| Jennifer, the studio owner, is interested in investing in a number of glossy, softcover portfolio books of ideas and examples of customers' pieces to distribute to her studios. She also wants to create a special linen-cover hardbound version of the album that includes her homemade publicity photos of the ceramic process, projects the studio has contributed to the community, and nice shots of each of her studio locations. These special books will be holiday presents for key staff members and some of her best customers. In general, Jennifer shoots video in her studio, using the footage to make training tapes and also to generate still images for her Web site. Occasionally she takes digital still images, which she loads into iPhoto. Over the years she has taken hundreds of photos, and she has aggregated the best pictures in albums based on some basic themes: images of bisque (the inventory of her studios), shots of her studios in action, shots of finished customer pieces that might inspire other customers, and shots of techniques that illustrate and demystify the process. iPhoto is designed to make, among other things, a good-quality hardback book of images. In addition to an 8½-by-11-inch hardcover book, iPhoto '06 allows you to make softcover books in small, medium, and large formats. The software helps you put photos on pages, and then lets you automatically access a Web site where you can order the book (or books) you designed. Large hardbound books are impressive but not inexpensive. A double-sided 20-page book of, say, 30 photos might cost around $35; single-sided pages are slightly more expensive. On the other hand, a medium-sized softcover book is only around $10. Hardback books make excellent keepsakes, specialty photo albums, and business gifts; the softcover books can be a viable alternative to scrapbooking. In addition to letting you create hardcover and softcover books, iPhoto '06 offers you more than a dozen different book stylespredesigned formats that let you vary the size of images, the arrangement of photos on each page, and the position and font of notes and captions. Note The quality of Jennifer's photos varies greatly: sometimes 3 megapixels from the still cameras in the studios, sometimes 1 megapixel from a digital camera she used many years ago, and sometimes 1/3 megapixel as frame grabs from a videotape (which you will do in Lesson 3). Keep in mind the image differences when you print photosif you try making an image larger than its resolution will support, it will look lousy, perhaps compromising the overall impact of the book. The first step is deciding what the book will be for, what photos to include, and in what general order they should appear in the book (and, therefore, in the iPhoto album). You can modify the order later, but it is most efficient to try to organize the photos before you start building your book. Choosing a Theme Once you've decided the purpose of the book and what photos to include, it's time to choose the right look for your book. | | 1. | Open the Cool Pieces album. This album was generated automatically based on keyword and rating selections (from Lesson 3). This reveals images that Jennifer wants to put in her picture book of ideas.
In most albums, the photos appear in the order in which they were dragged in and can be reordered. In Smart Albums, you can't move individual photos around, though you can reorder images by changing how they're sorted. Select the Smart Album, then choose View > Sort Photos. | 2. | Click the Book button. Book, like Slideshow, does more than give you a new way to view your photos; it creates a new object (a book, in this case, or a slideshow), which is added to your sourceshence the plus sign (+).
When you click the Book button, a theme window pops up from which you select the book format (hardcover or softcover) and size (small, medium, or large), and then choose from a series of themes appropriate for that format.
| | | 3. | Choose the Book Type pull-down menu to review your options. Jennifer would choose the large hardcover book, which is the default selection, for her formal high-end gift, but not for her studio idea books. She can inexpensively print in duplicate a softcover compendium of customer artworkfar better than a scrapbookand distribute it to all of her studios. Click the various theme options to preview roughly how they will look. There are no wrong answers here. And even after you select one theme, you can easily change your mind later if it doesn't seem to be working for your book. Jennifer settled on the Contemporary theme.
Note For many themes, you have the option of printing single-sided or double-sided pages. Since the minimum number of pieces of paper in a book is 10, the minimum number of pages is either 10 (single-sided) or 20 (double-sided). | 4. | Once you have selected the book type and theme, click Choose Theme at the bottom of the theme window. Before the window switches to the Book view, iPhoto lets you know you can lay out your book automatically by clicking the Autoflow button. The automatic option is very nice for anyone under time pressure (business deadlines or screaming kids)it eliminates most of the work. But in some cases, it can be just as much work revising the computer's choices as making them the way you want from the start. | 5. | Click the OK button. iPhoto reveals the workspace where you can organize and lay out your book. |
Creating a Cover Let's start by designing the first pages presented in your bookthe cover, front and back.
By default, iPhoto gives your book the album's name. It also takes a guess as to the design of your book pages, although it's very easy to change them while you work, using the Themes button at the bottom of the window. Displayed in the Book view is the template for the book's cover. The light gray regions on book pages are placeholders where you can drop the photos. On the cover, there is one gray space for a photo. Running across the top of the window are the photos in the album. 1. | Drag the first photo in the album down into the placeholder. | 2. | Change this book's title to Petroglyph Idea Book (Petroglyph is the name of Jennifer's company) and add the subtitle Spring 2006Volume 1. As Jennifer reviews the book, she doesn't think the painted skull is the right image for the cover. So try a few others. | | | 3. | Drag a second, then a third photo of your choosing over the skull photo on the cover, and drop them on top.
As each photo replaces the one before it on the cover, the old image returns to the photo workspace above. But none of the photos is right for Jennifer. It may be a book to give her customers painting ideas, but not all the images she wants are in the Smart Album of Cool Pieces. | 4. | Click the Biz Owner folder in the Source list. Selecting a folder opens all the images in all the albums in that folder at one time. Scan through the other images for something that might be appropriate for the covermaybe a wide shot of the studio interior? | | | 5. | Drag another photo from the library onto the Cool Pieces Book icon in the Source list. This adds a new photo to the book, even though it doesn't change anything about the Smart Album that was the original source for the book. A book is an independent object; you can add more photos to it just as you would an album. | 6. | Click the Cool Pieces Book in the Source list. Notice that the new photo is now in the bar along the top. | | | 7. | Drag the new photo on top of the photo you want to replace on the cover.
The bar at the top of the window has two views, which you can choose by clicking the small tabs at the left edge of the window; the bottom tab is a storage space for all the photos in the book not yet placed on a specific page. When you opt to create your book manually, this space is full of photos; when you opt for automatic book layout, this space starts out empty.
The top tab reveals thumbnails for the pages (or two-page spreads) that comprise the book. Even in thumbnails, the gray placeholders for the photos are clearly visible. The page or pages highlighted in blue are currently displayed in the larger window below.
To move to the next (or any) layout, click the corresponding thumbnails in the bar. | 8. | Move to page 1.
On all books, the back of the inside cover is blank, and the book begins on the right page. | | | 9. | Click the text blocks to add some appropriate text to the page. While the first line could easily be the same as the title on the cover, Jennifer made it one of her company slogans, "Personalize Your Presents®". If the pages are too small for you to work with, use the size slider bar at the bottom of the window for appropriate enlargements.
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Designing Interior Pages Following the first two pages of the book (the cover and inside front cover) is a blank page. After that are the "real" pages of your book. Let's add photos to the existing layouts on the following few pages. 1. | Click the next page in the book. | | | 2. | Change the workspace at the top of the window to photo view, and find some images to place in the book.
In this theme, some pages have text placeholders at the bottom of the pages. | 3. | You can add text to these placeholders or, for now, delete the text to simplify the design of the page. | | | 4. | Go to the next pair of pages and add a few more images to the layout so that it looks like this:
Jennifer wants the page on the right to be similar to the page on the left: both with two images side by side, one a close-up and one a wider shot of the same object. The page on the right needs to have a different layout. To change the design of a selected page, use the tools beneath the main window, which let you adjust the number of photos on a page. | | | 5. | Select the right page, and choose Two from the Page Type pop-up menu.
The page immediately rearranges to the new layout. If there are available photos still unplaced in the book, iPhoto will add one to the page. Now two photos are on the page...but they are the wrong photos.
| 6. | Drag two new imagestwo photos of the same bowlfrom the unplaced photos (at the top of the window) over those currently placed on the page so that the layout looks like this:
In this manner, you can adjust every page for the number of photos you want, and place the photos of your choice on each page. Some page types (only in some book themes) give you more than one option for how to position the photos on the page. | | | 7. | Find the next page with a single image on a page (that is, the Page Type value is One).
| 8. | Drag a photo from the choices at the top of the window down into the blank space.
Before
After This photo layout is elegant, but not your only option. | | | 9. | Click the Page Design button. This reveals a pull-down menu of different ways a single image can be displayed on a page. This photo looks fine large, running from edge to edge of the page (this is called bleeding to the edge). But not all of Jennifer's photos will look good this large. | | | 10. | Locate the photo of a red mug and drag it over this full-page photo. iPhoto is always looking at the resolution of your images and determining if photos of a given quality will reproduce well in the book at their selected size. If it finds a quality problem, it will insert a small yellow caution sign (with an exclamation point in it) over the problem picture, alerting you that the image will not look good when printed. In the case of the red mug, the problem is displaying a low-resolution image at a large size in the book.
Depending on the scope of the problem, making the photo smaller often helps. | | | 11. | Change the page design to a layout that makes the image smaller. The warning sign should be gone, which means that reducing the size solved the low-resolution problem. If the warning icon persists, change the page design to include more images (which reduces the size of each photo). If that still doesn't solve the problem, it may be necessary to leave a poorer-looking image in the book (with jaggies, or jagged edges, probably), or remove the photo altogether. | 12. | Go through the remaining photos and design a book to your liking, trying to use all the photos in the album. If at some point you want to let the computer do the work for you, select the Autoflow button, which will finish the project automatically. Whatever you do, keep this book to 20 pages. If a picture is spilling over to page 21, change the design of prior pages to shorten the book. You can make these books any length you want, but the price increases by number of pages (not number of photos). So you need to have control over the length of your product. Note The book-printing service requires that books be a minimum of ten double-sided pages; if your book is shorter, it will add blank pages to fill out the number. |
Printing the Book When you've finished the book and reviewed the text to your liking, the book is ready to print. You can choose from a couple of methods. To make a printout of your custom book on your own printer, choose the File > Print command. From there, you can select your printer, the number of copies, and, if you are so inclined, the option to generate a PDF file of your book. Note The PDF file will be an exceptionally large one, but for some kinds of paperless distribution, like posting on the Web or emailing, it might be desirable.
The most interesting option is to use iPhoto's built-in high-quality book production. iPhoto contacts an outside service to create linen-bound hardback books or softcover books, which are printed and shipped to you in a few days. This is the process Jennifer uses for her idea book. 1. | Once you're sure the book looks the way you want, click Buy Book at the bottom right of the iPhoto window. iPhoto takes a few moments to assemble the book and prepare a file of information. It analyzes the file and warns you if you've left default text in your book or if your photos are not high-resolution enough. Then it connects to the bookmaking service. | | | 2. | Select a color for the cover and the quantity of books. The book service will give you a price, at which point you can choose whether to place your order. Jennifer ordered four books.
| 3. | To finish up, drag the Cool Pieces Book from where it resides in your Source list to your Biz Owner folder. |
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