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Creating Covers for Albums and Photo Books in JDLab2You

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It is easy to create great album covers in JDLab2You if you follow these directions:

1. Decide which of our albums you are going to create: Diamond, Emerald, Sapphire, a hard cover photo book, or a soft cover photo book. Each of these types of albums have different sets of layout guides that you’ll need to use.

2. Download and save the Layout Guides .ZIP file for the type of album you’ll be creating.

3. Open the .ZIP file, and select the .PSD file for the size and cover of the album you’ll be creating.

4. Open the .PSD file you’ve selected in Photoshop.

5. Open the image you’ll be using for your cover in Photoshop. The image should be 300 dpi for best results.

6. Drag the cover image onto the cover layout guide to create a new layer.

7. Position the cover image so that it fills the entire cover layout guide. See the example on the right for a 10×10″ Emerald Album Cover. You want to pay special attention to these areas:

Bleed – This is the part of the cover image that will wrap around the album or be cut off on a soft cover book. Your image must fill this area to avoid white (non-printed) lines at the top and bottom of the cover.

Wrap Line – This is the approximate part of the image that will be wrapped around a custom hard cover cover. Soft cover books do not have a wrap line.

Safe Line – All text and the subject of your image must be inside the safe line to insure that it does not fall off the cover when the image is wrapped. For soft cover photo books, keeping inside the safe line insures that your text or subject will not be lost when the cover is trimmed for full bleed (edge to edge image).

8. If you add cover text or a studio logo, don’t put them up against the Safe Line. they will always look better if they are not pushed up against the wrapped or cut edge when the book is finished.

9. If your album layout guide includes a spline, you can layer text on it. Make the text layer, rotate it 90 degrees, and place it in the spline area. Pay careful attention to insure that the text is totally inside the 2 spline safe lines and centered on the center line, or it will be wrapped in the spline fold when the book or album is assembled. Also make sure that any image subject (like a face) is not near the spline guides, or they may be part of spline fold.

10. When your cover layout is complete, save the .PSD file, then hide the layout guide layer and save the cover again as a .JPG file. Use Quality=12, Baseline=Standard as defaults. You should save your cover (named cover.jpg) into the folder with the images you’ll be using to create the album or photo book in ROES.

11. If you need to make a change to the cover later, you can open the .PSD file, un-hide the layout guide layer, make any modifications, then hide the layout guide layer and resave your image first as a .PSD file and then as a .JPG.

That’s it! Your cover is now perfectly aligned and ready to drop into JDLab2You.


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