The COUTURE BOOK Blog - FAQ

Design books with the Aperture Plug-In!

Rafael Loureiro! — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 00:10:24 GMT

If you haven't seen it yet, you gotta check out our new Aperture 3.0 plug-in: http://www.CoutureBook.com/Aperture

We love Apple's new Aperture for the book design option. It's just so easy to use, and once you create your first book each book afterward just gets easier and easier. Aperture can save custom templates as you create them, making that next book that much faster to design. Even if you use another program for your image editing, the design piece of Aperture makes it worth your while to check it out. Here's the link to download the trial version: Aperture

Once you have installed Aperture and our plug-in, here's how to get started with a book design for COUTURE BOOK, and how export it to us when done:

First, select the image you want to use (highlight the images at the bottom or hold "Command A" to select all of them). Then click on the "New" link at the top, and select book.

Second, this should open a new window with all of the book options available.

Third, in the "Book Type" drop down window, you can choose COUTURE BOOK.

Fourth, once you have book picked, you can then pick the size of book you want to design, and name your project.

After that, you'll go through and design your book layouts. Keep in mind that the provided templates can all be adjusted and you can even make and save your own templates for future COUTURE BOOK project.

Lastly, when your book design is completed, just hit the "Send Book" link in the upper right to send the book to COUTURE BOOK. This will then connect you to COUTURE BOOK, and will walk you through the ordering process. You'll be able to pick out your book style and all of the options associated with that style.

If you do choose a book with a designed cover layout or cover image, we'll follow up after you place your order with instructions on how to upload the cover image(s) separately.

Hope you like the new plug-in, and please let us know if you have any questions comments on it.

Happy Designing!!

-Dave

How do I design those wrap around covers?

Rafael Loureiro! — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 16:23:34 GMT

Several of our book styles have printed covers, covers that either have an image on the front, or wrap around the entire cover of the book. With these different styles, especially the ones that wrap around the spine of the book, you'll need a template to properly layout your cover designs.

We've created the cover templates for all of our printed cover books, in all of the sizes and page counts. Just download the appropriate zip file for the book style you are working on, and the cover you need should be there.

New York SoHo: SoHo Covers
New York East Hamptons: East Hamptons Covers

German Munich: Munich Covers
German Berlin: Berlin Covers

When you are designing the cover, please keep in mind that the spine widths can change slightly with different paper types and page counts.   Also, on the templates, the edge area that is marked off is the edge wrap. This is the area that is wrapped around the side/edges of the cover, so you'll want your image to go all the way to the edge of the template.

After you design the layout in Photoshop, flatten it and save it as a Jpeg.   Then just upload the finished Jpeg as your cover image for that project.

Please let us know if you have any questions.

-Team Couture

Happy Holidays from Couture Book a.k.a. The Holiday Deadline Post

Rafael Loureiro! — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 21:15:13 GMT

I can't believe how fast this year has gone by, and already the holiday deadlines are nearing!

Here's our deadlines for holiday ordering:
-November 14th for the Spanish Madrid, all of the Italian books, and all of the Swiss books
-November 21 for everything else

If you have your order in by that day, we will guarantee that your book will arrive in time for Christmas. If not, we'll still try our best, but we won't be able to guarantee it'll arrive in time.

Let us know if you have any questions, and Happy Holidays!!

How to request stamping on your book order

Rafael Loureiro! — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 19:12:28 GMT

Several of our books include stamping of text by default, and you can also request stamping on any of the other books as well. When you choose a book with stamping, please make sure you include following information in the notes section of that order:

Silver Stamping on Bordeaux book

Location on book - Where on the book you'd like the stamping: front cover, inside front cover, back cover, etc
Position on page - Where on the page you'd like the stamping: upper center, lower right, dead center, etc
Font - Please download this file to see your font options: Stamping FONTS.doc (60.5 KB)
Color - Black, silver, gold, blind (no color, just stamping), or smoke (clear)
Text - this should be the exact text you need

If you are ordering a book that does not include stamping, or you want to add in additional lines of stamping, it's only $20.00 a line.

We can also have custom stamps made up for your books, either a custom logo that can be stamped on the inside of the book, or a custom stamp for your customers. There is a custom charge to have the logo made up (most logos are around $95.00), and once you pay the one time charge, it's again only $20.00 for each additional stamp.

Custom blind stamping on cover of slipcase

For the custom stamping, we need to have your file sent to us as a B&W Illustrator file, or a B&W Jpeg sized at exactly the size you need it at 600 dpi.

If you have any questions on the stamping or preparing your file for a custom stamping, please don't hesitate to let us know.

-Team COUTURE BOOK

Printed Vellum Pages and Printed Vellum Cover Wraps

Rafael Loureiro! — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 00:57:14 GMT

Several of our books have the option to have printed vellum pages inserted into the books, and the on the French Paris line, it includes a printed vellum cover wrap.

The vellum pages are added into the book after it is bound and can create a really interesting design element.

We've also seen them used with text printed on them as chapter markers, or even wedding vows!

These books include five pages per 100 ordered, and can be either blank or printed vellum. If you do not indicate which style you would like, we will place the blank vellum pages randomly throughout the book. If you do want to have a specific placement of the vellum, just note this in the special instructions during the checkout process.

If you want to have the printed vellum pages, please note this in the special instructions area as well. We'll then follow up with the FTP instructions so that you can upload those additional images to us.

You'll need to setup the vellum pages in photoshop. Here's the instructions:

Download these templates: Vellum page templates1.zip (308.3 KB)
Create your layout, image or text on the template
Include your order number and the page number you want this placed after on the bottom of the page
Save as a Jpeg
Upload to the FTP account
Email Support@couturebook.com to let us know when they are ready.

After you have done that, we'll have those pages printed up and added into the book.

Please keep in mind that you'll either want to use an image with a lot of white in it, or you'll want to add some transparency to your images if you'd like to be able to see the printed image on the page behind it. For text, just keep the white background, and use a solid black text.

For the Vellum cover wraps, you'll do basically the same process, just with a different template. Here's the templates for the cover wraps: Vellum cover templates.zip (101.52 KB)

Page layout FAQ

Rafael Loureiro! — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 01:36:28 GMT

We get many questions regarding the specifications for page layout on our books. The short and sweet answer is your working canvas should be set to the size of the book at 300 DPI in sRGB.

For instance, if you were laying out an 8x10 book, you'd start with a canvas that was 8 inches wide, by 10 inches tall at 300 dpi. The only book size that is not exactly the right size is the 9x6, which is actually 8.5x6.

What about the trimming on the edges?    We do trim about 1/16 of an inch off the outside edges, and between 1/16th and an 1/8th of an inch on the books with the hand torn edges.     You'll still want to setup your pages exactly the same way, but just be aware that the edges will be trimmed a hair.

By the way, the full bleed pages look fantastic with the hand torn edges! See below:

What about double page spreads, or panoramic images?   You can absolutely setup a double page spread with images going across the middle.   The only tricky part about pano pages is they need to be split into the left page and the right page before uploading. The way I layout my books is I start with a double page canvas, layout all of my pages, and then on the last step, I crop it to split it into the left side and right side.

There is basically no center gutter to worry about in the design either.   There is a fold, as you can see in the picture above, so I wouldn't run text across the middle or put the brides head there, but you can definitely run a full image through the center.

Back to our 8x10 example, for a double page spread, we'd start with a 16x10 page, create the layout and then split it into the 8x10 sides. Those of you more savvy with Photoshop can probably whip up an action to batch process all of those spreads into the sides, thus saving a bunch of time.

Hope that helps and happy designing!