The making of a Photo Book

Getting organized is important. With digital cameras you can literally have thousands of photos lying around on CDs, memory sticks, in the camera and on various hard drives. Choose your project - what do you want to scrap? Do you want to do a whole year, a set of years or a special trip? Once you’re clear about your topic, you need to gather all of your photos into one place.

There are lots of choices when it comes to photo organization software. I personally use a Mac and iPhoto. I’m not thrilled with it and curse it’s limitations, but I manage to work around those limitations and beat it into submission. I have been toying with Adobe Lightroom. I like it because I can quickly retouch all of my photos and I trust the software to do a good job (I don’t trust the iPhoto editing) and I don’t have to open them all in Photoshop.

Now that you have all of your photos in one place, you can start to whittle away at them. Choose the very best, your favorite, images you really want in your book. You should have a space on your primary hard drive for these photos. Make copies of them and leave the originals where they are. A fresh set, on your working hard drive, now you are ready to go.

Open the folder of photos in Adobe Bridge and manually arrange them in the order you want them to appear in your book. At least clump them together if you don’t know the order. Now your photos are ready to go.

For speed and efficiency, I actually design a bunch of pages first. I choose the kits I want to use and crank out pages using pre-made layout templates, “scrap-lifting” from magazines and websites, etc. I create a nice little cache of layered designs just waiting for me to add my photos. I keep these all in a folder on my working harddrive (and usually inside of a folder that holds this folder and my photos folder for this project).

With my templates and my photos both open in Bridge, I can now choose which photos will go in which page. This process goes fairly quickly. I’ve already completed the design - which was speedy because I wasn’t attached to how it looked. Now I can add my photos and make it mine. Sometimes my design is just perfect and I just drop in the photos and I’m done. Sometimes I alter the design to fit my photos. Either way, my pages take 5-15 minutes each to complete.

I create folders called “used inside” of my pre made design folder and my photos folder. I drag the designs and the photos into those as I use them to make my pages. That way I don’t accidentally use them again.

If you find this article helpful, please leave a comment, I would love to hear from you!

Disney Pages for You

I am currently designing my personal Disney pages (I have many, many photos from Disney). My husband bought me a DVC (Disney Vacation Club) last fall ensuring we will be visiting at least once a year. We have been going once or twice a year for several years.

I have partnered up with Sophia Sarducci to bring you her wonderful designs. Digital Scrappers can make their own pages from her designs and I am creating templates to use with my customers’ photos. You organize the photos in the order you want them, send them to me and I’ll make you a Disney Themed Photo Book! I am mixing my own designs in there with hers. There will be lots of themes including Cinderella, Mickey, Belle, Buzz, Woody, Bugs Life, Ariel, Nemo, Monsters, Snow White, Tink, Peter Pan and more.

I will post the pages in the gallery as I get them designed.

How to Turn Your Paper Scrapbooks Into Digital Files

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This technique works for anything that is too large to scan or won’t scan well - art work, memorabilia, kids stuff, etc.

Equipment

1. a tripod
2. a digital camera (preferably 7+ megapixels)
3. a solid color background that is larger than what you are photographing (white chip board or white cardboard works great)

The Set Up

A cloudy day works best. Find a nice large area on the floor in front of a large window where there is lots of diffused light pouring. If the sun is shining, watch the shadows and you might want to wait until it’s overcast. Place your background on the floor and position your tripod and camera to look down upon the background. Make sure there are no shadows from your tripod landing on your background. You want the camera looking straight down, no angles. You will most likely see the tripod legs in the camera - that’s OK.

You want your camera set to take the highest quality photos. If you can shoot in RAW format, use it.

Get the Shot

Place your scrapbook page or artwork on the background, zoom the camera in and focus. Use the self-timer for each shot - this is critical. If you don’t use the self timer, your photos will be blurry! Do not use the flash - make sure you turn it off. Make sure you can see the background around the page or artwork so you don’t cut anything out in the photo. Repeat with each page.

Preparing the Image

1. If you shoot RAW images, open in Photoshop Camera Raw and make any adjustments for color, lighting, etc. Open you image in Photoshop. You will notice that your image is not square with nice perfect 90 degree angles and in fact, has camera distortion.
2. Pull out guides for 2 sides, you pick the 2 adjacent sides that look the straightest. Place the guides close or on the edges of your subject.
3. Draw a selection box around the entire subject, making sure you get the whole subject and don’t cut any parts off and don’t get too close to the outside edges of the photo.
4. Go to Edit, Transform, Distort. You will see control handles in the corners. Adjust the control handles until your page is square and the edges are straight.
5. Copy your image to a new layer and remove your background.
6. Crop the image to just the edges or how you want it to print. Remember that for full bleed (no white edges) the final print will be trimmed about 1/8″, so don’t crop too tightly here.
7. Adjust your image size. Go to Image, Image Size and type in one size, choose either width or height and be consistent with each image. Make sure the resample image box is not checked. For 12 x 12 scrapbook pages, keep the image 12 x 12 or smaller.
8. Save a copy as a high quality jpg and an original in case you need to make any more changes.
9. Repeat with each image.

Wrapping it all Up

Consistency is key. You want the lighting consistent, do this all in one sitting. This will help with keeping colors consistent.  You want the file size consistent, make each final jpg the same size. If you are struggling with the final output sizes, consider adding a white border or a colored border to match your image. Your files will not be 300 ppi. It’s OK. You want 150 ppi or higher and they don’t all have to be the same ppi, just the same dimensions in inches - not pixels. The final resolution will be dependent upon your camera. Prints under 150 ppi are acceptable but not preferable.

If you have questions or anything is not clear, leave a comment.

Using Consumer Digital Scrapbooking Software

I often receive files created in software other than Adobe. They are a crap shoot when it comes to printing. Here is some help I’ve found along the way. If you have any insights, please add a comment!

Scrapbook Factory Deluxe - From their FAQ
When exporting my project to a JPEG image, the image quality is low. How do I improve the image quality?

The Scrapbook Factory program automatically sets the JPEG image quality to a mid-range value to minimize the size of the image file when saving. You can increase the image quality to a higher value.

To increase the JPEG image quality:

1. Launch the Scrapbook Factory program.
2. Open a project.
3. In the project workspace, click the File menu.
4. Select the Export As Image option.
5. On the Image Size window, set the Resolution to 300 pixels/inch and the Save As to JPG.
6. Click the JPEG Options button.
7. On the JPEG Options window, set the Image Quality Options to Highest and click the OK button. It may take a while for the window to disappear, depending on your system configuration.
8. On the Image Size window, click the Save button.
9. Browse to the location you wish to save the image to.
10. Enter a name for the file in the File name field and click the Save button.

Note: The Image Quality Options are only available for JPEG images.

Creating Keepsakes

They offer nothing in the way of support or a user manual. I don’t know what the help looks like in the program. The files it outputs are a bit strange when I open them in Photohop and the quality is low.

Color Proof Your Pages Before Printing

I’m not a color expert. I do know a little about it and it’s important that all designers know something about it when printing. Matching color in print to what’s on your monitor can be a nightmare. Many designers struggle with this. Getting an inkjet to print your colors well is time consuming and costly. Using an outside printer can be just as frustrating. Color is an ongoing issue. You don’t just learn it once and then everything works. Every single design has it’s own issues.

Color Spaces

Everything has it’s own color space. Some are custom, some are standard, some input devices create their own and apply them to your files. These include things like sRGB, Adobe 1998, CMYK, LAB, etc. Most digital cameras have some variation of sRGB. This space is meant for online graphics. R = red, G = green, B = blue. These are the colors of the old tubes in monitors. These 3 colors mix together to create the colors you see, just like in the real world you mix the 3 primaries, Red, Yellow and Blue to get all the other colors. CMYK, Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black, correspond with the colors of a printer. For traditional 4 color separation pre-press, you must submit your file in CMYK.

Why is this important?

Each color space is finite, meaning it can only handle so many colors. Each space is unique, meaning some colors overlap spaces and can be found in several and other colors can only exist in one. This image is of Adobe 1998 - the white, with CMYK in color. You can see the CMYK color space is much smaller and contains many less colors than Adobe 1998.

So why don’t you just design in CMYK?

You will limit your colors even further if you design in CMYK. You want to design in the richest space, Adobe 1998 to achieve the best color possible. When working with the color picker in Photoshop, the little triangle with the exclamation point means that the color is out of gamut for printing in CMYK. If you click on the triangle, it will choose the closest color that can be reproduced.

In addition to using the correct color space, I highly recommend that you calibrate your monitor with a spectrometer. I use a Spyder2, there is a new less expensive Huey (didn’t get good reviews). My monitor is calibrated and my prints match.

You can preview your pages and see what colors are out of gamut - meaning they won’t reproduce correctly in CMYK. In Photoshop, with your layout open, go to View, Proof Set-up. It’s set to Working CMYK by default. If it’s set to something else, set it Working CMYK. Then select Proof Colors. You’ll notice a color shift in your images. This is an approximation of what your layouts will look like when printed. To get a better view of what colors are shifting, select the next option, Gamut Warning. This will show you all the colors that will shift in print.
If the files I receive from customers are ready to print, meaning they are the correct pixel size and correct ppi, I simply create a PDF file to send to the printer. I don’t modify the color space. The PDFs are saved as RGB. I let the printer do the conversion to CMYK. I highly recommend you proof your pages before sending. Only a well calibrated monitor will give you a good representation of what the final output will look like. I use a digital pre-press that prints with 4 color cartridges - CMYK.

Recommended Downloads:

http://www.adobe.com/products/creativesuite/pdfs/cs2_color_workflows.pdf

http://www.adobe.com/studio/print/pdf/color_terms.pdf

PPI and DPI

Now that I spent all that hard work on my last post about DPI, I realize that I’ve just been around too long and PPI is way more relevant. So, for simplicity sake, please substitute PPI in the previous post with DPI when discussion preparing a file on Photohop. Photoshop’s dialog box uses pixels/inch, meaning pixels per inch. For more details on the differences, you can do a Google search, and start here.

Why and How DPI Matters When Printing

Digital Prepress and inkjet printing are apples and oranges. The processes are completely different. A digital prepress is like a giant laser printer. The toner is a fine powder that is baked onto the paper. Ink jets use liquid ink that spreads when applied to paper because it’s liquid and thats what liquid does. As a result, ink jets print photo quality images with continuos tones as the ink spreads and overlaps. Files don’t need to be as large or contain as much information for a great ink jet print as they do for a great pre-press print. There is no visible quality increase over 150 dpi on an ink jet and in fact printing at higher quality may simply use more ink and cost more money.

For digital pre-press, on the other hand, which is how Photo Book Memories and other photo book companies print, size and dpi matter. Most photo book companies print at 150dpi. They take your files and compress them allowing for faster uploads, less server and storage space and much smaller file sizes. Image quality suffers as a result. Photo Book Memories prints at 300dpi.
For best quality prints, your files should be 300dpi. At 12″ x 12″, this is 3600 x 3600 pixels. They need to be created at this size. Unless you are working with vector graphics (like Illustrator creates), enlarging files can result in huge quality loss. When designing in Photoshop, you are using raster graphics.
The larger the file and higher the dpi, the more information the image contains. The more information, the better print. There is no need to go higher than 300dpi. Graphics start to suffer quality loss immediately. Sharp edges disappear giving way to visible anti-aliased edges. The lower the dpi, the worse it gets. 200dpi is acceptable, 150dpi is the bottom of the acceptable range. Anything lower is unacceptable.

Photos seem to hold up a little better. Perhaps because we are wired to see things like faces and our brains blend everything together making it look OK.

If you create your layouts at 150dpi, simply enlarging them will actually lower the quality even further than simply printing them. The software simply guesses and invents information. If you are doubling the size, you’re doubling the information. It didn’t exist before you enlarged the image. This is called interpolation. In the example below, compare the enlarged, 300dpi image to the original 300dpi image above. There are ways to enlarge images for layouts so the loss of quality isn’t as visible, but that’s another discussion.

Fixing Blown Out Highlights and Glare on Faces

After, no distracting glare

Using a flash can create harsh lighting and glare. Using curves and levels can help, but sometimes it’s just not enough. When printing photos like these, the white becomes even more distracting, leaving an area where there is no ink.

The rubber stamp or clone tool and the healing brush are my preferred tools of choice.

Choose a soft brush and lower the opacity to somewhere between 20% - 80%. It really depends on how much your fixing. I start with about 20%. If it’s not enough I bump it up. Set your mode to darken. You want to clone from the middle tones of your image. So, for this example, I clicked on the pink part of the cheeks, next to the white I wanted to fix. Stay away from the shadows. The sides of the cheeks are in shadow and are much too desaturated and dark, containing too much gray to be useful. Just “tap” the clone tool over the area covering a small area at once. Don’t paint. Adjust your brush size using [ ] as needed.

Use the healing brush, spot healing will usually do. Set it to normal and go over any areas that still need a little help with small strokes. This will help blend any color problems that might have occurred with the clone tool. It will also get rid of any imperfections, smoothing out the skin.

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Creating Full Bleed Book Pages

Posted by melissa on Jul 10, 2006 in Designing Pages

Click to open full size image in new window.

Full Bleed: Term used when an image extends completely to all four edges of the finished sheet. Printing the image beyond the trim edge of a sheet to ensure that there is no white space at the edge after the printed paper is trimmed to finish size.

When designing your scrapbook pages, keep in mind that 1/8″ will be trimmed from the edges. Don’t place anything important right on the edge, like text. You can’t leave blank space, it will leave white edges. I need to trim part of the printed page. I highly recommend you use guides if designing in Photoshop. For other software programs that may not have guides, make a layer that sits on top of all the others with lines representing the trim lines. Make sure your background goes all the way to edges of your document and that your important pieces stay inside the lines or guides.

If your pages will be hard bound into a book, I will leave 1/4″ white space for the binding so you’re binding edge will not loose anything. Design 2 page spreads to match up at the edges and they will match up in your book. No other book companies do this. They all suck your designs into the binding. Just an FYI if you’re reading this with the intent to print and bind elsewhere.

If you are desiging 2 page spreads that will be prints and not bound, you want to design them to overlap slightly, 1/8″. This is important for things like a family tree or if you have a photo that spans 2 pages. It’s not important at all if the spread is simply a continuation of the background design. You need to consider what you’ll be doing with the prints, as well.

Your final page size will be 11.75″ x 11.75″. If you want your final page size to be 12″ x 12″, simply make your files 12.25″ x 12.25″. If you are using backgrounds from kits and such, simply enlarge them to fill the extra space. Enlarging them this small amount will not effect the quality. You can also enlarge pages you have already designed, or we can do it for you.

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Cover images can also be full bleed. The same concept applies. There needs to be extra room for trimming. I trim the cover images by hand. I can do 1/8″, but an extra 1/4″ would be much more helpful. Setting guides in your document will allow me to see where you want your image trimmed.

Things to avoid:

Placing a border around your pages. The trimmed edges are never exact and your border will be thicker on some edges and could possibly get cut off completely on others.

Placing text, journaling, headers, etc., on the edge. They will get cut off.

 

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