10.3. Phase 3: Design the PagesiPhoto is nearly ready to lead you into Book Layout Land, where you'll see, for the first time, your pictures inserted into Apple's page designs. First, though, an important message appears shown in Figure 10-3. It's letting you know that, at least for the moment, your book is completely blank; gray rectangles appear where pictures ought to be. It's your job to put the photos on the pages. And there's two ways to go about it:
Think about it, and then click OK. Two things have now happened . First, a new icon appears in your Source list, representing the book layout you're about to create. You can work with it as you would other kinds of Source-list icons. For example, you can delete it by dragging it to the iPhoto Trash, rename it by double-clicking, file it in a folder by dragging it there, and so on. Note: If you're used to previous iPhoto versions, this is a happy bit of news. It means that a book is no longer tied to an album. Therefore, rearranging or reassigning photos in the original album no longer wreaks havoc with the book design that's associated with it. Figure 10-4. Book mode is a miniature page-layout program right in iPhoto. Use the picture- size slider to zoom in or out from the page you're working on, which can be handy when you're editing captions at small type sizes. Also note the single-page / two-page switch at the lower-left corner. For books with two-sided printing, it lets you specify whether you want to edit single pages or two-page spreads .Second, you now see something like Figure 10-4. The page you're working on always appears at nearly full size in the main part of the window. Up above, you see a set of thumbnails, either of your photos or of your book pages (more on this in a moment); that's the photo browser . iPhoto has just turned into a page-layout program. Once you've selected an album and a theme, the most time-consuming phase begins: designing the individual pages. 10.3.1. Open a PageThat photo browser at the top of the window has two functions, as represented by the two tiny icons at its left edge. When you click the top one (the blue page button), you see miniatures of the pages in your book. This is your navigation tool, your master scroll bar. When you click one of the page thumbnails, the full-sized (well, fuller - sized ) image of that page appears in the main editing area. The lower icon presents a desktop, a pasteboard , a temporary scrapbook, for unplaced photos pictures that you've said you want in your book, but haven't yet inserted. (You can see this view of the photo browser in Figure 10-9.) The unplaced-photos area is also convenient for dragging the photos into a satisfying sequence before you transfer them onto the book's pages. In any case, the first step in building your book is to click a page to work on. Most people start with the Cover pagethe first thumbnail in the row. When it's selected, the cover photo appears in the main picture area. This is the picture that will appear, centered, on the linen or glossy cover of the actual book. You can't do much with the cover except to change the title or subtitle ; see "Editing Text" in Section 10.4.1. You'll choose the cover color in a later step. Tip: The picture you see here is the first picture in the album or selected group . If it's not the photo you want on the cover, you can drag a different photo into its place, as described in the following pages. 10.3.2. Choose a Page TypeAfter you're finished working with the cover, open the next page you want to work on. If you did some preliminary photo-arranging work (in an album, for example), your photos should already be in roughly the right order for the book pagesbut not necessarily the right groupings . Whether you opted to have your photos placed into the book manually or automatically, you can see that iPhoto cheerfully suggests varying the number of photos per page. Two-per-page on the first page, a big bold one on the next, a set of four on the next, and so on. If you approve of the photos-per-page proposal, great. You can go to work choosing which photos to put on each page, as described in the following pages. Sooner or later, though, there will come a time when you want three related photos to appear on a page that currently holds only two. That's the purpose of the Page Type pop-up menu shown in Figure 10-5. It's a list of the different page designs that Apple has drawn up to fit the overall design theme you've selected. You control how many pictures appear on a page by choosing from the Page Type pop-up menu. Your choices are:
10.3.3. Pick a Layout VariationOnce you've chosen how many photos you want on a page, the Page Design pop-up menu becomes available to you. As shown at right in Figure 10-5, it contains tiny thumbnail representations of the various photo layouts available. If you chose Three as the number of photos, for example, the Page Design pop-up menu may offer you a choice of page background (for a three-photo layout) or a couple of different arrangements of those three photosbig one on top, two down the side, or whatever. In some themes, especially the older ones, you're not offered any choices at all. There's only one arrangement for a two-photo layout, one for a three-photo layout, and so on. In some themes, a page type may offer over a dozen variations. Try before you buy. 10.3.4. Lay Out the BookThe key to understanding iPhoto 6's book-layout mode is realizing that all photos are draggable . Dragging is the key to all kinds of book-design issues. In fact, between dragging photos and using a handful of menu commands, you can perform every conceivable kind of photo- and page-manipulation trick there is.
10.3.4.1. Ways to manipulate photosHere are all the different ways to move photos around in your book (see Figure 10-6 for a summary): Figure 10-6. iPhoto's book-layout mode is absolutely crawling with tricks that let you move photos around, add them to pages, remove them, and so on. The fun begins when you finally understand the difference between the page browser (top) and the unplaced-photos browser (bottom). |
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTION The Save Command |
Yowhere's the Save command ? There isn't one. iPhoto automatically saves your work as you go. If you want to make a safety copy along the waythat is, a fallback versionControl-click the book's icon in the Source list and then, from the shortcut menu, choose Duplicate. This process takes virtually no extra memory or disk space, but it's good insurance. If you change the layout or theme of a book, iPhoto vaporizes all the text you've entered (and often a lot of the layout work). If that ever happens, you'll be glad you had a backup. |
When you're finished editing, click Done (or, if you're editing in a separate window, close it). You return to the layout mode, with the changes intact.
Photos aren't the only ones having all the fun. You can drag and manipulate the pages themselves , too:
Move pages around within the book by dragging their thumbnails horizontally in the photo browser.
Remove a page from the book by clicking its photo-browser icon and then either pressing Delete or choosing Edit Remove Page. (If you use the Delete-key method, iPhoto asks if youre sure you know what you're doing.)
Note that removing a page never removes any pictures from the book. They just fall into the unplaced-photos area, ready to use later if you like. But removing a page does vaporize any captions you've carefully typed in.
Insert a new page into the book by clicking the Add Page button at the bottom of the window, or by choosing Edit Add Page.
Before you go nuts with it, though, note that iPhoto inserts the new page after the page you're currently viewing. It's helpful, therefore, to begin by first clicking the desired page thumbnail (in the page browser at the top of the window).
If you have some leftover pictures in the unplaced-photos area, iPhoto uses them to fill the new page; if not, you just get empty gray placeholders. (iPhoto takes it upon itself to decide how many photos appear on the new page.) In any case, now you know how to change the number of photos on that page, or at least how to replace the pictures that iPhoto put there.
Sometimes chronological order is the natural sequence for your photos, especially for memento books of trips, parties, weddings, and so on. Of course, there's nothing to stop you from cheating a bitrearranging certain scenesfor greater impact and variety.
As you drag your pictures into order, consider these effects:
Intersperse group shots with solo portraits, scenery with people shots, vertical photos with horizontal ones.
On multiple-photo pages, exploit the direction your subjects face (Figure 10-8). On a three-picture page, for example, you could arrange the people in the photos so that they're all looking roughly toward the center of the page, for a feeling of inclusion. You might put a father looking upward to a shot of his son diving on a photo higher on the page, or a brother and sister back-to-back facing outward, signifying competition.
Group similar shots together on a page.
iPhoto's design templates operate on the simple premise that all of your photos have a 4:3 aspect ratio. That is, the long and short sides of the photo are in four-to-three proportion (four inches to three inches, for example).
In most cases, that's what you already have, since those are the standard proportions of standard digital photos. If all your pictures are in 4:3 (or 3:4) proportion, they'll fit neatly and beautifully into the page- layout slots iPhoto provides for them.
But not all photos have a 4:3 ratio. You may have cropped a photo into some other shape. Or you may have a camera that can take pictures in the more traditional 3:2 film dimension (1800 x 1200 pixels, for example), which work better as 4 x 6 prints.
When these photos land in one of iPhoto's page designs, the program tries to save you the humiliation of misaligned photos, which was a chronic problem in iPhoto 4. Rather than leave unsightly strips of white along certain edges (therefore producing photos that aren't aligned with each other), iPhoto 6 automatically blows up a miscropped photo so that it perfectly fills the 4:3 space allotted to it. Figure 10-9 shows the effect.
Unfortunately, this solution isn't always ideal. Sometimes, in the process of enlarging a nonstandard photo to fill its 4:3 space, iPhoto winds up lopping off an important part of the picturesomebody's forehead, say.
Here, you have two alternatives. First, you can use the Fit Photo to Frame Size command described in Figure 10-10.
Second, you can crop your non-4:3 photos using the Constrain pop-up menu (Section 6.5.1) set to "4 x 3 (Book)." This way, you get to decide which parts of the photo get lopped off. (Or just use the adjustment technique shown in Figure 10-8.)
The book can have anywhere from 10 to 100 pages (or 20 to 100 for double-sided pages). If you try to create more than that, iPhoto scolds you and dumps the excess photos onto your unplaced-photos shelf.
Of course, if you really have more than 100 pages' worth of pictures, there's nothing to stop you from creating multiple books. ("Our Trip to New Jersey, Vol. XI," anyone ?)
Don't be alarmed if iPhoto puts page numbers on the corners of your book pages that's strictly a function of the theme you've chosen. (Some have numbering, some don't.) In any case, you never have to worry about a page number winding up superimposed on one of your pictures. A picture always takes priority, covering up the page number.
Even so, if it turns out that your theme does put numbers on your pages, and you feel that they're intruding on the mood your book creates, you can eliminate them. Click the Settings button at the bottom of the window. In the resulting dialog box, you'll see a "Show page numbers" checkbox that you can turn off.