Update: You no longer need to follow this tutorial to make templates for Blurb. You can find my free Blurb templates and lots of other Blurb tutorials in the “Want to Make a Blurb Book?” link.
A lot of people have been asking about how I set up templates for the albums I’ve created. I typically only use Photoshop to do this, even for wording. This is because most of the album companies use jpeg files to create the albums. So instead of messing around with InDesign (which doesn’t directly save to a jpeg format) I just stick with Photoshop.
So here’s how to set up an album template for any type of album in 8 steps. I’ll use my Blurb book as an example (a 13×11” hardcover book).
1.) First, you need to calculate what size your spread (two facing pages) needs to be. For a 13×11” Blurb book that would be 10.9” high and 25.2” wide. You can find the page sizes for other sized books at
http://blurberatiblog.com/index.php/2007/04/24/look-no-further-for-full-bleed-page-specs/.
2.) Now that you have your page size, in Photoshop open a new file and change height and width to the spread size you just found. Make sure that your dpi (dots per inch) is set to 300 pixels/inch. Then click on the advanced arrow and make sure the color profile says sRGB IEC61966-2.1. This is the color profile Blurb and many other similar companies will convert your pictures to if they aren’t already in that format. When your finished click OK.
3.) Next you can change your background color using the paint bucket tool. Simply click on your color palette (the two colored boxes near the bottom of your toolbar) and select the color you’d like your background to be. Make sure your background color is in the box on the top then click the paint bucket tool to your spread. This is convenient if you are using one color as your main background color but don’t worry if you want to change it in the future you can.
The next step is to set up guides to designate your trim and “safety” areas. To create full bleed pages printing companies print the pages and then trim off part of the area they printed so that the colors bleed right to the edges. If they didn’t do this there would be nowhere for equipment to grip the page while the ink is still wet. Blurb recommends that you design for a 1/8” trim all the way around your spread. I also like to create a 1/8” “safety” area so that I make sure nothing important is cut off the page. In this buffer area I make sure to not have any text, heads, hands, feet, or other important part of the page. It’s not uncommon for a printing company to accidently trim off more than they suggest, but even if they do my page will still look good.
4.) There are two ways to put a guide on your spread. The first way is to drag one from one of the rulers around the spread (if you don’t have rulers set up on your page you can go to View>Rulers). The other way is to go to View>New Guide, select a vertical or horizontal direction, and enter in a dimension. The second way is more accurate and I would recommend you use it when setting up a template.
For a 13×11” Blurb book with 1/8” trim area and 1/8” safety area you would need to enter in the following guides:
Vertical: 0.125”, 0.25”, 24.95”, and 25.075”
Horizontal: 0.125”, 0.25”, 10.65”, and 10.775”
5.) Next, you need to add a guide to designate the separation between each page. To do this simply divide the total width in half and add a vertical guide there. For my Blurb book this would be 12.6”.
6.) Now you need to create the trim and safety guides for the center of the spread. If you are making a flush mount album (like my wedding album where the picture is not lost to binding) you can skip this step. However, the vast majority of albums you or I can create are not flush mount so we have to add more guides.
The amount of space to leave for the binding is not really specified on the Blurb website. This area is called the gutter and in the final product you won’t be able to see anything that was on the page there. After reading through many forum posts I seemed to find that many people used 1/8” on each page for the gutter. When I did my honeymoon album, however, I added a 1/8” safety area on both sides. I treated this area as the gutter too. Making a 1/4” gutter on each page or 1/2” total. The two page photo spreads in our honeymoon book turned out really well using this gutter size.
For my Blurb book I added a vertical guide at 12.35″ and 12.85.”
To get a better visual idea of which areas will be trimmed off I created the visuals below. The pink area will be trimmed off, the blue area is the safety area that may be cropped off, and the purple area in the center is the area I treat like a trim area but may actual appear in the album.
7.) Next, I add center lines for each page. This makes centering photos on a page much easier because tools and objects snap to guides. If you add a photo or a shape to your template the edges and center of that shape will snap to any guides you have.
For my Blurb book example I added a vertical guide at 6.3″ and 18.9.” Then I added a horizontal guide at 5.45″ to finish it off.
8.) Finally, save your template with a general name like “Album Template.” This way for each new spread you create you can simply start with this file and you’ll know that none of the guides have been moved (which can be really easy to do while making your layout).
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.
