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.

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