Help With Making a Photo Book Please

abm234

abm234

Active member
I have always printed 12x12 layouts and slipped them into traditional albums. I just printed my first photo book! Paper Kiwi was the only place I could find to print an album big enough for PL -104 lay flat pages hardcover. I only printed one copy (I usually do one for each kid) because I wanted to see how it would turn out. I loved the book and want to print 3 books of my 2014 layouts.

Here is my problem. This is a screen shot from the program Paper Kiwi uses. How do I "shrink" my layouts so that nothing gets cut off? What is the best way to do this? I thought I'd ask now rather than at the end of the year because we are already Week 31 and that is a lot of layouts to open up and resize. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

ScreenShot2014-08-06at105225AM_zps48aa9032.png


Thanks!
 
I haven't used Paper Kiwi, so can't say how their program works. Have you tried asking this question in their forum? Generally though, I would think you'd have to add a border prior to uploading the layout to their site.
 
I'll check and see if they have a forum. They are the same company as Scrapping Simply and they usually have good customer service so I could probably call too. I just thought maybe somebody here had encountered this issue and had a simple/lazy solution for me!
 
I haven't printed with this company, but I have printed with a few others. Each book printer should have specs for the area around the edges that may be cut off in printing/cropping. That said, it's not an exact science, so let's say the printer says up to 1/4 inch may be cut in cropping. I wouldn't recommend putting a 1/4 inch border around the layouts because some of that border may still show (it won't be exactly 1/4 inch that gets cut). If you want your layouts to print where they cover the whole page without a border, what is best to do is to make sure nothing important (journaling, someone's face in a photo, etc) is in that 1/4 inch space on the edges. I've had to adjust to this over time and design pages with this in mind. I'm a traditional scrapper, so it's fairly easy for me to make sure nothing important gets put on the edges of my layouts. I can see how it could be a little tricky with pocket style. Maybe someone else who does that will chime in with suggestions. I hope what I said makes sense and helps :)
 
Do you think I should just open each pocket layout and select all the pockets and shift and then drag the corner box to make it a little smaller? I just don't think I could be consistent on all the pages with that method. There has to be something I could do so that it is uniform on each page right?
 
Do you use the same kraft background on your pages? You could flatten everything above the bottom paper and reduce it by 1/4 inch.
 
What if you just changed the size on each layout to something like 11.75x11.75? If you're worried a bit of white background would show, slap it onto a 12x12 background that is the color you are using.
 
I think I can handle that. Resizing must be easy on CS5. I bet I can figure it out. I used the kraft background on each page.

Now, I only have 31 weeks x 2 pages = 62 pages to start resizing! Fun times!
 
abm234 said:
I think I can handle that. Resizing must be easy on CS5. I bet I can figure it out. I used the kraft background on each page.

Now, I only have 31 weeks x 2 pages = 62 pages to start resizing! Fun times!
Click to expand...

I would resize and add a background paper/white. Just resizing you may still have problems with cut offs if they auto-fill the area somehow. You can set up an action in PS to resize and then add a white behind it. Then just run the action as a batch on the folder and save to a new folder. Its similar to something I do when I get Janet's templates and have to re-save as a TIFF since she only does PSDs.

Once you get set up it takes a few minutes to do all of them.
 
Wendzine makes all sorts of resizing actions for different printing companies. I know she has one for scrapping simply so if that is the same format she would probably know. If you reach out to her she will give you suggestions and tell you what options you have.

I know that you can do it different ways. I have an action that adds a coordinating color border around the layout and I have a resizing action for one of the companies. I know some printers trim on specific sides of a layout and the actions add excess to compensate for the way they do the trimming. All of which she taught me.

She also said that as an alternative, for layouts you still have the layers... before you flatten you make the bottom background layer invisible then select everything else and reduce it, but I don't recall what that size is. I know it was not even 95%.

The other thing to do is contact the printers and ask them how much they enlarge to compensate for the bleed.
 
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Thanks for the suggestions Kim and Tracey. I've never made my own action before but I use them all the time. That would be an adventure! Where is Wendzine at? I should maybe start by contacting Paper Kiwi. If I do go the action route I'm definitely going to figure out how to do a batch. I didn't know you could do that!
 
I created an action I use which resizes the image and adds a ¼" white border to my pages to avoid anything pertinent being cut off in the bleed space. To create an action, you just go to your action palette, create a new action, name your action and hit record and it will include all of the steps you use until you end the recording. You can modify the steps later if you change your mind. Super easy!
 
In my PL pages, I open all my templates at the beginning of the year and resize them slightly so they won't be cut off when I print... Thats when I shadow the pockets and add the kraft background paper too. That way, they are all uniform when I print.

This is what it looks like on the computer:

sm2014-7-week28-left.jpg


I recommend doing that now to avoid the hassle of resizing for the rest of the year.

Your pages are great, btw! You will love your photo book!
 
Thanks Marla! For 2014 I did add the shadows and kraft but I didn't know I needed to resize. You live and learn. And you were my PL inspiration - don't forget!
 
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