Picturia Press - Creating Books authored by you -->

A client contacted us the other day because she was working on creating a great book chronicling the life of her friend who was turning 30 years old in a few weeks. Although she wanted to design the book herself, she asked us to consult with her on design and layout and the concepts of "telling the story" of her friend's life. We were very happy to assist her in creating a wonderful gift.

While we consulting with our client, we also provided our image correction services to work on red-eye elimination and color correction of some old photographs. We also designed the dust jacket for her new book, seen here.

There's nothing more rewarding than working with and recovering old photographs for a client. We were asked to do this project as a commemorative piece on our client's wife who recently passed away.

We received many scans, emails, and discs full of wonderful old images to work with on creating this book. We spent a great deal of time photo editing and photo retouching the images to bring them up to print quality.

Never assume a photo can't be used in your book because it is old, damaged and/or deteriorating. A good designer will know how to edit and recover those images to use in your book. Below is an example of one such image that we recovered and used in this book.



To view more of the book, please click here.

So you’d like to produce a book. Regardless of whether it is a portfolio of your work, an event or wedding album, a blog, a cookbook, or a novel, the first decision to make is should you do it yourself, or should you hire a professional?

The most important thing to consider is the time and effort put into creating the book versus the desired outcome of the finished product. Time is always something we are short on, and trial and error in designing your own book can be time-consuming, costly and frustrating. Hiring a professional book designer can simplify this process for you. This way you work with a designer to establish the look and feel of the book, and the designer then implements and/or enhances your vision.

Professional designers do this for a living and therefore understand the technology and the graphic design layout process a book requires. If your desire is to create a professional portfolio, or a book that is personal and emotive, a designer will know how to convey your concept.

Additionally, their skills in designing allow them to provide creative input such as use of color, use of design elements, typography and photo editing. All of these skills not only add to, but enhance the look of your finished book.

In preparing a quote for a client, it isn’t as simple as quoting a set price and going from there. There are many things a professional designer will need to know from you in order to establish a base cost. Let's review some of the things you'll need to know about designing your book before you hire a designer...

Take some time to think about your book before selecting a designer. This process will really help you establish what exactly you want to create and will also enable the vendor to give you a quote based on your true needs and not on a “guesstimate”. And keep in mind that hiring a vendor to design the book does not in most cases include the cost of purchasing and shipping the book. Be sure to verify that with any vendor you hire.

What format shall my book be in?
Blurb.com has several book size selections to choose from as follows:



Blurb books come in soft cover, hard cover with a dust jacket and hard cover with an image wrap. (An image wrap allows you to print an image directly on the front and back of any hard cover book.

Deciding right away on the size of your book is important to begin the design process. You may already know what you want, or you can consult with your designer to determine the best size suited for your project.

Blurb offers great flexibility with ordering your book when it is completed, you have the choice of either soft covers or a hard covers. However, for design purposes, you will need to know if you want the book to have the option of a hard cover with a dust jacket or a hard cover with an image wrap. The reason for this is the designer will need to “lay out” the inside flaps of a dust jacket, and will also need to meet specific design parameters if the cover is to be image wrapped.

How big will my book be?
This can often be a question you find hard to answer and the book designer understands that. However, you may have an idea of how many pages you would “like” the book to be, or you know how many pictures you have or pages of text. This will help enormously when asking a vendor to give you a quote.

What are the elements in my book?
This is important to know for the designer to determine the needs and time required for designing. While your concept can change, a basic understanding of what materials will be included will help the vendor determine pricing.

Most importantly, know what is the content of your book – is it photographs, text, or a combination of both.

Photographs
Know approximately how many images you have.
Can the vendor use a selection of the images, or must they use them all.
Indicate if the images are in digital format or printed format.
If not, will you require them to be scanned by the vendor.
Do the images required editing (such as color enhancement, editing background).
How many of your images require editing.

Text
What format do you have the text in now. (i.e. a Word document)
How much text will you have. (Is it captions for the photographs, quotations, dedications, or the entire book consists of text.

Timeline
It is important as a client for you to convey any deadline for your project. In most cases this determines if and when a vendor can take on your project. Do not assume that because the vendor is a professional, your book can be completed in two days. Be sure to allow enough time for the designer to create a design for you to review and revise and deliver a polished finished product. Most vendors can and will work with you on your timeline but may need to charge you a “rush” fee if it falls outside of the normal time it takes to design the book.

OTHER PROFESSIONAL SERVICES
Not all vendors offer additional services, but here are some to consider.

Additional Design Elements
Enhancing your book to complete your vision may require additional photography, illustration, or text. For example, you may wish to add quotes to the book, or customize a front cover. You may desire specialty design treatments, such unique backgrounds or typography. These things require additional time and services from the vendor.

Color profiling. This assures your images will get a truer contrast and more accurate color consistency in your printing. For most individuals, this is not a service you will require. Usually, a professional photographer wanting to assure absolute color consistency would use this process.

ISBN Code.Will you require as ISBN Code. If you are unsure if you need an ISBN code or not, please read my post. If you need an ISBN Code for your book, you can either do this yourself or ask if your vendor can perform this service for you.

I had the pleasure and fun of recently completing a book for an associate of mine. Fun because it was a book about two of her best friends, her dog and cat. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m a big animal lover, so this book was something I was looking forward to working on. It’s going to be a gift to her mother for Mother’s Day.

What made this more interesting is having the opportunity to work with and play with typography. Something I enjoy just as much as graphic design and they go well together. As you can see, using typography in some of these pages can make a simple image come alive. It can add sentiment that the image alone might not convey. Treatments like these are emotive and add to the quality of the overall presentation.

When designing a book, consider working with and trying out different fonts, different sizes, and different colors. Images tell a story, but so can typography. The images above were not taken by a professional photographer, but as you can see, they didn’t need to be. We converted the image to black and white and then added the appropriate text to convey personality.



Bear in mind that when you hire a designer, there are additional costs and time to create these types of pages for your book. But, as with everything, they are well worth the cost when you see the end results.

Click here to view the book

A common issue we frequently handle with photographs we receive is the dreaded "red eye". It's unavoidable, one out of three pictures a client gives us inevitably has one person or more in the picture with red eye. Most professional photographers know how to avoid it, and at the very least, know how to correct it in post production image editing. The point here is how much money you can save in book production/image editing costs if your designer doesn't have to do this work for you. But let's face it, not everyone has the know-how to fix their photographs.



News comes down today in the New York Times that now anyone can go online, upload their photos and fix red eye easily. It is has been a long time coming, but it's finally here. Online photo editing in the form of Adobe Photoshop Express. Of course, it's in beta right now, so I'm sure there are some glitches to be smoothed out. But generally, the service offers storage of your images, easy editing for removal of red eye and other options that range from the useful (cropping, exposure, etc) to the slightly tacky and quite unnecessary graffiti. Personal choices for everyone I'm sure. Even more useful is the "UNDO" feature for those of us who might get carried away.....

Save the difficult image editing and effects to the pros, but red-eye? Adobe just made that easier for you.

One of the challenges a designer faces is that sometimes (well, more than sometimes....) we have less than perfect images to work with for creating the client's book. That's where image editing can take a good picture and turn it into a great picture. And honestly, from a designer's standpoint; the better the image, the better the book.

Often all that an image requires is a little retouching. That can be something as simple as the removal of red eye or perhaps turning a color photograph into a black and white image to provide a more visual impact. Then there are the bigger challenges like removing background "noise" (i.e.: items or individuals) from a photograph.


This is an example of a picture the client had of her parents at her wedding. Of course this was a photograph that had to go into the book, but every time the client looked at the image, she saw those pesky uninvited people standing in the background. They would just have to go! Figure B reflects the image editing we did so that we could use this picture in our client's book.

Another example of making an image work is the one below. The client had a picture with her newborn baby. Again, this was a must have in the client's book. But as you can see....it was too dark to use (see, or not see Figure A).


Fortunately, editing the image enabled us to brighten it enough to use the picture (see Figure B) and actually the end result made this one of her favorite pages in the book.

Unless you are blessed with being a professional photographer, you can assume that a percentage of images you provide us with will require some kind of image editing. The end result will be well worth the investment.

Since my last post, I've seen, spoken, emailed and called clients to no end and have now tried to develop a set of questions most commonly asked. Hopefully for you bloggers out there, it will save you some time.

How many pages can my book be?
As many as you like, but we don't recommend going over 400 pages.

How do I decide on the size and cover?
That size of the book is up to the client. Small books can be 7 x 7 inches, large books can be 13 x 11, but the most common size is 10 x 8 or 8 x 10. Choosing between a hard back or soft cover is completely up to the client.

How many pictures should I have?
Assume you'll need 40% more images than pages. So for example a 100 page book, you'd want to provide us with at least 140 images.

What size/resolution should the images be?
The higher the resolution of the image, the better quality the image will print. Even though a 380K file size image will show wonderfully on the Internet, it needs to be at least 1.2MB file size image to print on paper. If you give us images that are low resolution, we will either not be able to use them, or they may have to be the size of thumbnail images!

Will you edit my images?
Not all book designers do editing. In our case, we have the experience to do so. Editing can consist of color correction, removing unwanted spots or other items from a photograph to adding effects. This is not usually in the bid price for the project and is priced out separately.

How does the creative process work?
Every book designer is different. But at Picturia Press, we work with you to get the look and feel you want for the project. Then we go away and create that vision. We'll put a draft of your book online for you to view and make changes/suggestions. We work with you until you are satisfied with the end results

How do you get my images?
There is a variety of way for us to access your images. You can create a CD and mail it to us. We can set up an FTP on line where you transfer the files, or we can access them through an online photo gallery such as Picasa. We work with what's easiest for the client.

How long will it take?
Well, that can vary on the size of the project. But usually allow 2 to 3 weeks for the project to be completed, then it has to go to print - usually another week to 10 days. So, basically, don't expect to get a finished book in under a week.....

How much will it cost?
The magic question. Unfortunately, there is no magic answer. Book design can range from $250 to $5,000. It all depends. Just remember the reward of seeing your book in print is worth every penny!!

Side Note: Make sure you own all the rights to the images you provide us with, as you will need to confirm that in writing.

This book I did for a dear friend who has had four huskies in his life so far. But it was also for selfish reasons too, I happen to love dogs. I can't pass one in the street without stopping to pet it. And as some of my friends will tell you, I have a knack for finding abandoned dogs.

Anyway, my client had recently experienced a loss of one of his huskies and realized he wanted some special way to commemorate him. He had boxes of pictures he'd taken, pictures on his hard drive, on CD's and also on Picasa online. Time to collect and consolidate, wouldn't you say? Now he has this book in his living room that he can pull out and look at whenever he likes. And to be honest, I have the book on my bookshelf too.

What a great project. I never laughed so hard at some of these images. The trouble was in picking the right ones. We went through about 300 pictures. The more the merrier when it comes to that. Let your designer spend the time looking through them all. I find that clients who try to select the photos they want to use get very overwhelmed. Leave the decision making to us, give us all the pictures you can.

This was a small and quick project, but I loved it. Click here to see the book!