Using the Book Monitor feature, you can see issues that
arise in your photo book in real-time. By default, the Book Monitor is set to
on. If the Book Monitor has been turned off, go to the View menu and click
“Show Book Monitor.”
The color of the arrow at the left indicates the most
serious of the problems within the book. Placing the cursor over a color-coded
error box will display a page’s problems, and allow you to go directly to the
page to make changes.
Multiple problems on a
single page with the same color-code will be represented by a single box of the
pertinent color.
Any of your pictures can be used as a background for a two-page
spread. Just drag a picture from the Image Browser to a page (but not onto a
frame), and when asked “Would you like your picture to be used as a background
for a single page, or across a two-page spread?” click the Two-Page Spread
button.
NOTE: When using a landscape picture
for a two-page spread background, it’s often best to use a portrait orientation
book. Also, faces should be kept out of the gutter, as some of their fine
details may be lost or distorted within the spine.
The design process for the cover of your photo book is the
same as for the interior pages, except that you cannot use separate backgrounds
for the front & back covers, nor can you see the front & back covers at
the same time. Otherwise, frames captions, grids, and so on behave exactly as
they do within the book.
If you plan to design some or all of your pages in Adobe
Photoshop®, there are a few more things you need to know:
Bleed – when one or more sides of a printed image
touch the edge of the paper. The use of bleed guarantees that the finished
(cropped) page will look neat & precise. The page bleed allowance should be
1/4 inch at all four sides of the page. The bleed area (i.e. beyond the crop
marks) will be trimmed off. If you use a background color or image, it should
fill the entire page including the bleed area. For example, if your printed
page size is 8.5 inch wide, your page design should be 9 inch wide with the
bleed (1/4” + 8.5” + 1/4”).
2 Page Spread – this is a page design than spans both
right & left-hand pages. The pages are centered at the gutter where they
are bound into the spine. Approximately 1/4" of the spread will be bound
into (and thus hidden within) the spine. This, in of itself, is not a problem,
but it does require a bit of special attention when using an external tool,
such as Adobe Photoshop to create your page designs:
Be sure to leave bleed on all 4
sides. The My Photo Books software will automatically adjust any
background used as if it has a bleed designed into it.
Keep important design details at
least 1/4” from all sides of the page so that unwelcome
trimming does not occur.
Keep important design details an
extra 1/4" away from the center binding (this is in addition to the bleed
you leave on all 4 sides of the page). This is an issue specifically for
single page designs.
The software will adjust the spread
pages for the 1/4" lost within the spine. To this end, the spread should
be designed to be 1/4" smaller than the size that it would be if you were
to include the gutter. Also, keep in mind that although page spreads are well
suited for panoramic picture backgrounds, fine details may be partially
obscured within the binding.
The following table is a guide to page and spread size
design:
