We're honored that your class would take the time to publish this test book. If you wish, I would invite you to bring this up in to the Lulu Forums for discussion with a larger audience of creators http://www.lulu.com/forums - It would be interesting to see other users share and discuss their results.

A few things you should be aware of when conducting these tests:

We do not currently offer the ability to print specific output intents or color space as defined within the file or images. These would be ignored by the printer and printed within what I believe is CMYK.

For both professionals and amateurs alike, POD digital printing can be an excellent solution, allowing you to achieve a high degree of quality for printing. For some of the more scrutinizing professions however, you may notice a difference between a POD book and a more traditional offset version. There are obvious advantages to each process but PODs main goal is to find a balanced between quality and economy, one book at a time.

First, the concept. Very clever and useful. As a quality control tool it's very enjoyable; not something you'd expect from something with such a practical purpose.

On to Lulu's part. There was nothing in my packing slip or on my book that would hint at the location of the printer; just a return address to the corporate headquarters. With some homework through the US Postal Service, it seems to have shipped from Greensboro, North Carolina. Presumably printed there, as well. This is odd because I am a 10 minute walk from a Lulu printer, yet it was shipped from half a state away. I ordered the item on 10 July and received it 22 July.

The image quality, for the most part, is quite good. The printers did well with color, grayscale, even rich black in the text block. The cover image is of poor quality, however. The printers also did not fair well with the concentric circles, pages 52-55.

The trim was great on the fore, tail, and head, but cut the gutter more than a centimeter short. Future rebinding would not be possible with the existing margin.

The adhesive is irregularly applied, causing some structural issues and is not likely to be durable. If circulation is a consideration for your materials, this item raises a red flag.

As a whole, though, this exercise is most useful as a comparison of vendor products, I expect. I may update this review at a later date if it is head and shoulders above other copies I receive. Special thanks to the Dear Lulu creators. Highly valuable publication.

I am very much hoping that I could speak to any of you about this wonderful project - I have so many questions, and while the books is WONDERFUL, wish there were a few more details about how the "files' were created!

You need to ad a Colophon!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colophon_(publishing)

What exact settings and image formats were used to build the figures and images (photoshop settings ?) as well as what PDF export settings were used - I can see that this PDF file was created onJune 14th 2008 at 10:45am, and can see you used Adobe InDesign CS3 (5.0.2) - but you save the file as PDF version 1.3 (Acrobat 4)- yet since this file was designed for Print - you did not use PDF/X1a or PDF/X-3 - curious as to why !



Please do take a moment to contact me - and I think you should join the Ghent PDF Workgroup !



http://www.gwg.org/



Michael Jahn

Jahn & Associates

PDF Color Conversion Specialist

1824 North Garvin Avenue

Simi Valley

California 93065

Office: (805) 527 8130

Cell: (805) 217 6741

Email: michaelejahn@gmail.com

Skype: michaelejahn

An interesting project; my feedback on the Lulu service as follows:

-A neatly produced book overall, with crisp materials and finish.

but...

-Printed in Spain and delivered by air to London.
-No information on environmetal credentials of paper, printing and binding.
-Badly trimmed.
-Digital print struggles to produce consistent greys and solid colours.
-Scuffing to some page corners.