One of the reasons I love using Blurb for photo books, is the variety of ways to make a photo book. You can make a book entirely online with Bookify. You can use the Book Module within Lightroom so you’re using only 1 program to organize, edit, and print your photos. You can use their downloadable free programs, BookSmart or BookWright. Finally, you can even use a plug-in for Adobe In-Design to create stunning custom layouts and print with Blurb.
As Barry Schwartz writes in the Paradox of Choice, sometimes having more choices makes it difficult to actually choose any. And that’s how I feel when it comes to which free downloadable Blurb software you should use for your next book. I’ve put off giving you my thoughts on BookSmart or BookWright for a while – partly because I’m mixed.
Being completely honest and transparent here, there are some advantages with their new program BookWright that I love. But they didn’t put everything that I love from BookSmart into their new program. So when it comes to giving a recommendation….I have a hard time telling you to use one versus the other.
But I know this can be a big sticking point for some so I’m going to provide a few considerations to help you make your decision. If you want to go even deeper and learn how to use BookSmart or BookWright for your next photo book, I hope you’ll sign up for my Intro to Photo Book Design Workshop. I cover both programs in more depth (with screenshots and videos) so you can make the best decision for your book and know exactly how to use the programs.
Custom Layouts
While you can’t create custom layouts in Bookify or the Lightroom Book Module, Blurb’s free downloadable programs offer the ability to design custom layouts to fit your photos. Within BookWright, it’s extremely easy to add the photo and text boxes you want on the page and save it to your library. While it can be done in BookSmart, it’s a little more cumbersome and takes extra time. You have to utilize a separate work space to customize your layouts. Essentially, it adds another layer or process, distancing you from the actual context of your book.
Advantage: BookWright
Text Styles
If you want to use text for your photo book – even as page numbers – it’s easier to set up the characteristics of each type of text you want to use (headings, captions, and page numbers) in order to have consistency throughout your book. This is not as easy in BookWright. Each type of text you’ll want to include will require separate formatting….or copying and pasting each time.
Advantage: BookSmart
Alignment
One of the best ways to make your book look more professional is to align your photos. It’s even better if you can align them between the left and right page. In BookSmart, you have to use a grid on each page to align the photos. BookWright makes alignment extremely easy and intuitive with guides showing you when you align your photo boxes.
Advantage: BookWright Want to see how these two programs look?
