Digital Sculpture

I learned about this amazing sculpture from the Gizmodo blog. It’s going up in Heathrow Airport in London. The 16 foot cloud consists of 4,638 dots that are controlled by 134 distribution boards and over 16,500 feet of cable.

See the sculpture in action:

You can find out more about the sculpture on Troika’s website.

Amazing Blogs and Designs

Sorry I was gone for a few days. I’ve been really sick but I’ll save you the gory details.

The Eighth Annual Weblog Awards are out and as always they have some great blogs to look at. There are a couple blogs I have in my Blogroll and some that I want to add.

 

My favorite new site on the list is the Web Designer Wall. The blog is gorgeous and has a lot of great information. There are CSS and Photoshop tutorials and current web trends for inspiration. Check it out!

 

After reading the About section I realized that it is the same designer as one of my all time favorite website designs, N. Design Studio’s website. OK, well I’ve only been into web design for a year and a half but still it’s one of my favorites. Check out all the other creative sites Nick La has made.

 

He also runs the Best Web Gallery which is a great source for inspiration.

Night Blossoms

Right after I got my new camera (a Nikon D40) last spring a tree near my apartment was blossoming. I hadn’t even opening the owners manual. I was having trouble adjusting the flash but I really like using natural lighting. Or in this case a nearby street lamp.

Want to Make a Blurb Book?

I’ve organized all the posts I’ve made regarding Blurb books and how to make custom layouts for them. This way they can be in a chronological/logical order. As I add posts regarding Blurb books I will update and link them to here so keep checking back.

 

 

 

First, download the free templates for the size book you are looking to make. I’ve created both Photoshop and InDesign files for each book.

Here you can learn how to use the free templates I’ve provided.

If you want to learn how I created these templates or create your own in Photoshop click here.

 

December 31, 2007: See some pictures of how my Blurb book turned out

January 12, 2008: Learn how to put a picture across the gutter of a spread

January 17, 2008: Creating Photoshop Actions

February 5, 2008: Putting Your Custom Templates Into Booksmart

 

Coming Soon

• Quick tips on how to make a unique book
• A review of my Blurb book (and it’s two replacements)
• Uncommon things to add to your book

How to Use the Free Blurb Templates

This post along with other Blurb book tips and tutorials can be found in the “Want to Make a Blurb Book?” link.

Here’s a quick guide on how to use the free Blurb templates I’ve provided.

 

After you’ve downloaded and unzipped the templates you should have a .tiff file and an .inx file. If you are using Photoshop open the .tiff file. If you are using InDesign open the .inx file (InDesign XML Interchange Document). Here’s what you should see:

 

 

Around each page and in the center there are trim guides and safety guides. Anything outside the trim guide will be cut. In the center, anything in the trim guide will be used for binding the book so it won’t be seen. The safety guides are in case more is trimmed than intended (this is fairly common in any bookmaking process). No wording or important parts of a picture should be in this area. Be careful to not have the tops of heads, hands, or feet in this area. The example below is shown in InDesign but the guides are in the same place as Photoshop.

There are also guides in the center of each page to help align things up.

 

 

When you are adding pictures to the templates that you want to bleed to the edges of the page make sure that the photo goes all the way to the edges of the page. Don’t leave any pictures at the edge of the trim guide.

 

 

For text make sure that you have a margin starting from the inside of the safety guide. This also applies to photos or graphics that you don’t want to bleed to the edge.

 

 

You can easily change the background color of the template in Photoshop using the paint bucket tool. Pick the color you want by double clicking on the top of the two colored squares in your tools palette. Next, make sure you are in your Background Layer (Window>Layers). Then click on the paint bucket tool and click on the background of the template.

 

 

In InDesign you need to create a background using the rectangular tool. First, pick your color by double clicking on the top of the two colored squares in your tools palette. Here I picked a blue color. Next, select your rectangular tool button and create a rectangle over the page/spread. It is good practice to extend your background color a short distance outside your page.

 

 

When creating layouts in the templates line pictures up using uniform margins between the pictures. Do not line pictures up using uniform margins to the edge of the page. This is because you don’t really know where exactly the page will be cut so you have no way of knowing how much of that margin will be left in the final product. The top of the page may have been cropped off more than the bottom of the page. This works for pictures of any shape or size. Just keep the margin uniform. Below is an exaggerated example so you can see the difference.

Here’s how you should line up the pictures.

The layout would ideally print like this if everything was trimmed evenly.

But even if the top and bottom are trimmed more than the edge the layout still looks good.

If you had lined up each picture in the center of that quadrant of the page and the trim and safety areas were trimmed your pictures would no longer be in the center of the quadrant.

 

 

Finally, if you want a centered layout make sure everything is centered off of the center guides. Similar to the example above do not use the edge guides if you want something to be centered. Even if you have uniform margins between the pictures you still need to make sure you have the overall layout centered. If, for example, the top of the page was trimmed more than the rest of the page your layout would be higher than the center of the page.

 

This should get you started with your new templates.

Let me know if you have any questions or if this tutorial was helpful.

Free Blurb Templates

This post along with other Blurb book tips and tutorials can be found in the “Want to Make a Blurb Book?” link.

With all the interest in people wanting to learn how to create their own templates for Blurb books I’ve decided to make some templates available for download. I’ve created templates in Photoshop and InDesign for all the different sizes of books available through Blurb.

Below are downloadable zip files each containing both a Photoshop and InDesign template.

Download the 7×7″ book templates

Download the 8×10″ (portrait) book templates

Download the 10×8″ (landscape) book templates

Download the 13×11″ book templates

The Photoshop templates are saved as .tiff files and the InDesign files were exported as .inx files (InDesign XML Interchange Documents) so everyone should be able to open them not matter what version of Photoshop or InDesign they have.

Leave a comment if you are having trouble opening the files or if you like these templates.

I will have a tutorial on how to use these templates tomorrow in case you’re lost.

Update 1/22/08: Sorry, I’ve re-zipped the files because I forgot to put the center guides on the InDesign files. Just download the current version to get the new files if need be.

Update 1/26/08: The 8×10 and 10×8 horizontal center guide weren’t exactly on center. Download the current version or you can center the guides yourself.

Creating Photoshop Actions

This post along with other Blurb book tips and tutorials can be found in the “Want to Make a Blurb Book?” link.

So I’ve showed you how to create your own album templates and how to put a picture across the gutter of a page, but after you’ve created your spreads you’ll need to crop them into two separate pages. This is because for online albums like Blurb you need to upload each page separately. The quickest, easiest way to turn your spreads into two different pages is to create some Photoshop actions. Actions are very simple to make and use plus they can save you tons of time.

 

1.) First open up one of your spreads. Then open the actions palette (Widow>Actions).

 

2.) Second, make a new action by clicking on the button that looks like a Post-It note (second from the right). In the window that pops up give the action a name and designate a function key. The function key will serve as a shortcut to playing your action in the future. For this example I’m naming the action “Left Page Crop.” Then click Record.

 

3.) Now you just do whatever you want to be recorded as your action. To a spread into two pages I created two different actions. For the first action, used to create the left page, I just selected the crop tool from the tool palette and cropped the spread to be just the left page of the spread. Remember the very center guide designates the page separation so this is where you should crop it to.

 

4.) To finish the action press the stop button (the square button in the bottom left). You should have only the left side page showing. Now save the page as the page number not the original file name using Save As (Shift+Ctrl+S). Save the page as a jpeg at the highest quality possible.

 

5.) Next, you need to create a second action to make the right side page. Repeat steps 2 & 3 naming the action “Right Page Crop.” While recording this action you need to do one more step. In the history palette (Widow>History) click on the previous step (in the picture below this is Open), undoing the left side crop. Then re-crop the spread to be the right page.

 

6.) Finish off the right side page by stopping the action and saving the file as the page number. And your finished!

 

You should have two .jpeg files now one for each page.

 

To use these actions now all you need to do is:

1. Open the next layout you’ve created
2. Hit the function key for the Left Page Crop
3. Save the left page to a new name
4. Hit the Right Page Crop function key
5. Save the right page

Once you get a rhythm going you’ll fly through all those spreads!

Math can be Beautiful

I’ve always had a thing for fractals. They are advanced mathematics but yet can be very artistic. A marriage of both the right and the left brain. The Benoit Mandelbrot Fractal Art Contest Winners were recently announced and I loved the variety of fractals. Here are some of my favorites:

(Graphics courtesy of the Benoit Mandelbrot Fractal Art Contest Website)

Aren’t they great! I wish I could do that.

I Wish I Was Here

Not staring out the window at the snow.

This photo was taken with our point and shoot Canon Power Shot SD800 IS in the matching underwater case (Canon WP-DC9). I haven’t Photoshopped it at all. We were kayaking with some friends down the Wisconsin River south of Wisconsin Dells when I caught this shot. I love the reflection of the clouds and my new kayak!

Putting a Photo Across the Gutter of a Spread

This post along with other Blurb book tips and tutorials can be found in the “Want to Make a Blurb Book?” link.

 

Putting a photo across the gutter of a book so that none of the picture is lost is one of the most common questions in the Blurb forums. Many people call this a two page photo spread but the spread could have more than one photo so I try not to call it that. I have had a bunch of people ask me how I did it so I created a quick easy guide with only 6 steps.

Let me know if this tutorial is helpful or if you have any questions.

 

1.) Open up your album template file (to learn how to do this see this post) and pick out the picture you want to put in the spread.

 

2.) Size your photo to the size you want it to be. To do this right click in blue bar at the top of the photo and select Image Size. Make sure that you have the resolution set to 300 dpi (pixels/inch), the same resolution of the template you made earlier. Note that the overall length of the photo will be increased after adjusting for the gutter. So if you want the photo to bleed (go all the way to the edge) to both the left and the right side of the spread but don’t want to loose any of the photo use this equation (yes, there’s an equation I’m an engineer after all):

Total width of the spread – Half the width of the gutter = Width you should size the photo to

For a 13×11″ Blurb book (the example I used to show you how to make an album template) you would need to size the photo to 24.95″ wide (25.2″ – 0.25″ = 24.95″).

 

3.) Now put the photo you just resized into you template. To do this simply click on your move/arrow tool (in the top right corner of your tools palette) and drag and drop the photo into your template. Using the same move tool place the photo where you would want it on one of the pages. For this tutorial I’m going to place the photo on the left page and adjust the part of the photo on the right.

Drag the photo all the way to the left, leaving empty space on the right side of the page. In the template you made earlier the right side of the photo should line up with the safety guide on the right.

 

4.) Next, select the rectangular marquee tool (the dashed square button in the top left corner of your tools palette) and select all of the photo from the far left guide in the center to the far right side of the photo.

Make sure you select from the far left guide in the center all the way to the right side of the photo.

 

5.) After you’ve made the selection copy and paste the selected part as another layer. Simply hit Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V to do this. The copied part of the picture should appear as another layer on top of your original picture. The copied section should appear right over the top of the original photo so you won’t be able to see it until you move it.

 

6.) Finally, simply move the new photo layer over to the far right side of the page. The left edge of the new layer should line up with the center guide (two guides over from you copied it from). And that’s it. You’re finished!

I darkened the original picture so you can see where the copied part of the picture should be.

Here is what the final product should look like. I removed the guides (View>Clear Guides) so that you can see the picture better. Be careful if you decide to clear the guides too because there is not “Redo Guides” option. You’ll have to undo it by either going to Edit>Undo or by clicking on the option above the clear guides step in the History palette.

Here you can see how part of the right side is repeated. Don’t worry this repeated part will not show up in the book because it will be used for the binding.

 

Here’s how the actual book turned out.

 

Here are some other spreads I used this technique on:

 

You can also do this for layouts that have more than one photo. You can see how in both of these layouts that a tree extends from one page to the next and everything lines up perfectly.

 

Note: After you’re done with your layouts crop the spread in half along the center guide. To do this use the crop tool (in the tool palette or simply press C). Save the files as jpegs at the highest resolution possible numbering the files with the corresponding page numbers. Don’t worry the guides won’t appear in the jpegs. Lastly, upload to whichever site you are using to make your book. You should have each page as a separate jpeg.



Side Note: A fast easy way to crop the spreads into two separate pages is to create an action. Watch for a post about creating an action soon.