My name is Michelle Seelig. I am a professor in the School of Communication, at the University of Miami. I am asking your help with a research study to measure the visual delivery of information through the use of photos with sound.

I am asking you to participate by completing a survey about photos with sound. The survey takes about 15 minutes.

Your participation in this study is voluntary. If you choose not to participate or to withdraw from the study at any time, there will be no penalty.

While there are no direct benefits to participate, this research will provide insight as to the emerging technologies used to present still photos with sound and their impact upon viewing experience. There are no foreseeable risks or discomforts to your participation.

The questionnaire is anonymous. The results of the study may be published but your name will not be known. This study is not commissioned or funded by any company.

I highly appreciate your time and your input. If you have any questions before, during or after the survey, you are welcome to contact me, Dr. Michelle Seelig (mseelig@miami.edu). If you have any questions regarding your rights as a research subject, please call me the University of Miami Human Subjects Research Office at 305-243-3195.

Clicking of the link below will be considered your consent to participate:

https://surveys.miami.edu/WebService/mrwebpl.dll?project=MSEELI0609271237

Thank you for your help.

Michelle

Michelle I. Seelig, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
University of Miami
School of Communication
Coral Gables, FL 33146
(305) 284-5211

Thanks again,

Michelle

From my own experience the book that I created and ‘previewed’ was approx 30MB. However, when I pressed the magical ‘Buy Book’ button and entered all relevant info, the amount of data that was transferred to Apple was only 8.7MB. Therefore a significant amount of the image quality is effectively stripped from the book, (or rather the images contained within it), at the point at which you send it to Apple. Therefore what you see is most definitely not what you get, which is the part that I find most galling. Through investigations on the net, it is suggested that the quality of the images in the PDF preview are at 720dpi where as the quality of the images that are printed are 150dpi. I have learned of a ‘hack’ which seems to suggest it increases the quality of the images that are sent to Apple and subsequently printed by them to 300dpi – see this.
Has anyone tried this? I just wondered whether it works? My advice to anyone thinking of buying a book is don’t bother!

I have a question though, it there anyway to retrieve the PDF that is created by iPhoto? I’d actually like to be able to post somethign like that to my personal website…. doesn’t haev to be full resolution or anything, just be nice to share it with others that will never have an opportunity to actually see teh book.

And have you done any process to black and white? If so, have you tried both a desaturated RGB file vs. a true grayscale file?

Yes, I have printed one book in black and white. I converted the images to black and white in iPhoto, but if I were to do it in Photoshop, I wouldn’t convert them to grayscale. There are several better techniques (I’d recommend looking at The Adobe Photoshop CS Book for Digital Photographers for some down and dirty tips).

The black and white images do have a very slight purple cast, but it would be extremely difficult to correct for it. Overall, the quality is quite good.

I applied the .plist change to increase the photobook resolution to 300 dpi and converted to grayscale, and back to RGB so iPhoto would play nice. Ordered the large hardback. I’ll report back when it arrives on the quality. I’m really looking for an Ansel Adams-esque feel, so I’m going to be disappointed if there is any color cast. Oh well, we’ll see.

[In case you weren’t aware, as I can’t find it on your blog, iPhoto defaults the medium and large size to 150dpi. Open com.apple.iPhoto.plist in your ~/Library/Preferences/ folder and change the BookTargetImageDPI (and the Medium one below it) to 300. Your filesize will obviously increase, but the quality will as well.]

The book was entirely composed of black and whites, as I mentioned, and the retained contrast is great. With your tip on changing the output levels, it matches the intended brightness and shadow detail as my onscreen postprocessed images.

They do have a minor purplish cast, but nothing dramatic: only in the highlights. Perhaps I saved some of the problem by converting to greyscale and losing all RGB data, and then converting back into RGB so iPhoto could handle them. Either way, unless you’re looking for it, it just appears to be dithered black and white, which you’d expect from this printing process. I need to find my loupe and see if it is really printed in just black ink, or if it’s an RGB mixture. My areas of complete black look more black than I’m used to seeing from the mixed methods.

All around, I’m very pleased, and glad I looked for tips such as yours before I spent the money on a hardback. I can see how using iPhoto as-is with your images might yield slightly disapointing results.