Archive for the ‘Tech and Design Tips’ Category

Creating custom wraparound photo covers

Tuesday, December 22nd, 2009

To design your own custom full wrap photo covers in Photoshop for Zookbinders PhotoBooks, PhotoBook Plus, and LustreBook, just follow these step-by-step directions.  Start by creating a new canvas in Photoshop to the specification listed in the linked PDF for wraparound cover height and width:   Cover Specs 

As an example, let us create a 10×10 cover for a 20 page (40 side) PhotoBook Plus. Remember, this chart is based on page inserts; each page on the chart equals two sides (front and back) in your book.

Width: 22.375 inches (based on the table)
Height: 11.5 inches (the same for all 10 inch high covers)
Resolution: 300 pixels/inch
Color Mode: RGB Color / 8 Bit

preset

Now we’ll set your margins. From the outer edge of each side, set a guide line in 0.75 of an inch. This is the case for ANY sized book and accounts for the part of the image that wraps around the edges of the cover and won’t be visible. In our example, margins are set at 0.75 and 21.625 inches on the outer edges and 0.75 inch and 10.75 inches from the top.

Next we’ll set the spine width which is the width of the cover face in from your edge margins. In this example we’ll have guide lines set at 10.75 and 11.625 inches. Then we set additional guide lines 0.5 inches outside the spine with for the “pinch” or hinge part of the cover on either side of the spine guides: 10.25 and 12.125 inches.

We recommend that you save this canvas at this point as a template that you can use it over and over again for books of the same size and page count.

You’re now ready to layout your cover and add your images, background, text and logo. We still recommend that you don’t place critical elements too close to the margins as our covers are hand made and very slight variations can take place. If you have any additional questions about your covers please let us know. Happy designing.

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Posted in Tech and Design Tips, What's New at Zookbinders? | 3 Comments »

ROES Do’s and Don’ts

Thursday, December 17th, 2009

Our staff works on thousands of books and albums per year. To help you eliminate problems with your orders, they have offered up these tips to help your orders flow through our facility more smoothly.

DO: Please always enter a customer reference in ROES or on your order forms. When you have multiple orders in house and don’t have an order number, a reference name makes it easier to identify the order. For Zook Books, Matted and PhotoBook Plus albums, you’ll enter the reference name in the Options diablog box. For PhotoBook only orders, you’ll enter the reference under Review Order.

custname

DO: Add your account number in ROES. With your first order, test prints or an album, you need to fill in all of your contact info in My Information and type ‘new’ for your customer number. Once you’ve established your account with Zookbinders and your account number is issued, please update your My Information dialog box with your account number.

custinfo

DON’T: Grammatically it is inappropriate to add st, nd, rd or th after the date in album titles. You’d be amazed at how often we see ‘June 23rd, 2009’ when it should simply be ‘23 June, 2009’ or ‘June 23, 2009.’

SORRY YOU CAN’T: Currently, in ROES, you are unable to order multiple copies of a PhotoBook Plus, Zook Book or Matted Album. Only PhotoBooks can be ordered in packages or with multiple copies. If you need to order multiple copies of an identical PhotoBook Plus, Zook Book or Matted Album, first create and Add to Order all of your pages and cover. Then go to Open and Save>Save this Incomplete Order and save to your desktop or dedicated folder. Close ROES and reopen. Click Open and Save>Open an Incomplete Order then click Review Order. Review and initial the order click Complete Order. Close ROES and reopen for the following album(s) adjusting the size or cover as needed.

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Making a Difference

Tuesday, December 8th, 2009

Recently, I’ve overheard a few photographers saying “Why would I want to use Zookbinders if all of my competitors are using them too?”

While it is always good to differentiate yourself from your competition, is it the album that you use that makes you different or the images you put in your albums? Of course, here at Zookbinders we pride ourselves on making high quality, hand made, books and albums. We stack ourselves against any of our competition and strive to give our customers the best possible product in which to feature their images.

But it is your images that make your album truly unique. No matter how many photographers use one orientation or another, one leather color or another or one cover style or another, it will be your images and image layouts that make your album different from your competition. How can you make your designs different from your competitions’?

1 – Be Selective. Nothing makes an album look more like a scrapbook than cramming as many images as possible into the album. Before you begin designing, carefully select which images best tell the story of your client’s big day.

2 – Use Negative Space. Some people don’t like that term, I happen to think it is a great positive. Used properly, negative space balances and actually ads impact to the corresponding image(s) it surrounds.

3 – Fewer Images for Greater Impact. When designing each page layout, once again the old axiom is true; less is more. It may take a few more pages to tell the story, but your album will have much more impact if each page spread has a more sparse design. Admittedly you may need to charge more per image to cover the added cost of more pages, but your designs will be much more dynamic.

4 – Hire a Professional. We all love photographing weddings. But not all of us love sitting behind the computer designing or have the design background to create wonderful page layouts. Consider hiring a local designer or an online design service. We at Zookbinders have a partnership with Zoho Design, www.zohodesign.com. It may cost you a bit more but you’ll have more time to photograph and be with family; you’ll be able to handle more clients in an efficient manner; and, you’ll have wonderful album designs that your clients will rave about.

5 – Packaging. As beautiful as it is, don’t just hand over your client’s finished album alone. Wrap it in a special box or bag, include ribbon or a bow, include referral cards and include a complimentary portrait session to get your wedding clients back in the door for a future session and order.

Do you have design tips of your own you’d like to share? Let us know. Send us a message with your tips on making your albums unique.

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The color of money

Tuesday, November 24th, 2009

One of the most important things you can do to make money in professional photography is to have an efficient and consistent workflow. Part of that workflow is knowing basic color management. By properly managing your digital files you’ll get better results, and actually save time and save money.

Zookbinders’ printers, as those within most labs, print in the sRGB color space. The key to good color, however, is consistency. Whether you choose to shoot and work in the sRGB or AdobeRGB color space, you should pick one and be consistent. In your camera as well as your computer, select your preferred color space. In Photoshop you’ll select it in Working Space under Color Settings. Also select Convert to Working RGB under Color Management Properties and uncheck Ask When Opening and Ask When Pasting if you’d like Photoshop to automatically convert your files. When saving your JPEG files, make sure to check the “Embed Color Profile” check box so that your printer will know your color space and you will have predictable results.

Now to help stay in the black with money that is green, you’ll also need to have a properly calibrated and profiled monitor. The easiest and most accurate way to do this is with a calibration device such as those available from Xrite, DataColor or GretagMacbeth. These devices, with their software, remove any color cast from your screen, optimize brightness and contrast and create a profile for your monitor. Photoshop uses this profile when displaying your images to give you the most accurate color display possible.

By taking control of your monitors and your images, you will be assured that what you send Zookbinders or your lab will look the way you expect. Sure a calibration device can require a $150-$200 investment, but in the end you’ll save much more in time, remakes, and lab fees as most labs to offer discounts for studio managed color prints.

Let us know what you think or your tips for color management and stay tuned for those next tips as you start the process of calibrating your monitor.

Scott Patrick, Zookbinders Marketing and Sales Staff

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An American Idol: 5 Tips to Make Your Albums Sing

Monday, November 9th, 2009

1. Find out what type of book your client wants

The first step in designing your client’s album is knowing what type of album they’d like. While the flush, coffee table book styled albums are all the rage these days, there is still a small demand for matted albums. Of course within each style there are a variety of options in manufacturing, size and format. Show and explain the differences to your clients and get them excited about the style they choose.

2. Pre-design

Initially it may sound counter intuitive, but pre-designing your clients’ albums, in the long run, will actually save you time. Who knows your images better, has the experience and has the creative vision to design your client’s wedding album? You do.While your clients are on their honeymoon, edit their images, create a folder of album favorites and create and album layout BEFORE they return and see the rest of their images. They will be wowed by your images and your design and it will be much easier for them to understand the final product. Sure they make a few changes for some images, but in general, your clients will trust your design talents and you will see completed album sales much quicker than waiting for them to pick out their favorite images. We recommend over designing the album with more images or more pages than included in their package. While it is best to show your layout in person in your studio, you can post your layout online as well, but be sure to explain why you created the layouts you did so that they don’t pick apart each individual page layout. They can always eliminate pages or you can upsell them on the additional pages or a multi-volume set.

3. Less is More

Some of the most beautifully designed albums actually use fewer images, or at least more sparsely laid out pages. These pages look less cluttered and truly highlight your images. On average, four to five images per two page spread offers some wonderful design options. One design approach is to feature a single image on one half of the page spread, the key image for that part of the story, with smaller, accompanying images on the opposite page. Less is more and simple is beautiful.

4. Tell a story

The most successful wedding albums tell a story. The success and beauty of this story not only depends on your album design and how you visually take the viewer through the album, but the images you take as well. Remember the five Ws of journalism – Who, What, When, Where and Why. Capturing all of the people, places, details, events and emotions of your client’s day will insure that they’ll be able to relive their entire day through your images.

5. Don’t forget the family

Not in an ominous way like Don Vito Corleone might have said it, “Never go against the family,” but in a joyous way, we suggest that you remember the bride and groom’s family when designing your albums. Once you’ve designed your main album, with just a click of your mouse you can order parent albums, grandparent albums and even wedding party albums that are clones of the original, a fraction of the cost. This can mean lots of happy people and great additional profits.

Time to vote for your “Idol Album Tips.” Share with us your favorite album tips so we can all vote on the best one.

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