SmileBooks Exact Page Measurements

It’s really easy to ensure that you have the same background throught your SmileBook. All you have to do is open the book and click on the backgrounds tab. Then click on the background you’d like to use and then click on the icon circled in red in the screenshot below. I do hope this helps!

Setting backgrounds in the photo book software

Today you can win a $100 SmileBooks Design Service Gift Certificate. To enter, write the phrase “SmileBooks Design Service”in the comments section.  That’s it, couldn’t be easier!  Entries will close at midnight PST and I’ll pick a winner by random number generation on Monday morning.  One entry per person/IP address. Good luck!

Double page spread with an image mask

Here are step by step instructions on how to create this effect. The first thing you need to do is set a full bleed background on clean double page spread. This can be one of your own photos or one of the backgrounds included in the software. You also need to click on the 4 default image frames and delete them from the page.

Add a background to the spread and delete the 4 image fields

Now take an image and place it on the double page spread. Drag the left, right and bottom edges right off the page. Make sure to go way over the edge of the page when you do this so that you extend the effect beyond any possible tolerance margins for cropping pages in the production! It’s very important you go as far over as I have in the screenshot below as customer care won’t issue a refund if you try to place the photo right on the edge of the page and end up with 1-2mm of white page.

Positioning the image on the spread

Now go to the image mask tab and drag an image mask onto your photo. You might have to move things around a bit to get the look you want. As you can see, I decided to extend the image way over the top of the page too once I had the image mask on top of the photo. Easy, isn’t it?

Select an image mask and drag it onto your photo

The image mask I used on this page was one I found by clicking the “download more” button and downloading the “Colour Gradients” package. The background was one I found in a download package titled, “Give your design that romantic feel with these heart and pastel striped backgrounds”. Once i’d downloaded the package, I had to search for the background and found it in the “Animals” category. What a mess! If any of you have any examples of mislabled categories in the Backgrounds, Layouts, Clipart or Image Masks download packages, please let me know and please feel free to suggest replacement lable or category names. Let’s work together and fix this!

I'm not feeling the romance!

The first thing you have to do is look at the dark box in the bottom left hand corner of the software. Click on the “Pages” pulldown menu and add another 8 pages to your book. My book had 26 pages to start with:

Step 1: add empty pages to your book

Here you can see that my book now has 34 pages and there are 8 blank pages at the back of the book:

Step 2: empty pages at the back of the book

 Now all you have to do is click on one of those empty double page spreads and, keeping the left mouse button pressed, drag this spread to where you want it in the book:

Step 3: positioning the empy page in the photo book

 I hope this helps, Sharon!

To share your books, all you have to do is click on the share link in your Shipping Confirmation mail or click here and go to the “My SmileBooks” section of the gallery:

Shipping confirmation mail

Log in using your user data:

Login page

Now click on the Facebook icon below the cover of the photo book you want to share. Remember you have 60 days time to share your photo books:

Facebook share button

Now you can add a message in the “Description” box. You must tick the box “Allow permission for publication” and you can also tick the “Allow ordering” box if you’d want to give your friends the option of ordering copies of your book. Once you’ve done that, click on the “Share on facebook” button:

Publication and ordering permission page

The last step is to “Share” to Facebook. You might want to check your privacy settings before sharing. If you only want specific people to see your SmileBook, click on the lock icon, select Customize, then select, Specific People and type in the names of those friends who may view the photo book:

Facebook privacy settings

This is what your friends will see on their wall:

Facebook wall

Once you click on the book, you can page through the pages:

Paging through the shared photo book

If this blog post inspires you to try out the Design Service, use the Coupon Code BLOGDS100 before 05/31/2011 and you’ll get the design fees and image selection for free!

To get to the Design Service, go to the SmileBooks web site and go to the, “Create A Photo Book” page. Then click on the the “Start your photo book design now” button on the “Design Service” tab.

Design Service tab on the Create A Photo Book page

Now you’ll find yourself in the Style section which has 6 main styles, Just Pictures, Classic, Heritage, Modern, Pastels and Vibrant. Each main style is divided into moods and you can page through sample pages of each category. The style and mood selection is most important as this information gives your designer a general idea of what you’d like the book to look like.

The page always starts with the Just Pictures option but I chose Heritage Light for my book.

Style selection - heritage light

The next stage is simple. Just decide what size book you want to order. I went for a 12×12 Deluxe with an image wrap hard cover on silver halide photo paper. These books with the lay-flat binding and a lustre finish can be found by clicking on the “Real Photo Paper” tab.

Book size selection page

 I’d taken over 1000 photos in Venice but i’d already sorted out the ones I didn’t want and knew I had about 220 photos for my book. This made the next step really simple. I wanted a thick book so I slid the top bar to the maxiumum page amount for this type of book. I also didn’t want there to be too many images on the double-page spread, so I left the right-hand slider at 2.5 images. This meant that 195-215 photos were needed for the book. The designers always like to have a few extra photos to play with!

If i’d had more photos, I could have just increased the image distribution to an average of 3 photos per double spread pages and I would have been asked to upload about 250 photos, as shown below. 

Number of pages and image distribution

 This is my favourite page. I always click, “Yes” because normally i’m too lazy to do any pre-sorting and upload about 100 photos too many. This option let’s the designer take care of all the hard selection work!

Image slection option

Now all you have to do is upload your photos and at the same time, take the opportunity to give the designer feedback about the design of your photo book. What are your color preferences? Are there specific images you want on the cover? Now’s the time to tell!

Adding comments and uploading photos

While the photos are uploading, you’ll have to log into your account or register. Just use the same data that you use for ordering with the software if you are an existing customer who’s never tried the design service before.

Within a few days, you’ll get an email from your designer telling you that your book is ready to preview. Page through the draft of your photo book and feel free to either add captions to the page or give the designer feedback about something you’d like changed, as I did here.

Gabi and I had lunch at the famous Cafe Florian one day and when I saw the first draft, I decided I wanted to dedicate a double-page spread to those photos.

This is the first version, including my feedback to the designer.

Draft 1 of pages 80-81

 And this is the revised version, just like I wanted it!

Revised spread for pages 80-81

Once I was happy with the entire design, all I had to do was click on the order button to get my printed book. 

If you want to see the entire photo book, just click here.