Creating Books

Aperture provides a built-in book-making facility that provides layout tools for designing professional-looking picture books. After building your book in Aperture, you can upload it to Apple's book-printing service, where it will be printed and bound and then shipped to you via regular mail.

While the print quality is not as good as what you get from a high-quality desktop photo printer (or as good as the quality delivered by the Order Prints option, which we'll look at later), it's still very good, and the overall look of the books is polished and professional. The Aperture book-making facility is ideal for making courtesy books for clients, delivering mock-ups of a layout or book design, or creating gifts.

Creating a Book

An Aperture book is just like an album or Web gallery in that it simply contains pointers to images in your project.

To create a book, follow these steps:

1.	Select the images that you want to include in the book and then choose File > New > Book or click the New Book button on the toolbar.
2.	In the dialog box that appears, pick a book size and theme (Figure 8.17). Figure 8.17. When you create a new book, Aperture first asks you to choose a theme for the book. The theme will determine page layouts, color scheme, and type options. Currently, Aperture provides two book sizes: Mini, which creates 2.6 x 3.5-inch books, offered in packs of three only; and Standard, which creates 8.5 x 11-inch books, offered in hardcover and softcover versions. You can choose the desired size from the Book Size pop-up menu. Aperture provides six predefined themes, and each theme provides different layout options. You can change the book's theme later if your initial choice does not provide the look that you want.
3.	Click Choose Theme, and Aperture will add a book to your project and place your selected images in it. You can add more images at any time by dragging them into the Book entry in the Projects pane.

Creating a Book Layout

As with Web galleries, when you select a book in the Projects pane, Aperture displays its book editing interface (Figure 8.18).

Figure 8.18. When you select a book in the Projects pane, Aperture displays its book editor in the Viewer pane.

By default, all books begin with 20 pages, each of which holds placeholder text blocks and empty image boxes. You can add or delete pages (additional pages cost more, but if you have fewer than 20 pages, you'll still pay the same base price) as well as change the layout and contents of the pages.

Navigating your book is simple: in the Pages panel, just click the page that you want to view. By default, Aperture displays two-page spreads. If you're working with a small screen, you may want to switch to single-page view by clicking the Show Single Pages button below the page display.

Choosing a New Master Page Design

Aperture provides a choice of page layouts, called master pages, and you can select new layouts on a page-by-page basis. Each book theme provides a different set of layouts appropriate to that theme's design.

To change a page's master page, follow these steps:

1.	In the Pages panel, select the page you want to alter.
2.	Select a new master page design from the Set Master Page menu located below the Pages panel. Your page will immediately change layout. If you are switching from a page design that includes text blocks to one that doesn't include text blocks, then you will lose any text that you've added to the page.

Editing Text

You can edit the text in any text box by double-clicking it. To change the style of the text, select a new style from the Set Text Style menu (Figure 8.19). The options in this menu will vary depending on the theme you have selected. A text block can have only one style applied to it, and you cannot change the style of individual words within a text block.

Figure 8.19. In a book layout, you have several choices for the style of your text blocks.

Adding Images

You can add an image to any photo boxthe large shaded boxes with the + signs in the middleby dragging an image from the Browser pane into the box (Figure 8.20). The image will be scaled to fit the box. After you've added an image to a book, Aperture adds a small number badge to its thumbnail in the Browser pane, to indicate the number of times that the image has been used in the book.

Figure 8.20. You can place images in any photo box by dragging them from the Browser pane.

Zooming and cropping an image: You can zoom into and pan around an image in a photo box by double-clicking the image to invoke the Image Scale HUD. Drag the slider to the right to zoom in on the image. Click in the gray area surrounding the book layout to dismiss the HUD. If you've zoomed in on an image, you can pan around it by clicking and dragging the image.

Changing the aspect ratio of a photo box: If your image does not have the same aspect ratio as the photo box that you've placed it in, it will be cropped. You can automatically resize the photo box to match your image by clicking the Edit Layout button and then Control-clicking (or right-clicking, if you have a two-button mouse) the image. From the pop-up menu, choose Photo Box Aspect Ratio > Photo Aspect Ratio (Figure 8.21). The box will be resized to match your image.

Figure 8.21. By Control-clicking an image, you can ask Aperture to automatically change the aspect ratio of a photo box to match the aspect ratio of the image that's been placed inside it.

Changing the size of a photo box: In Edit Layout mode, you can resize a photo box, even one that already contains an image, by dragging the control handles along the edges of the box. Hold down the Shift key while dragging to maintain the aspect ratio.

Rotating an image You can rotate an image within its photo box by double-clicking the image to make it editable and then using the rotation tools to rotate it in 90-degree increments. You cannot arbitrarily rotate a photo box.

Adding a Photo Filter

Aperture provides some built-in filter effects that can be applied to any image in a book layout. You can use these filters to perform black-and-white conversions and sepia conversions and apply a wash to an image to make it appear lightly screened (Figure 8.22).

Figure 8.22. Using the Set Photo Filter menu, we applied a Light Wash filter to this image to screen it back, making the text box on top of it more readable.

Filter effects that you apply in a book layout are visible only in the book; they do not appear on the images in your library.

To apply a photo filter, select the image that you want to filter and then choose the filter you want to apply from the Set Photo Filter menu.

Autofilling Book Pages

Aperture can automatically build pages for you using your remaining unused images. Select the page on which you want to begin autofilling and then choose Autofill Unplaced Images from the action menu below the Pages panel. Aperture will fill the remaining photo boxes in your book with your unused images.

If you want to limit the images that Aperture uses, select the images that you want to use and then choose Autofill Selected Images from the action menu.

Customizing Book Pages

You can freely edit Aperture's book layouts, to tweak them to meet the needs of your particular project. Aperture's book editing facilities are powerful enough that you can completely rebuild pages to your own design.

Changing the Layout of Text Blocks

You can change the size of a text block or move the block on the page by clicking the Edit Layout button. Handles will appear on the text block, and you can use these to stretch and drag the block. As you drag, alignment guides appear to help you align blocks.

In Edit Layout mode, you can also add text blocks by clicking the Add Text Box button or choosing Add > Text Box from the action menu below the Pages panel.

When you're done editing, switch back to Book Layout mode by clicking the Edit Content button.

Changing the number of columns in a text bock: You can give a text box a columnar layout by choosing Text Block Columns from the action menu below the Pages panel.

Changing text box alignment: You can change the alignment of text within a block by choosing Text Box Alignment from the action menu below the Pages panel.

Adding a Photo Box

You can add as many photo boxes as you like to a page. To add a new one, select the page to which you want to add the box. Click the Edit Layout button and then click Add Photo Box to add a new box. You can then resize and position the box.

Tip

You can create overlapping text and photo boxes simply by layering the boxes on top of each other. You can change the stacking order of the currently selected item by using the Send Backward and Bring Forward buttons.

Adding a Metadata Box

If you want to automatically display the metadata for a particular image, you can add a metadata box. Click the Add Metadata Box button and then position and size the box.

You must configure the text box to display the appropriate metadata:

1.	Click the page to which you want to add the metadata box.
2.	Select the metadata box and the picture that you want it associated with.
3.	With both items selected, Control-click (or right-click if you have a two-button mouse) the metadata box and then choose Link Metadata Box from the pop-up menu. This command tells Aperture to display the metadata from the linked image.
4.	Click the Set Metadata Format button and then select the metadata set that you want displayed in the selected metadata box.

Changing the Page Background

In addition to adding images to photo boxes, you can drag images directly onto the page background. The image will fill the entire page, and all other elements on the page will sit on top of it. You can still zoom and pan the image, but you can't change its aspect ratio.

To add an image to a page background, drag it from the Browser pane to the white part of the page (or the black part, if you're using a theme with black pages). The page will be highlighted in gray to indicate that the image will be added to the page background.

Note

You can apply the same filter effects to background images that you can apply to photo boxes.

The ability to add images to the page backgrounds gives you lots of additional design and layout possibilities, because you can design page elementsor even entire pagessave them as images, and then import those images into Aperture and place them on a book page.

For example, by default Aperture's themes have a white or black background. You can change the background color of a page using the following technique:

1.	In your image editor, create a document that is 8.5 x 11 inches with a resolution of 300 ppi.
2.	Fill the document with your desired page color.
3.	Save the colored document as a TIFF file and then import it into the Aperture project that contains your book.
4.	Add the document to your book.
5.	Drag the file into the page background of the page that you want to color. You can now create text or photo boxes on top of this page.

Using this technique, you can perform some additional layout functions that Aperture doesn't currently provide:

Use additional typefaces: Aperture doesn't let you use any typefaces besides those included in the Set Text Style menu. However, you can use your image editor to create a background image that has the text that you want, styled and positioned to your liking, and then import that image into Aperture and place your images over it. Obviously, you will not be able to edit the text in Aperture. You can also use this technique to add graphic elements such as border lines.

Create complex image layouts: While Aperture lets you design pages with multiple, overlapping text and image boxes, it doesn't let you arbitrarily rotate images or perform other more sophisticated layout tricks. However, you can lay out your page in your image editor, position your images as you like there, and save the entire layout as an image that you can then import and place on a page background (Figure 8.23).

Figure 8.23. If you need to create more complex layouts than what Aperture's built-in tools are capable of, consider designing a page in an external application and then applying it to a page background in your Apple book.

Saving Custom Pages

If you've customized the layout of a page and want to be able to easily apply that layout to other pages in your book, you can save the custom layout by choosing Save Page > As New Document Master from the action menu below the Pages panel.

The new page layout will appear in the Master Page menu. Note that images added to page backgrounds are not saved in the master page definition.

Outputting Your Book

When you're ready to output your book, you have two options:

• Click the Buy Book button to order an Apple-printed book. After you complete the book order form, Aperture will prepare your book file and then upload it to the book ordering server.
  
  
• Click the Print button to print the book yourself on your own printer. Aperture comes with book-printing presets; we'll cover printing in detail in the next section. Note that, from the Print dialog box, you can also save your book as a PDF document. You can then submit this file to other book-printing services.
  
  

Edit Any Time

Remember, even if you're currently building a Web gallery, light table, book, or album in Aperture, you can still freely edit your images just as you normally would. There is no editing mode in Aperture, and all of your adjustment tools are always available.

For example, while working on a book layout, if you decide that an image needs a slight Levels adjustment, just select the image directly on the layout, open the Inspector panel or the Adjustments HUD, and make your changes. You don't have to leave the book layout or move any files.

Even better, press F to switch to full-screen mode. With this single keypress, you leave the book editing interface and go to a spacious, full-screen editing environment. When you press F again to leave full-screen mode, you'll be right back in your book layout, but with your image now adjusted.

Aperture's lack of specific modes makes it more flexible than any other image editor.