we can perhaps avoid having to pay for more than one book, as I presume you did

Did the colour etc compare to where you might normally get prints done ( quality control of the printing industry)

Ok so that’s more than a couple

[Tulloch (Andrew)]

Hey Clive, yeah, I tried a few options, the first was a "non-Pro" LayFlat book which was glossy and the blacks were pretty awful. It also did something with the contrast such that rather having the planet smoothly transition from black to colour, it was more sudden and the edge was not smooth. It's kinda hard to explain.

After this experience, they were happy to send me a free 20 page 20x20cm sample, where I played with the contrast, colour balance, gamma before finally settling on the Pro Lay-Flat version. The pages are thick, and have a matte surface - I think Fuji call it "Lustre", so a little sharpness is lost, but it will not collect fingerprints. There were some fingerprint marks, but I was able to easily wipe them off with a soft cloth. Their website says "Printed on 440gsm Photographic Paper". The "Lay-Flat" part means that the entire foldout is one sheet of photographic paper, so the Jupiter/Saturn conjunction image does not have a gap in the middle.

The colour match was good, possibly a little biased to the red/yellow, but are a good match to what I see on my Spyder calibrated screen. The person I was talking to explained the printing process as an RGB method for the Pro version, while it was a CMYK process for the non-Pro version.

I bought the discount voucher and placed the order on the 21st of Feb and it was delivered on March 3rd, so about 10 days.

I would recommend a little more brightness than what you would normally show on a screen (hence gamma 1.25), and blow up the images in Photoshop rather than have the pixels increased by them.

Andrew

[Alchemy (Clive)]

Sounds good, you say blow up the pictures, resolution per cm or inch ?

[Tulloch (Andrew)]

Planetary images are usually only about 200 pixels across the planet, so blowing them up to a reasonable size in a book is essential. I use 3x drizzle when stacking, then increased these by 2x to give a reasonable pixels per inch value.

That being said, I increased the size of Mercury too far, and should have blown up the comet a bit more ... you never really know until you see it on the page.

[strongmanmike (Michael)]

Cool idea Andrew, came up a treat, some excellent solar system photography in there too

Mike

[Derek Klepp]

Great result and a good learning curve to.

[leon]

Hey that is pretty cool Andrew, might look into that, nice work by the way.

Leon