Photo books

This part of the Print module is used for creating professionally produced books with smooth covers, containing pictures and texts of the user’s choice.

Caution! When you are creating a photo book, the photos used are not stored in the project. The photo book project only stores links to the photos’ locations. If you change the location of a source photo, or its name, or overwrite it with another photo, it will not be possible to upload that photo for printing. Photo data is not uploaded until the order is sent off.

There are 6 basic photo book formats to choose from:

  • A4 landscape
  • A4 portrait
  • 20 × 20 cm
  • HD A4 landscape
  • HD A4 portrait
  • HD 20 × 20 cm

For each of these formats, a number of pages can be chosen. The minimum number of pages in a photo book is 24 and the maximum is 84. To set the number of copies ordered, use the Shopping Cart. The first and last page do not have opposite pages. After this, the price for the selected type of photo book is displayed.

Ikona. adds the photos in the current folder in the order they are listed in the Filmstrip and suggests the most suitable automatic layout.

Ikona.Adds one photo to the selected page. This photo is not firmly anchored. It can be freely relocated, resized, and/or rotated. If multiple photos are selected, only the first one in the selection will be added. Freestanding pictures can be rotated by 90 degrees or freely rotated, and they can be fit, filled, moved to the next/previous page, or framed.

Ikona. – Adds one text field to the selected page. This field is not firmly anchored. It can be freely relocated, resized, and/or rotated. Its font, size, and text color can be adjusted in its settings. The text can also be made bold. Additionally, you can set line spacing, the whole text’s vertical and horizontal alignment, its inside and outside frame, and their colors.

Ikona. Flips the contents of the left and right sides on the selected page spread. This does not work on a photo book’s title page, first page, and last page.

Ikona.Removes photos and texts from the selected pages.

Project templates determine a project’s background color, font, and text color. Options for seven predefined project templates are available here. Choosing a template affects the look of all of the pages in the photo book. The font type and color, as well as the background color, can be changed freely.
For HD photo books, there is also the option of glossy or matte paper.

The Page Layout affects how pictures and text are laid out on the selected page. Page layouts with picture counts page page ranging from 0 to 10 are available. The page layout can be set separately for every page of a photo book. If multiple pages are selected at a time, the layout is changed for all of the selected pages.

Break Layout Into Objects – anchored pictures on the selected pages are changed into freestanding pictures that can be moved around freely. The page layout is then changed to the default with the number of anchored photos set at “0.”

Use Photo Placement Mode to adjust the page layout and the alignment of the photos you place.

The Layout style section offers 16 predefined page layout styles. Each of the styles is set up through the defining of inside and outside frames for pictures. For the outside frame, you can set pictures’background color, opacity, width, and indentation. The inside frame is defined through a background color, opacity, width, and rounding. A rounding of greater than zero gives pictures rounded corners. Click the Set for all (project default) button sets the selected layout style for all of the pages in the current photo book project.

All of the changes are reflected in the chosen print template immediately.

Photo-book page previews can be used for adjusting the pictures and text on those pages. Clicking a picture displays a control panel where the picture can be rotated, the displayed crop of the picture can be changed, or the picture can be replaced. Clicking Replace Photo starts the process of replacing the given photo. To finish it, drag a photo up from the Filmstrip into the photo’s space, onto the blue Replace Photo button. If you drag a picture from the Filmstrip outside of the button for replacing the photo, a new picture is added to the template instead, changing the page’s layout. The nearest appropriate template from the Page Layout section that corresponds to the current number of pictures on the page is then chosen automatically.

Any text frames that you have added can be edited and adjusted from the page preview in a similar way. In this case the control panel offers basic options for moving the text frame and editing the text. The top row of icons in the control panel sets text properties such as font, size, and color, and indentation and alignment. The bottom row works directly with the text frame. Here you can set whether the frame fills out the left or the right side of the photo book, or a whole two-page spread instead. The icons Ikona. Ikona. indicate whether the current frame will be below or above an existing frame if multiple frames overlap. Similarly as in Layout style, the control panel also lets you set inside and outside frame properties for a text frame. The icon Ikona. sets the selected settings as the default for the whole project.

The control panel for individually added “extra” pictures Ikona. lets you change the cropping rectangle for the given photo, move its picture frame to a different place in the photo book, or replace it with a different photo. The settings for the picture frame’s properties are the same as for text frames.