DOWNLOAD the file here

Installation Instructions:

Copy the .jsx file to the following place:

Mac: ~/Applications/Adobe Photoshop/Presets/Scripts

PC: c:\Program Files\Adobe Photoshop\Presets\Scripts

You can also save the file to your desktop and double click to run it, or use File > Scripts > Browse to get to the file and run it.

Running the Script:

Go to the File > Scripts Menu, and you should see the “Couture Cover Template Generator v1″ listed. (If Photoshop was open when you copied the file to the Scripts folder, you will have to quit and restart Photoshop in order to see it.)

Click on that and a Pop-up Menu will come up.

Select your book style, paper type, page count, and whether or not you want text tips.

Make sure Guidelines are turned ON.

Click OK, and Voila! your cover template is ready. Below is an example of what you should see.

DOWNLOAD the file here

Here’s a list of locations where you can catch up with us in person:

February 20th-22nd : WPPI in Las Vegas – This is the granddaddy of all shows.  If you haven’t been yet and you can only go to one show this year, make it this one!  We’re going to be in Booth 1450 with some great specials and new books, so make sure you come by to say hello!

March 26th-28th : Inspire Boston – We are so excited to head out to Boston for the Inspire Boston for our second time.  It’s an amazing conference with so many great speakers that have so much passion for what we all do.  It’s hard to believe that they can get all of these great people all in one place!

April 24th and 25th : Canada Photo Convention – It’s the first year for this conference in Vancouver, and we’re already fired up about it!  They have a ton of great speakers lined up, and it’ll be our first time attending a conference up in Canada.  I hope we finally get to meet many of our Canadian friends in person!

I hope we get to see you at one of these shows, and we’re working on a few others that we’ll keep you posted on.

This is a family history book created by an amazing designer out of NYC, Maria Mayer Feng.   She has designed a lot of really interesting and cool books with us in the past, but I think she has taken the cake this time!   There are just so many interesting features she’s incorporated into the design that the book has come out so unique and elegant:

Printed wrap-around cover layout

Scans of original Polaroid pictures, and vellum pocket for actual postcards

Vellum pocket for postcards

Holes punched on page for a great peak-a-boo effect

Hand-written letter unfolded

Another hand-written note included with scans of other letters

Close-up of note

Another letter bound into the book

Close-up of letter

More letters scanned and included in the design

DVD attachd to the inside back cover with printed endsheets

Thanks again Maria for letting us share this amazing book!

To see more of Maria’s work and to contact her for a design of your own, please check out her website: www.mariamayerfeng.com

With the paper sample set, we’ll take a collage of your images and print them out on all of our paper stocks.  That way you can not only see and feel the texture of all of the different surfaces, but you can also see exactly how YOUR images will print on each of the different papers.

Here’s how to get started with those:

1. Log into Couture Book – click create and log in
2. Once logged in, create a new project
3. Pick “Paper Samples” from the list of options
4. Download blank templates, place a bunch of your images on the pages, flatten the pages, and save as Jogs
5. Upload those pages to the site
6. Order your paper samples

Once you place the order, we’ll have the pages sent to print, and out to you usually within a week. 

The good news is there is a way to do it!

In a nutshell, you’ll export the layout pages as Jpg images, and then upload them to your COUTURE BOOK account to generate the free preview. That way you can share your preliminary layout with your customer before anything is set in stone. This also lets you keep a record of exactly which design was approved (you can generate different preview links for each iteration of your design).

Here’s how to combine your Aperture design with our free online preview:

• First, open your book project in Aperture and then hit the “Print” button on the upper right

• When the print dialogue box opens, click on the “PDF” drop down on the lower left
• Choose ” option to “Save PDF as Jpg in folder” and this will automatically start the export process

• Once Aperture finishes exporting the images, you’ll see a “gear” icon spinning on your upper status bar. That tells you that your computer is working on converting the layouts to Jpgs

• After it finishes, you’ll get new window with a cryptic message that says “copy finder items”. Just enter the location you’d like to save your layouts at, and this will save your exported jpgs to that folder

• After that, just upload your newly minted Jpgs to a new project on your COUTURE BOOK account, and order a free preview.

Hopefully that doesn’t sound too complex, and I promise that once you get the hang of it, it’s really easy!

-Dave

Liona and Michael Wedding Album from Mango Studios on Vimeo.

I LOVE how they go through every single page!   I think this is such a great way to show off your books.  It really gives you a great idea of the style of photography, the design of the books, and really highlights how many pages you can have in a COUTURE BOOK.

Here’s a link to their original post with more info on their book: mangostudios.com/our-storybooks

Also, here’s the contact info on Mango studios:
MANGO STUDIOS
477 Richmond St. W. Unit 101
T. (416) 366-4723
W. www.mangostudios.com

Special thanks to Mango Studios for letting us share!!

French Cannes book with Satin cover and custom White Snow slipcase

They choose the Cannes Satin cover, which gave the cover an elegant feel.   To go with the Satin cover, they added a White Snow covered slipcase.  The soft Snow suede really complimented the satin of the cover nicely.

French Cannes full cover layout

Custom Snow slipcase, with just the spine showing

They also incorporated vellum pages as chapters throughout the book

Chapter pages in vellum

Vellum Chapter Page

I also loved their layout.  They used a lot of full bleed images and double page spreads.  This gives the book a great fine-art feel, and really makes the images look great.

Panoramic image over two pages

I LOVE the clean simple design!

Another great double page spread

You can check out more of Paula’s and Barend’s work here:

www.paularomein.nl
www.paularomein.nl/weblog
http://www.houtsmuller.com/

To add stamping to an order, we just need to know a few things:

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 Line 1 – this should be the EXACT text you need
Text Line 2 – Exact text for the second line
You’ll want to include the above info in the notes section upon checkout, and we’ll have it added into your order.

We can also have custom designs and logos made into stamping dies for your books.  This is a nice way to include your branding professionally on your books.  There is a one time charge to have the logo made into a stamping die (depends on the size of the logo), and then it’s only $20.00 for each additional stamp.

Custom blind stamping on cover of slipcase

For the custom logo stamping, we need 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 text stamping or creating a custom stamping die, please don’t hesitate to let us know.

What about the trimming on the edges?

We do trim about 1/16 of an inch off the outside edges on the books with the straight cut 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 somebody’s head there, but you can definitely run a full image through the center.

Back to our 8×10 example, for a double page spread, we’d start with a 16×10 at 300 dpi canvas.   Once we’ve created our design, we’d then split it into the 8×10 sides and save them as individual pages.

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!

They are great way to divide up the book into chapters, or to highlight certain areas or images, or even just to add a beautiful design element to your layouts.  I’ve even seen them used with a different line from a favorite poem sprinkled throughout a book!

Several of our lines include the printed vellum option, but they can be added to any of the different collections.

For the styles that do include vellum pages, they 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 also note this in the special instructions area as well.   We’ll then follow up with you to have you send us the images and locations you’d like to have for your vellum pages.

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

1. Download these templates: Vellum page templates1.zip (308.3 KB)
2. Create your layout, image or text on the template
3. Include your order number and the page number you want this placed after on the bottom of the page
4. Save as a Jpeg
5. Upload to the FTP account or email them to support@couturebook.com

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

Please keep in mind that any area in the image that is white will be transparent.  If you use an image with a lot of white in it you won’t need to adjust the opacity, but you’ll definitely want to adjust the opacity on an image without white if you’d like the page to be semi-transparent.

For text pages, you can just keep the white background, and use a solid color for the text.