Making Your Photobook in Blurb BookWright

What you are making

Two copies of one book: one copy is for our records, one copy is yours to keep.
The budget is $100 per student for both copies, including shipping and tax.
You will design the book in BookWright, Blurb's free book-making app for Mac and Windows, then upload it to Blurb and order the two copies.

TODO:

Install BookWright and make a Blurb account.
Start a Photo Book project (size, paper, cover).
Add your photos, lay out the pages, make the cover.
Fix every warning, then check the whole book in Preview.
Review and Upload to Blurb.
Order 2 copies, after checking the total with me.

Before you start

Download BookWright from blurb.com/bookwright and install it. It is free; you only pay when you print.
Make a free Blurb account at blurb.com. You need it to upload the book.
Put the photos you are using in one folder on your computer. Download them from Google Drive first: BookWright works with files on your computer.
Photos must be JPG, JPEG, or PNG, with a maximum size of 75 megapixels. BookWright does not accept TIFF files, so export your photos as JPG first.

30% off your first order. When you sign up for a new Blurb account by email, Blurb sends a welcome code for 30% off your first order. The code expires, so sign up close to when you will actually order, and use it on the order for your two copies. Check the code's terms in the email: Blurb's wording is "first order," so it may cover both copies if you order them together.

Pricing (subject to change) and your budget

Every Blurb photo book price starts with 20 pages. Each page beyond 20 adds a set amount. The price depends on three choices: size, paper, and cover. Full price list: blurb.com/pricing.

Softcover prices, per copy (Blurb pricing page, October 2026):

Paper	7x7 Small Square	10x8 Landscape or 8x10 Portrait
Standard (80# semi matte)	$17 + $0.26/additional page	$24 + $0.33/additional page
Premium Lustre or Premium Matte (100#)	$22 + $0.40/additional page	$29 + $0.45/additional page
Mohawk Superfine Eggshell (uncoated)	$25 + $0.48/additional page	$32 + $0.54/additional page
Mohawk proPhoto Pearl (photo gloss)	$26 + $0.55/additional page	$37 + $0.61/additional page

Hardcovers cost more: at 10x8 on Standard paper, a dust jacket hardcover starts at $38 per copy and an ImageWrap hardcover at $41. Two hardcover copies leave very little of the $100 for extra pages, shipping, and tax, so plan on softcover.

What two copies cost at 10x8 or 8x10, before any discount, shipping, or tax:

Pages	Standard paper, 2 copies	Premium Lustre/Matte, 2 copies
20	$48.00	$58.00
40	$61.20	$76.00
60	$74.40	$94.00
80	$87.60	$112.00

These prices are only estimates. BookWright (the software) shows the price for your size, paper, and cover when you start a project, so you can check these numbers as you go.

Step 1: Start a photo book project

Open BookWright. The welcome screen shows any books you have already started. Click Create.

BookWright welcome screen with the Create button and the Your Books list

Keep PHOTO BOOKS selected and pick a size. Each size shows its starting price for 20 pages. In this demo, I chose Standard Landscape (10x8), because all of the photos are horizontal.

BookWright photo book sizes: Mini Square, Small Square, Standard Landscape, Standard Portrait, Large Square, Large Landscape, each with a starting price for 20 pages

You can change these later. Once the project is open, the Papers/Format menu has Change Paper, Change Cover, and Convert Book (for a different size). Switching paper or cover is a small change. Changing the size is a bigger one: the pages change shape, so decide on the size early and check every page afterward (see Step 6). Each change also changes the price, so look at the budget again.

Click Next, then choose a Paper and a Cover from the two menus.

Paper menu open, listing Mohawk proPhoto Pearl, Mohawk Superfine Eggshell, Premium Lustre, Premium Matte, and Standard

Once both are chosen, BookWright shows the starting price and the cost of each extra page. For Standard Landscape, Premium Lustre, Softcover, that is $29.00 for 20 pages plus $0.45 per additional page.

Standard Landscape with Premium Lustre paper and Softcover selected. Price shown: From US $29.00 for 20 pages, add US $0.45 per additional page

Click Next. Type a Project Title and your name as Author Name. Note the File Location: this is where your project file (.blurb) is saved. By default it goes in Documents/Blurb. Click Start a New Project.

Project Title, Author Name, File Name, and File Location fields, with the Start a New Project button

Save often (File > Save, or Cmd+S) and keep a backup copy of your .blurb file somewhere else, such as Google Drive. BookWright projects are saved on your computer, not online, until you upload.

Step 2: Add your photos

A new project opens with a box asking for photos. Click Select Photos, go to your photo folder, select all of the photos (Cmd+A), and click Open.

Add Your Project Photos window with Select Photos and Import Photos buttons

BookWright then offers to build the book for you, placing photos in order by the date they were taken. Click NO, I'LL PLACE THEM MYSELF. The sequence is your decision, not the camera's clock.

Save Time window offering to create the book automatically, with NO, I'LL PLACE THEM MYSELF and SAVE ME TIME buttons

Your photos now sit in a strip along the top of the window (the Photos tab). The pages of the book are listed down the left side. A small check mark on a photo means it is already used somewhere in the book.

Moving your book to another computer: what travels with the .blurb file

Your whole book is one file ending in .blurb (for example, My Book.blurb). To see where it is saved, open the book and choose File > Info. By default it is in Documents/Blurb.

Photos you have placed on pages travel inside the .blurb file. BookWright copies each placed photo into the file at full size. That is why the file gets big: 5 placed photos made the demo book about 66 MB.
Photos still waiting in the Photos strip do not. For those, the .blurb file only remembers where they were on the first computer (for example, /Users/yourname/Desktop/BookPhotos/). On another computer that place does not exist, so those photos will not be there.
Fonts do not travel either. If you installed a font yourself and used it in the book, the other computer needs it too, or BookWright will substitute a different font.

So always move two things together: the .blurb file and your photo folder. Then nothing is left behind, whether or not you have placed every photo yet.

Moving your book to another computer: step by step

On the first computer:

Save (Cmd+S) and quit BookWright.
Copy the .blurb file and your photo folder to a USB drive, an external drive, or Google Drive.
If you used a font you installed yourself, copy that font file too (on a Mac, find it in Font Book).

On the second computer:

Install BookWright if it is not already there.
Install any font you copied.
Copy the .blurb file and the photo folder onto the computer (Documents/Blurb or the Desktop is fine). Do not open the book straight from the USB drive or from Google Drive in the browser.
Double-click the .blurb file to open it.
Check the Photos strip. If photos you had not placed yet are missing, click Select Photos and add them again from the photo folder you copied.
Go through the book in Preview to make sure every page looks right.

Keep one "current" copy. Once you have two copies of the same book, it is easy to edit the wrong one and lose work. Work on one computer at a time, and when you finish a session, copy the .blurb file back to where you keep your main copy. Adding the date to a backup copy's name (for example, My Book 2026-11-10.blurb) helps you tell them apart.

Step 3: Lay out the pages

Pick a page. Click a page in the list on the left, or click the page itself.
Pick a layout. Click the Layouts tab at the top. The menu next to the layouts filters them: 1 Photo, 2 Photo, Spread Layouts, Text, and so on. Click a layout to apply it to the selected page.
Place a photo. Click the Photos tab and drag a photo from the strip onto a photo box on the page.
Try other layouts quickly. After you drop a photo, a Suggested Layouts panel may appear. Hover over a layout to preview it on the page, and click it to apply it.

Suggested Layouts panel open over a spread, previewing a full-page layout on the right-hand page

Two choices you will make on almost every page:

Full bleed: the photo runs off all edges of the page (right page below). The edges get trimmed slightly when the book is cut.
With a margin: the photo sits inside a white border (left page below). Nothing important gets trimmed.

A spread with a photo inside white margins on the left page and a full-bleed photo on the right page

Step 4: Spreads, the gutter, and the trim

A spread is two facing pages. A spread layout lets one photo run across both pages (filter the layouts to Spread Layouts).

One photo placed across a two-page spread, pages 02 and 03, with a warning triangle in the corner

The center of a spread is the gutter, where the pages are bound. Part of the picture disappears into the binding there, so keep faces, text, and anything important away from the center line. BookWright reminds you with a warning whenever a photo spans two pages:

Warning: Image spans across pages. Remember to position your image to account for the center line so that important content is not lost in the binding

To see what will be trimmed, choose View > Show Trim Area (Cmd+T). BookWright calls this the print safe area. The pink band around the edges (and down the middle of a spread) is the zone that is risky for anything important, because of trimming and the binding. Keep faces, text, and key details out of the pink.

Spread with Show Trim Area turned on: a pink band around the edges of both pages and down the center

Press Cmd+T again to turn it off.

Color and image quality

Color is really difficult to get right. To do it properly, we would have to calibrate our monitors and simulate the ink and paper the book will be printed on. Unfortunately, we do not have the means or the time to do that.

Here is what Blurb says in its image quality checklist:

Convert the color mode from RGB to CMYK (if you have the knowledge and the means to do so).
Brighten your images, because ink on paper looks darker than a screen.
Slightly sharpen your images, because ink on paper looks softer than a screen.

The most useful advice here is to brighten your images.

BookWright has an Auto Image Adjust feature that sharpens the photo and makes it lighter. Double-click a photo on the page to open the Photo panel, and look for the Auto Image Adjust switch at the bottom.

BookWright Photo panel with the Auto Image Adjust switch at the bottom, next to a selected photo of a dark, shadowed asphalt surface

Use it on darker photos. Apply Auto Image Adjust to photos that are not already bright. Do not apply it to photos that are already bright, because they can end up blown out. Check the result in Preview (Step 8).

Step 5: Fix the warnings

When something might not print well, a red triangle appears on the page and a Fix button appears at the top right of the window. Click either one to see the list.

Warning window open over a spread, listing Low image resolution and Image spans across pages for page 2

The most important warning is Low image resolution: the photo is being printed bigger than its pixels can support, so it may look soft or blocky. In the demo, a 4500-pixel-wide photo stretched across a 20-inch spread triggered it.

Low image resolution warning with Fix, Fix All, Ignore, and Ignore All options and a Submit button

For a low-resolution warning, you can:

make the photo smaller on the page (use a single page instead of a spread, or a layout with margins), or
choose Fix, and BookWright resizes the photo to the recommended size, or
use the full-resolution original from your camera instead of a smaller copy.

Only choose Ignore if you have checked the page in Preview and you are fine with how it looks. Do not upload a book with warnings you have not looked at.

Step 6: Add or remove pages

A new book starts with 20 pages, the minimum. Click Manage Pages at the bottom left to see the whole book at once. Use the + button to add pages and the trash can to delete them.

Manage Pages window showing all spreads of the book as thumbnails, with add and delete buttons at the top

Every page you add over 20 raises the price of each copy. Check your page count against the budget table above before you add a lot of pages.

Changed your mind about paper, cover, or size? As mentioned in Step 1, use the Papers/Format menu: Change Cover, Change Paper, or Convert Book (to change the size). If you convert the size, go through every page in Preview afterward, because the pages change shape.

Papers/Format menu showing the current format, Change Cover, Change Paper, and Convert Book

Step 7: The cover and text

Click Back Cover / Front Cover at the top of the page list. With the cover selected, the Layouts tab shows cover layouts for the back cover, spine, and front cover together. Drag a photo onto the cover the same way as a page.

To add text, click a text box ("Click to add text") and type. The Text panel opens next to it, with font, size, color, bold and italic, spacing, and alignment. To add a new text box anywhere, use Place Text in the toolbar.

Cover open in BookWright with a title and author typed on the front cover and the Text panel open

Empty text boxes do not print. They are only placeholders.
The spine of a 20-page softcover is very thin. Check in Preview whether there is room for spine text before you plan on it.
Proofread every word. Blurb prints exactly what is on the page.

Step 8: Preview the whole book

Click Preview (magnifying glass, top right). Preview shows the book as it will print, without the boxes and guides. Use the arrows at the top right to go page by page through the entire book, starting with the cover.

Preview of the cover: back cover, spine, and front cover with the title, author, and photo

Preview of a two-page spread with one photo running across both pages

Before you upload, check every page in Preview:

No warnings left that you have not looked at.
Nothing important in the gutter or the trim area.
The sequence is the one you want. Look at it as spreads, not single pages.
The title, your name, and any text are spelled correctly.
Your page count and price fit the budget for two copies.

You can also click Export PDF Proof to save a PDF of the book to look at, or to share with me before you upload.

Click Back to Project to keep working.

Step 9: Review and upload

When the book is finished, click Review and Upload (orange button, top right). If you have unsaved changes, BookWright asks you to save first. Then sign in with your Blurb account (or create one here).

Sign-In/Register window with the four upload steps across the top: Sign In/Register, Confirm Project, Review Project, Upload Project

The upload goes through four steps, shown across the top of the window: Sign In/Register, Confirm Project, Review Project, and Upload Project. Read each screen and check that the size, paper, cover, and page count are what you planned.

Uploading puts the book in your Blurb account so you can order copies. It does not put the book up for sale. Selling it is a separate choice you would have to make on purpose, and you do not need to for this class.

If you find a mistake after uploading, fix it in BookWright and upload again before you order.

Step 10: Order two copies

After uploading, find the book in your Blurb account and order 2 copies of it in one order.
Enter your 30% welcome code at checkout.
Before paying, check the total with shipping and tax. It has to be $100 or less.
Printing takes 4 to 5 business days before the book ships, and shipping time comes on top of that. Order early enough for the books to arrive before the due date.

Paying for it. The school covers up to $100 per student. When your book is uploaded and you have checked it in Preview, come see me with your cart ready, and we will place the order with the school card. If you pay yourself instead, keep the receipt (order confirmation with the total) for reimbursement.