Mike DelGaudio

There are several choices you can make when creating your own photo book. You can make a photobook from most major photo printing services — Kodak Photo Gallery, Snapfish, Photoworks, shutterfly, the list goes on. Most of those services require that you upload your photos top those services, use their web based book creator interface, and often are quite expensive.

If you want a high degree of control over your book, use photos already present on your computer, you have a few options, most popular are Blurb and Lulu. Let’s compare and contrast to see what is the bset situation for your needs:

NOTE: Lulu does offer a photobook option, similar to a Blurb softcover. In this option you must upload your photos to Lulu. For the purposes of this comparison, we will look at the options for creating your Lulu book on your computer. I.E. NOT using the Lulu photobook option.

Cover:
Both services offer both hardcover and softcover versions.
Blurb offers a glossy print softcover, or a cloth covered hardcover with a full-color, full-bleed dust jacket.
Lulu offers a a glossy print softcover, and two types of hardcover:

• Dust Jacket Hardcover: A book bound in navy blue linen with a full-color dust jacket (6×9 book only).
• Casewrap Hardcover: Full-color or Black and white, glossy cover. Does not come with a dust jacket.

Sizes:
Blurb Hardcovers and softcovers can be in 4 possible sizes: (height x width) 8″ x 10″ , 10″ x 8″, 13″ X 11″ and 7″ x 7″
Lulu Hardcovers can be in 2 possible sizes (height x width): 6″ x 9″ and 8.25″ x 10.75″
Lulu softcovers are also available 6″ x 9″, 8.5″ x 11″, 9″ x 7″, 7.5″ x 7.5″ — What size you can choose depends on the type of softcover binding option you select. More Info

Paper:
Blurb uses a glossy, heavy paper.
Lulu uses a matte, heavy paper.

Templates:
Blurb books can be made ONLY using the premade page templates that come with the blurb booksmart software. This limits layout choices, but increases the chances that the book will come out properly formatted and the way you expect it the first time.

Lulu hardcovers do not come with any template, you create every book from scratch. You can create the document in word, or another application like OpenOffice.org and convert the document to PDF (I used Impress from openoffice.org to create my lulu book). This offers a greater level of flexibility, but requires a greater level of expertise, and increases the likelihood that your book could be incorrectly formatted the first time you print.

Pricing:
Blurb books are priced as follows:

Lulu offers a pricing calculator to determine price based on a variety of factors: Type of binding, type of cover, color cover or black and white, number of pages, number of copies etc… These prices are based on results for the calculator:

As you can see the pricing for the two services are very similar.

Quality

Previously, I have given reviews as the quality of books from both Blurb and Lulu.

• Review of a Blurb Book
• Review of a Lulu Book

Important to note is that Lulu and Blurb use different printing techniques. Both are very high quality, with Lulu having an edge on pure resolution. Read the linked reviews above for more.

Summary
In summary, both Blurb and Lulu offer high quality, print on demand services. Which you choose will depend on what you need / want.

Do you want a Dustjacket (Blurb) or Glossy hardcover (Lulu)?
Do you want glossy paper (Blurb) or matte (Lulu)?
Do you want to use a template (Blurb) or have fine control over every detail (Lulu)?

Which is important to you? Do you have a preferred provider? Let me know in the comments!

[tags]Blurb, lulu, photobooks, photo books[/tags]