Building Albums with InDesign
If you’re using Photoshop to design your albums, let Kevin Swan show you how you can be up to 60% faster on your FIRST ALBUM, using Adobe InDesign, part of the CS2 suite. Kevin can design beautiful 80-page albums in less than 4 hours. That’s 20 pages per hour!
“If you want to speed up your workflow, and you own InDesign, this will be the BEST MONEY YOU’VE EVER SPENT! I don’t often get over excited about tutorial videos, but this one - it’s going to give me my life back! ” — Crystal at Studio Vitae
The video is 40 minutes long and covers the following:
“I just watched Kevin’s video and it does indeed ROCK. I learned enough in less than an hour to actually use InDesign, and I’ve paid for other tutorials before and not learned it well enough to actually use. So it’s well WELL worth the $$…and that totally makes this a ‘must not miss’ deal!” –Bill with Cloudspot.com
HELPFUL LINKS! (from www.nobledesktop.com):
For a list of keyboard shortcuts, go to: PC or Mac
Free 30-Day Indesign Trial
Order Now: Click HERE!
on January 23rd, 2007 at 5:23 pm
OK! We finally got the comments working on pages. If you have questions about the InDesign Video, please post them here!
RF
on January 23rd, 2007 at 7:19 pm
Somehow I knew I’d be the first to ask questions!
Is there a way to ‘action’ like things in InD, like automatically add guides around the edges of your pages? I know you can drag the guides out, but I would love a faster way!
Thanks!
on January 23rd, 2007 at 7:30 pm
Layout/Margins & Rulers will give you the margin lines and columns. Hope that helps!
RF
on January 23rd, 2007 at 7:46 pm
Sorry, I should’ve phrased it better! Say I need two sets of margins, one for trim and one for the ’safe zone’ (like Graphi does). I use the Margins & Rulers for the trim, but I still need one for the ’safe zone’. I know I can drag it out manually, but wondering if there is a quicker (or better) way to do it.
Thanks!
on January 23rd, 2007 at 8:45 pm
Ah!
Most vendors will have you design your book to the size of the finished page. E.g., in the sample, Kevin talks about a 10×10 and so he makes his pages 20×10 (for a full spread). The 20×10 page IS the cut size. You can bring things right to the edge and know that your album vendor will always trim in slightly smaller than the edge. The final page size will be slightly smaller than 20×10.
Kevin uses a 1/2″ margin to make sure he’s well safe from even a vendor who may cut more than a 16th of an inch.
However, If you have an album company that requests bleeding past the cut size, you can also just design your albums slightly past the page boundaries. In your new document page setup (or in File/Document Setup), you’ll see a “more options” button. Click that and then determine just how much of a bleed your album vendor requires. When you go back to your page, you’ll see a red line showing your bleed, a black line showing your page edge, and a purple line for your margin (assuming you haven’t changed the defaults.
When you export, make sure in your PDF settings under Marks and Bleeds that you have the “Use document’s bleed and slug” box checked.
Rebel Fish hopes this helps!
on January 24th, 2007 at 7:16 pm
Hi Kev:
quick question… typically my last stage in album design (photojunction, photoshop, whatever) is to sharpen the images AT THEIR FINAL OUTPUT SIZE to get the best prints.
Do you have any advice on the best way to accomplish this within the framework of how ID works?
Ben
on January 24th, 2007 at 9:57 pm
Rebel Fish has never had any issues with sharpening being a problem. All her images are sharpened according to Lightroom settings before being rendered as JPEGs. No further sharpening or attention has ever been necessary, nor does she think it will have any noticeable effect on final output.
That being said, there’s no simple way to automate such a thing in InDesign.
on January 28th, 2007 at 4:52 pm
One of the tips not mentioned in the video: Option-Double-click on an image to launch it in Photoshop (or other external editor). Woot!
on January 28th, 2007 at 10:36 pm
Question:
“Hey Kevin…. one little thing i noticed is that you didn’t touch on using text on the albums.. is this something that is easy to do with inDesign (i assume so).. any tips for newbies?”
Kevin says to simply select the text tool, drag a box the size of the text box you wish to fill, and away you go! There are palettes for paragraph and font information that are standard to most programs.
on January 30th, 2007 at 8:53 am
Hey Kevin -
Quick Question -
How can one make guides appear across multiple layouts in inD?
Eric
on January 30th, 2007 at 11:35 am
Eric,
Rebel Fish assumes you mean having the same guides from one spread appear on others? You can insert them on the master pages (in your pages palette), which will then cause them to appear on all subsequent pages using that master.
RF
on January 31st, 2007 at 3:55 am
Question:
1. When I export to a PDF from InDesign, the black backgrounds turn dark charcoal gray. But when I export to low res jpegs from InDesign (for the ShowIt slideshow) they stay black like they are supposed to.
2. On some of the pages (it seems random) the images look almost as if I lowered the transparency on them, but I didnt. This only happens when I export to PDF though. Exporting to low res jpegs looks fine.
Answer:
Rebel Fish is guessing you’re working in CMYK instead of RGB. Did you keep Kevin’s export settings from the video? Also, check your black, make sure it’s an RGB black, not a CMYK. You can look in the color palette and make sure RGB is selected in stead of CMYK. One other thing to check: Edit/transparency blendspace/document RGB.
Look there first!
on February 17th, 2007 at 8:07 am
Hi Kevin -
Just got done designing a 10×20 LC album - It took about 45 min for 21 spreads - Fantastic.
My client wants to save a few dollars and wants an album with a gutter. Is there an easy way to cut the pages in half to 10×10 size? I know I can get them printed as 20×10 and then cut them down, but a 10×10 is less costly to print.
on February 25th, 2007 at 11:11 pm
Kevin, awesome work. You just saved me countless hours and improved the quality of our albums. Looking forward to your future videos!
on March 15th, 2007 at 9:40 pm
Hello, I have been working in both photoshop and indesign for years now, but now my new job requires that I use photojunction. I feel like the program is holding me back creatively and find it very frustrating. Do you have a suggestion for a good workflow from indesign to photojunction? I thought about changing them to eps/rastarize in photoshop then pulling them into photojunction, but that seems like such a waste of time. Is there a way to do it more efficiently? and does your video cover this type of work?
on April 3rd, 2007 at 2:00 am
It’s about time people figured out to use InDesign for albums. Every time I see another album company trying to sell their own album design software for $500+ it angers me because it’s such a disservice to photographers. You can get InDesign for $600 and it does WAY more than those other programs. Or you can get the design suite with Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, and Acrobat for just over $1K.
Do yourselves a HUGE favor and avoid all other album design software. Just buy InDesign. Then go out and buy “InDesign CS/CS2 Breakthroughs” by David Blatner, or “InDesign CS/CS2 Killer Tips” by Scott Kelby.
InDesign rocks.
- Jon
on April 6th, 2007 at 12:02 am
Eric:
Instead of designing a 10×10 page, design a 10×10 and have the pages facing (in the page setup) (sorry for the delay)
Elizabeth:
The video doesn’t cover Photo Junction. But, if it supports browsing a JPEG image library, then you should be able to drag and drop from it into InDesign.
on April 25th, 2007 at 2:35 am
Haven’t seen the video but you say in an earlier post that for a 10″ x 10″ album you set the page size to 20″ x 10″ for the spread. Wouldn’t you be better off keeping the page size at 10″ x 10″, ticking ‘facing pages’ and then ticking ’spreads’ when finally exporting to PDF? I think this gives more flexibility with master pages, moving pages around, auto page numbering, guides etc etc.
on April 25th, 2007 at 1:30 pm
a few questions for you…we are using InDesign & Kevin’s tutorial for Asuka books.
1. do you need to enter .5″ for the gutter?
2. we are using InDesign 2.0; when we import an image into the page (using direct selection tool to fit the page) it always comes in HUGE and we have to use the Object–Fitting–Fit Content Proportionally. In the tutorial Kevin just imports and it seems to size automatically. Any ideas?
3. Why are images importing VERY GRAINY? We have viewed them at 50% and 100% and some images are way grainier looking than they should be??
on April 29th, 2007 at 6:09 pm
Gareth, you can certainly roll that way.
Geneve, 1: the gutter measurement is totally arbitrary. Rebel Fish just likes to have a reminder to keep important things off the center line.
2. If you create a box, drop an image into it, resize it to fit — then DUPLICATE that box, and drag an image in, it should also be resized to fit. Just duplicate those a few times, then duplicate a few spreads. That should help!
3. if they export OK as a PDF, then you shouldn’t worry. You can also set the view to high-resolution instead of medium or proxy, but that slows things down (it’s under ‘view’). Remember: InDesign is fast because it’s not working with full resolution images!
Hope that helps.
on May 3rd, 2007 at 11:00 am
Thanks for the responses Kevin. One more question. It’s a big one. Do you know how, exactly, I can submit these files to Asuka? We designed a 10 page 7×7 book and we want to have Asuka print it. Asuka just keeps saying “we recommend Photoshop.” They literally will not answer our questions. Don’t they just need PDFs? Does it really matter how we get from point a to point z??? HELP.
PS–we use Mac so can’t use the elusive file checker software.
on May 29th, 2007 at 12:29 pm
Geneve-
They do currently have a Mac file checker, here’s the page:
http://asukabook.com/getstarted-overview.html
And the direct link to the file:
http://asukabook.com/downloads/ASUKABOOK_Mac/File%20Checker/File%20Checker%201.4.sitx
Asuka’s file utility also builds a cover page into the PDF with the order details, which are probably important to their fulfillment process. Also, their file checker looks specifically for Jpeg files in the source folder, I don’t believe it will run if it’s finding PDF’s.
At current, my best response is to export from InD (CS3) at 271dpi (Asuka’s format), then open each exported Jpeg, copy and paste it into the Jpeg template from Asuka.
A continuation of this question…
Is there a way to change the file naming or numering scheme when exporting from InDesign to match the Asuka file naming? I don’t think so, but that would solve it.
Or could we create an action that opens all the files of the InDesign export file naming, then openes each of the Asuka template Jpegs by the correct name, then automate the cut and paste? Sounds pretty easy except for the complication of paths and file names in an action.
on May 29th, 2007 at 1:46 pm
If you export as a high-res PDF, then you can save the PDF pages as JPEGs from Acrobat. That should shut Asuka up! You can also submit the files as a PDF directly to KISS Wedding Books.
on May 29th, 2007 at 3:28 pm
Kevin,
Thanks for the info! Good stuff. There’s no way currently to change the file naming format from InDesign. Rebel Fish uses A Better Finder Rename for all of her renaming needs. It rocks!
on July 3rd, 2007 at 1:36 am
Kevin,
I loved your tutorial. Just one question. It’s my first time designing an album, and in the creative process I was all over the place. Is there an easy way to re-order the pages?
on July 3rd, 2007 at 12:26 pm
Rebel Fish says, “sure thing!” Just open your Pages palette and drag the thumbnails around until they suit your taste.
on August 12th, 2007 at 12:42 pm
Kevin, Do you know if CS3 Indesign has the capability of exporting in high res jpg’s?
on August 15th, 2007 at 8:41 pm
When I put a picture into my 10×10 page, the pictures size is over 4 times the size of the page. I checked my page dimensions and I believe they are correct, have you ever had this problem?
on August 16th, 2007 at 1:07 am
You need to create a frame to put your image in. The resolution is larger than your page size, and when you drag an image onto the page without a frame, it doesn’t size to fit.
1: create a box frame of whatever size you want the image to be
2: drag your photo into the frame and let go
3: size the image to fit the frame (command/option/shift e or right-click and view the frame fitting options)
on August 16th, 2007 at 1:08 am
Israel,
CS3 does allow for high-res JPEG exporting, but it has been known to be buggy, resulting in large gaps of missing data in your JPEGs. Rebel Fish finds it safer to just export as a high-res RGB PDF and then open that PDF in Acrobat and save as JPEGs.
on September 9th, 2007 at 8:47 pm
Rebel Fish, I’m hoping you can help with PDF exporting! When I export a hi-quality PDF, and open it in Photoshop to save as a JPG, it looks really pixelated! I’m wondering if it’s something in my settings? What settings do you recommend for exporting?
Thanks bunches!
on September 9th, 2007 at 11:31 pm
Oops…..I’m a dummy tonight! Somehow, my image links got messed up. I re-linked them all and I’m good to go!
on September 10th, 2007 at 1:11 am
Rebel Fish is glad to have helped! hahaha
on November 19th, 2007 at 11:32 pm
The video is great, just what I need to get started with InDesign. Thanks Kevin. However, I have a question on resolution.
If you start with a JPEG that is at 300ppi, and you then “stretch” this image to fit a frame (as Kevin shows in the video) then this actually reduces the resolution. Therefore a 300ppi image could end up being 150ppi or even lower, depending on how much it is “stretched”. (InDsign doesn’t insert more pixels like Photoshop does). This could lead to poor print quality.
When using Photoshop this is not an issue as Photoshop can interpolate the image and maintain the optimum resolution. (Although I realize there are limits to this).
What is the suggested way to prepare images for use with InDesign to ensure that output resolution stays withing the limits required to deliver good quality. Also, are there any penalties for printing with a very high resolution when a image is squeezed to fit a frame smaller than it wuld require at its native resolution? Can you check these limits with preflight feature?
Thanks again,
MikeG.
on November 27th, 2007 at 12:36 am
(from Kevin Swan:) Actually, that’s not really true. InDesign doesn’t care about resolution until you export. InDesign does do interpolation, by the way. When you drop an image into InD, it’s just playing at whatever size you want it to be. I’ve found that as long as you’re shooting 6 megapixels or better, you can stretch a horizontal image to cover even a 24×12″ 2-page in an album without noticable degradation.
High resolution images that are put into smaller frames have absolutely no issues. I do it day in and day out. InD only uses what it needs to fill the space at the requested output resolution.
I’ve been doing this exact method for 4 years and have never had a resolution issue. I started shooting 6mp and now shoot 8. Stretching to fill frames looks fine. Zooming in on parts of photos is fine. If you’re concerned about it, export to a PDF and look at the spread in Photoshop (or, if you’re using CS3, export a 300dpi JPEG).
Word!
on December 16th, 2007 at 11:00 pm
THANK YOU so much Kevin. Your video was so filled with info, and easy to follow. You saved me over $500 bucks because I was just about to buy page gallery. Anyone looking to design albums, or looking into purchasing album design software MUST watch this video first!
Melanie
on January 15th, 2008 at 10:57 pm
Dear Kevin,
The video was great ! and thanks so much Kevin. 1 question, how to make layer palette into screen side drawer indesign cs3
Steven
on January 20th, 2008 at 11:32 am
Rebel Fish pulls the palette off and drops it somewhere so it lives on its own. Then she grabs it again and drags it to the right side of the screen to get it to slide.
on March 30th, 2008 at 2:51 pm
I just jumped for joy when I found this link - but that quickly diminished when I realized it won’t work with Asuka Books as mentioned. Currently their site states the File Checker doesn’t work with Mac OSX 10.5 (Leopard) and that is a problem. I am stuck. ID would be a dream to use for this purpose - too bad. What other companies will accept PDFs in this manner?
on April 27th, 2008 at 7:05 pm
Quick question in regards to Showitweb I have the latest version (2.6) Pro and I did some digging and couldn’t find how to make the sideshow look like an album as did yours in the video?
Thanks in advance for your help!
Alex G.
P.S. The video rocked best money I have spent lately!
on April 27th, 2008 at 8:08 pm
Oh one more thing…Lets say I’m doing a 10X10 Album and then they want to give a 4X5 to each one of the bridal party how could you resize the document and contents to fit a smaller size?
on May 4th, 2008 at 1:32 pm
Hi,I ve been working on photoshop and indesign for afew months for a design portfolio and I came across a couple of image related problems
1.some of the high resolution images tend to look pixelated when viewed in Photoshop and Indesign. They even tend to print that way. But they look fine when viewed on Windows Image Viewer
2.When I place a high resolution PDF file in Indesign and scale it down to fit in specific frame , the image tends to loose some information( for eg. a sketch .,some lines go missing)
Thanks in advance for your help!
Darsh U.
on May 11th, 2008 at 4:46 pm
Alex, In showit, just create a custom size that matches your album dimensions (in my case, I did 800×400), then turn off all the motion effects. Pretty simple!
As far as resizing, going from a 10×10 to a 4×5 is tough because the ratios aren’t the same. If you’re going from a 10×10 to a 5×5, you don’t need to change anything–your album company should be able to print a smaller book from the larger files. If you really need to resize, you can :
1: save the file as a new file (so you’re not editing your 10×10)
2: in document settings (file/document setup), set your dimensions to the new book: 8×5
3: On each page, select all, group the selection (command-g in Mac, control-g in PC)
4: transform the selection by holding shift/command and then resize to fit new page
5: ungroup selection (command-g again)
6: rearrange objects to fit your new ratio.
on May 11th, 2008 at 4:52 pm
Darsh,
If things are blurry in Photoshop, but clear in something else, I have no idea what could be wrong. Photoshop is opening the actual file… If you zoom into 100% in PS and things don’t look right, then the image has a problem. It’s hard to imagine Photoshop somehow mishandling the resolution. Whatever you see in PS is what would print.
As for dropping a PDF into InDesign, as long as it’s linked properly, I don’t know why you’d have information dropping out. You may try a fresh removal and install of CS3 because the behaviour you’re describing is abnormal.
Sorry I can’t help more.
on June 11th, 2008 at 12:49 pm
Kevin, The video is great, it was a tremendous help creating me first album, which I’m almost set to upload to Kiss Wedding Books. One question regarding the albums on your site that I hope you’ll be willing to divulge some info. On the album “Chris and Samantha” you have an awesome effect where vines tend to creep along the pages into the pictures. Would you mind telling me how in the world you did that? It looks awesome.
Thanks, Chris
on June 19th, 2008 at 2:34 pm
I was wondering when you export to JPEG if you have to save at 300ppi. When I do I get this strange line through the whole page. When I save at 150ppi it doesn’t do it. Thanks!