One of the first dilemma’s facing digital scrapbookers is how to print your layouts. Perhaps you’ve been faithfully printing them out and slipping them in your scrapbook. Or, maybe you’re like me and never seem to get around to it. Maybe you’ve seen a schnazzy coffee table book at a friend or relative’s house and it got you thinking, “Hey, I bet I could do that.” Well, you CAN create your own custom photobook, and MyPicTales is here to make it even easier with it’s user-friendly software package.
Simply download the software, upload your digital scrapbook layouts, and use the software to put them in order. That’s the easy part!
Before you get started though, you will want to adjust your pages for margin
and bleed so that nothing critical gets cut off. There are two basic concepts to understand when it comes to printing your layouts in photo books. The first is bleed. Most printers cannot print to the edge of the paper. So, in order to get full-bleed pages, your layout will be printed on a larger sheet of paper and trimmed down to size. But, when trimming a large stack of paper down to size, it is possible for those pages to shift. To ensure that you don’t see any of the plain, unprinted paper on the edges of the page when it is trimmed, an extra buffer is added around your page that is cut off before it is bound. That extra buffer is called bleed. It’s usually about 1/8″ extra on all four sides of your layout.
If you haven’t designed your layouts yet, you can adjust for bleed before you begin designing your page by making your canvas 1/4″ bigger (that’s 1/8″ for each side). In that extra bleed area, you will extend your background paper and any other items that you want falling off the edge of the page. You should not see any blank canvas or white in the bleed are when you are done.
If you have already created your page, you can still increase the canvas size and enlarge ONLY the items that you want falling off the page into that bleed area. This type of adjustment will ensure that important parts of your layout are not cut off when the book is trimmed.
The second concept to consider when designing your pages is margin. You want to keep your important photos and journaling approximately 1/3″ away from the edge of the canvas. When your book is glued together during the binding, it will most likely hide a small amount of your layout along the inner edge of the book. To make sure that nothing important gets lost or hidden in that area of the book, pay attention to your margins. If you need to, select all your photos and journaling and shrink them slightly to fit within those margins.
If you use Photoshop Creative Suite or Photoshop Elements, there is even better news! PS and PSE have the ability to automate the tasks it takes to make these adjustments. And, MyPicTales wants to make it easy for you to get your scrapbook pages printed in photo books. So we have collaborated to bring you actions and templates that will help you make these adjustments quickly by automating the repetitive tasks. It also allows you to feel confident that your layouts will print as you expect them to. Run an interactive action on your layout to resize, and add bleed. Or, if you haven’t started your layouts yet, open up a template, with clearly defined margins and guide rules, and scrap right on the template. As long as your program can open a Photoshop (.psd) file, you can use templates as a guide to ensure your layouts are designed with photobook printing in mind. These actions are available through Studio Wendy at Scrapbookgraphics.
So, what are you waiting for? Grab a cup of coffee (or tea), pull up a mouse and take action! Your photo book is only a few clicks away!
Wendyzine Scraps is a graphic designer with over 15 years experience in the printing industry, and has been creating for digital scrapbookers since 2007. Her photo book actions have helped countless digital scrapbookers transform their layouts into exquisite photo books. She is always willing to help with your photo book questions.
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