Photobook with custom pages and less bleed

[lukegail1]

I have 300 plus 12x12 project-life type jpgs that I would like to have printed into a book. My problem is the bleed space. There isn't a lot of space around the edges with the project-life templates, and I don't want the boarders & journaling swallowed up. I had smaller 8x8 book printed with Picaboo Oct 2016 and I had to shrink each page to more like a 7x7, some of the journaling still got cut off, it was a lay-flat design, I was very disappointing. Has anyone had experience with this and found a solution? Any advice would be most appreciated!

[MariJ]

Hi

This THREAD might help

[lindarobin]

To get the best results in book printing, you have to design your pages with bleed. If you did not initially design your pages with bleed, you would need to open each layered PSD file and move/shrink everything important away from the edges by about an inch, and assume a quarter inch will get trimmed off every side.

 

Otherwise, what you have done (adding your photos to the album and leaving a "safety margin" around your JPG, is the only other option. Unfortunately, if your margin is too small, you lose part of your page; if too large, you end up with an unsightly margin.

 

Redesigning your pages with bleed for book printing is arduous, but the result is so much better.

 

In this example, the left side is the JPG with bleed; the right side is how it will look in a photo book. Notice that about 1/4" is trimmed off every side, but it looks fine. You can experiment by cropping 1/4" off your edges. If it looks OK, you can use your original JPG. Otherwise, you should redesign with bleed included.

[lindarobin]

...There isn't a lot of space around the edges with the project-life templates, and I don't want the boarders & journaling swallowed up.

Yes, this presents another problem. If the border is the edge and it is not very thick and can't take a 1/4" cut, then one solution is to increase your canvas size and add more of that border around the sides. It'll look kind of weird, but the intent is that this extra border will get trimmed off, so your page will look fine in the book.

 

I've exaggerated this so you can see how I had to duplicate and mirror all the edges, JUST IN CASE not all of the extra gets trimmed off. The "extended" design then won't look as bad.