I would appreciate any input on alternative for Book production to suit my worklflow?

Question

Hi
I'm trying to get into photo-book production to document my holidays, wildlife trips, etc., and I've become very frustrated with the available tools and techniques that seem to be commonly promoted. As Lightroom is the basis of nearly all of my photographic workflow, I thought that I'd see if anyone here has any experience / ideas on alternative tools / suppliers / techniques that can fit naturally with my workflow, and produce the sort of book that I want?
As I see it, the basic drawback of everything that I've looked at is that they are based around the idea of page templates, with pre-determined cells into which you drop the photos. This seems to me to be hugely constraining.
What I have at the end of my LR workflow, is a 'make book' collection containing the photos that I want, sorted mainly chronologically, but with some user sorting to group related photos. As far as I'm concerned, these photos are 'finished' - I'm happy with how LR has got them, and I don't want any other bit of software making further changes. In particular, they are cropped to a whole variety of shapes and dimensions to suit the subject matter, and ideally I will export them at the size that I want them to print in the book (at 300dpi or whatever is required) so that they don't need to be re-sized a second time.
Maybe my thinking is stuck in a rut, but what I think I want is something that gives me a blank page sized canvas, onto which I can drop the photos at the right size and shape, and position them to give the layout that I want - which will probably differ in some respect for almost every page! Plus I need to add text - captions on some but not all photos, headings on some but not all pages, and occasionally blocks of free form narrative.
I spent quite a bit of time with Blurb's Booksmart, but found that I needed to go into the rather clumsy template editor for almost every page - very tedious and frustrating. I've looked at most of the obvious European competitors - Abelli, CEWE, Bonusprint, Photobox, etc. - and they are just as constraining, if not worse.
When Adobe originally announced a Book module for LR, I was hopeful that this might be the answer, but as lots of others have pointed out, It is even more constrained.
The closest that I have come to getting what I want is actually the LR Print module, producing whole page JPEGs. I can drop the photos onto a custom template with no cells defined, and pull them to the size and position that I want - sizing is slightly fiddly, but very flexible. The big problem is text - no ability on custom layouts, and very limited in any case.
So - what am I missing? Is there a technique, or a tool, or a supplier than can do what I want? Any thoughts or comments gratefully received!
Environment:
Lightroom 4.2
Windows 7 64 bit
Canon EOS 7D - 100% RAW
Current Workflow:
(Entirely LR apart from very occasional foray into PS for edits that LR can't do)
Import all RAWs into LR (Copy to a new folder named with date and shoot id).
Pass 1 - initial sort, rejecting rubbish and duplicates; assigning categories (colours); ratings (5 = worth a large print, 3 = small print, 1 = keep but don't use).
Delete all rejects; rename all keepers (date, shoot id, sequence); backup keepers.
Pass 2 - all develop adjustments; crop to whatever dimensions suit subject matter; revise ratings.
(very occasional detour into PS for complex edits)
Pass 3 - select and create seperate collections for web, slide show and book production.
Print 5 & 4 star pics.
Upload web gallery.
??Make book??

Answer 1

If the Mac came pre-installed with Mavericks you can't downgrade. Have a look at mine and den.thed's comments here:
https://discussions.apple.com/message/23946758#23946758