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.