Windows Users

• Click on the link to install TaleWeaver for Photo Calendars and Cards.

Mac Users

• Click on the link to unstuff Taleweaver for Photo Calendars and cards.

Upon launching you will be offered three options :

• Create new book - Make a new photo book project.
• Open saved book - An earlier project.
• Cancel - Quit.

Select the option that fits your need. The next window that will open depends on the selection you make here.

Upon selecting Create New Book you will be able to choose from one of many available sizes supported by MyPicTales to create your photo book with the option of choosing from one of the many available sizes that MyPicTales supports:

Select the desired template and click OK. Once the template is chosen you can customize almost every visual aspect of your photo book.

The photo book templates can be changed at any point during the design process. However make sure you have checked the layout with the new designs. The photo book templates are all designed for specific paper sizes. So choosing the improper layout will ruin the look of your Photo Book.

The Classic

• 8.5" x 11"
• Landscape , Portrait
• Customized Hard Cover, Soft Cover (Perfect Bound or Wired), Standard Hard Cover.

The Handy Dandy

• 5" x 7"
• Landscape , Portrait
• Customized Hard Cover, Soft Cover (Perfect Bound or Wired), Standard Hard Cover.

The Legend

• 12" x 12"
• Landscape , Portrait
• Customized Hard Cover, Soft Cover (Perfect Bound or Wired), Standard Hard Cover.

The Square

• 10" x 10"
• Landscape , Portrait

The navigation items have been named intuitively to make your experience much more friendlier.

• Load pictures for your album in the bottom bar by clicking on the folder icon in Book Pictures

Choose from a default set of layouts for your photo book found under 'Page Layouts'. You can also create your own photo book layout by dragging pictures around with your mouse.

Select from our various images for your photo book background, or choose your own image.

Choose to apply borders to your pictures.

• Add Captions

Unable to decide what layout to make ?? Well there are the default book templates to choose from.

New - Start creating your own photo book
New book with easy wizard - Begin a new photo book using easy wizard
Open - Open a saved project
Close - Close current project
Delete - Delete current project
Save- Save current project
Save As - Save current project
Preflight Send To MyPicTales - Send to MyPicTales for printing
Exit - Quit my photo books

Undo - undo last operation
Redo - Redo last undo operation
Delete - Delete selection
Cut - Cut to clipboard
Copy - Copy to clipboard
Paste - Paste clipboard
Edit Text - Edit caption text
Delete Page - Delete the page
Clear Page - Clear the page
Remove Page Background - Remove current page background
Remove Image - Remove selected image
Remove Border - Remove applied border in selected image

Insert new page - Insert a page into you photo book
Append New Page - Add Page at end of current book
New Caption - Add a caption
New Picture - Add A frame

Filter - Apply the black and white filter and/or sepia filter
Fade - Control the Fade i.e brightness of the Picture.
Format Selected Item -
Fit Frame to Image -

Distribute Pictures -
Order - Change the ordering of your picture similar to layers
Rotate - Change the rotation of your picture

Facing Pages - Show two pages (book view) of album
Single Page - Show one page at a time
Hide Book Monitor - Toggle visibility of the book monitor
Setup Grid
Show Grid
Snap to Grid

User Guide - open the online user guide
Online FAQ - Visit the MyPicTales site for FAQs
About My photo books - About taleWeaver photo books

More detail.

Clicking on the Fast Track Button brings up the following dialog box:

Choose the kind of cover you would like to have on your photo book.

Once you are finished designing the Photo Book choose Send to MyPicTales from File.

Click on View Pages to preview your Photo Book. You will need Adobe Acrobat Reader from Adobe.
Tick the Check Box to continue to upload the file to MyPicTales.

Click OK to proceed to the MyPicTales website & complete your order.

Book Monitor

A new bar will appear underneath the photo book pages scrollbar. If your photo book contains no errors, the bar will be blank. If however, there are issues with any page, color-coded boxes will appear for those pages with errors.

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.

Two-Page Spreads

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.

Two-Page SpreadsAdjusting & cropping your pictures

Black & white and sepia filters, fading

Aligning pictures

Removing & duplicating frames/pictures

Photo book cover
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.

Designing pages in Adobe Photoshop®

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 1/8 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 8.3 inch wide, your page design should be 8.55 inch wide with the bleed (1/8" + 8.3" + 1/8").

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 1/8" from all sides of the page (1/4" is even better) 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