Aperture Plan your book
The amount of planning and work involved in creating a book varies with the type of project you’re undertaking. If you’re creating wedding photo albums, you may be primarily concerned with creating a reusable book design into which you can quickly place photos that tell the wedding story. The end result may be one or several printed copies per project.
On the other hand, producing a large book, such as a coffee table book, may require a good deal of planning, writing, design, page composition, proofing, and production work. In addition, you’ll want to look ahead and decide how the manuscript should be printed and bound, the number of copies for the print run, and what copyright and permissions information your book should include.
For relatively simple books, here are some of the typical steps in the publishing process.
Stage 1: Plan your book’s cover
Choose a cover photo and decide what text should appear on the cover.
Stage 2: Create copyright notices
Create any copyright or permissions notices you need.
Stage 3: Create a book album
Create a book album and choose a theme for your book.
Stage 4: Choose the book’s photos
Place the book’s photos in the book album and arrange them in the Browser in the order in which they should appear in the book. Don’t place the photos on your pages yet.
Stage 5: Specify the book’s settings
Specify any overall settings for the book, such as size, hardcover or softcover binding, page numbering, and so on.
Stage 6: Create the book’s pages
Create the number of pages you need and apply master page designs to them.
Stage 7: Place photos in the book
Have Aperture automatically place your photos, or drag the photos onto your pages.
Stage 8: Reposition and resize photos
Reposition and resize photos, adjusting individual page layouts if necessary.
Stage 9: Add text to your book
Add text to your pages and cover.
Stage 10: Proof your book
Print a proof and carefully review the text and layout of the book.
Stage 11: Distribute your book
Send the book to the Apple print vendor, or create a PDF file that you can print or send to a print vendor. If you create a PDF file, make sure to include all the fonts you used in your book in the PDF file. If you’re creating a larger, more complex book, contact your print vendor early in the process to make sure you consider printing issues such as the choice of paper stock, the use of inks and varnishes, and the review of bluelines, as well as other issues such as binding, packaging, shipping, and pricing.
If you routinely produce printed albums, you can create a book album that you can copy and reuse with each new project. After setting up master pages and individual page layouts, you can copy the book album to another project and then substitute the new photos, increasing your publishing productivity greatly. You can then customize certain pages, such as your cover, to provide any unique touches you like.