Custom book pages in Aperture

mercphoto · March 12, 2010

I'm wanting to use Aperture to design a photo book, but not wanting to use their book publishing service. As such I therefore want to use a custom book layout. For my case, an 8x10 landscape book from Pounds Photo Labs. I setup the custom layout just fine, and I put in zero for margins so that I can go full-bleed if I want (but now I'm thinking that was a mistake). The real problem, however, is that the page numbering seems wrong. Normally a right-hand page is an odd number, but I'm getting even numbers for the right hand pages. Very strange.

Any help? Any online tutorials? My Aperture 2 book really doesn't touch on this much at all.

mercphoto · March 15, 2010

Bump. Thanks if anyone has any insight.

mercphoto wrote:

I'm wanting to use Aperture to design a photo book, but not wanting to use their book publishing service. As such I therefore want to use a custom book layout. For my case, an 8x10 landscape book from Pounds Photo Labs. I setup the custom layout just fine, and I put in zero for margins so that I can go full-bleed if I want (but now I'm thinking that was a mistake). The real problem, however, is that the page numbering seems wrong. Normally a right-hand page is an odd number, but I'm getting even numbers for the right hand pages. Very strange.

Any help? Any online tutorials? My Aperture 2 book really doesn't touch on this much at all.

arodney · March 15, 2010

I don’t know how you’d print a book in Aperture without sending through their print provider.

mercphoto · March 15, 2010

arodney wrote:

I don’t know how you’d print a book in Aperture without sending through their print provider.

Its a pain to do. One route is to have Aperture generate a high resolution PDF of your book and use that to send to your preferred publisher. But it seems that Aperture 3 is opening up new publishing possibilities:

http://aperture.maccreate.com/2010/02/09/produce-stunning-books-with-aperture-3s-book-plug-ins/

mercphoto · March 16, 2010

I got this response to the same question that I posted on the Automotive Photographer's Network. Thought others might find it useful:

"I used Aperture 2 with custom page sizes, etc. to make a book that I printed via Blurb. I did not use Aperture to number the pages... rather exported each page as a single image and created the book via the Blurb software, which did the page numbering."

mercphoto · March 19, 2010

arodney wrote:

I don’t know how you’d print a book in Aperture without sending through their print provider.

From the Aperture 2 User's Manual, page 609: "After you’ve created your book, you can purchase printed and bound copies from Apple’s print vendor. You can also print your book using your own printer or create PDF files that you can send to clients or your own print vendor."

And from looking at it briefly last night it appears you can also get Aperture to spit out JPG's for each page, if need be, as well. Very nice. I made a photo book last night in Aperture in about 30 minutes, which would have taken me a few hours to do in Photoshop.

But, I still have the annoying page numbering issue. And I think I know what is wrong, and it has to do with the fact that with a custom theme Apple gets confused about the cover page and the first page of the book, and this throws off page numbering by one page.

arodney · March 19, 2010

mercphoto wrote:

But, I still have the annoying page numbering issue. And I think I know what is wrong, and it has to do with the fact that with a custom theme Apple gets confused about the cover page and the first page of the book, and this throws off page numbering by one page.

I don’t think its confused, its spitting out the pages, based on the books printing pagination. IOW, if a book is printing one sided versus two sided etc, how the sheets are printed and bound would play a role here.

It might just be easier to edit the PDF (doable with the full version of Acrobat) and just alter the page numbers it spits out. Or figure out if there is a book layout that has a pagination that matches what you want (I suspect not). Also, some parts of the book are sheet fed, others web (cover vs. inside) so again, this might make getting the pagination that would work if you sent the book to Apple difficult to fit your exact needs.

mercphoto · March 19, 2010

arodney wrote:

I don’t think its confused

When it displays for me left and right hand pages, and it numbers the right hand page an even number, that to me is confused.

MarkR · March 19, 2010

mercphoto wrote:

When it displays for me left and right hand pages, and it numbers the right hand page an even number, that to me is confused.

But if it's a double-sided print, then the right hand side would really be the left hand page, no?

mercphoto · March 19, 2010

MarkR wrote:

But if it's a double-sided print, then the right hand side would really be the left hand page, no?

No....

mercphoto · March 25, 2010

Don't know why I didn't do a screen grab before this. Notice here how the wrong page is labeled as page 1:

2&file=aperture2bookproblem_medium.jpg

erikguzowski · March 29, 2010

custom dpi as jpeg or tiff instaed of pdf

mercphoto wrote:

No....

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1859

this link will help you change your aperture print settings. I print custom wedding albums using aperture.

page numbers: sometimes there is a problem with page numbers. If you start with or add a single page to the first page of the book Aperture somtimes gets confused and starts the first page as a spread rather than ust the left page.

Turn of page numbers and just let your book company number your pages if you want them numbered.

erikguzowski · March 29, 2010

erikguzowski wrote:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1859

this link will help you change your aperture print settings. I print custom wedding albums using aperture.

page numbers: sometimes there is a problem with page numbers. If you start with or add a single page to the first page of the book Aperture somtimes gets confused and starts the first page as a spread rather than ust the left page.

Turn of page numbers and just let your book company number your pages if you want them numbered.

Now I see your problem: start your first photo on the first page (the page you have blank at the top that is your first page)

mercphoto · March 29, 2010

erikguzowski wrote:

Now I see your problem: start your first photo on the first page (the page you have blank at the top that is your first page)

But that doesn't have a page number.

Which was my original question, why that is happening.

I am, however, getting around this by not letting Aperture number the pages itself.

What I think is really happening is that Aperture seems to think that first page is the book cover, which is why it is not numbering it. But then it immediately jumps to a two-page spread, instead of a one-page spread for the first page.

Custom book pages in Aperture

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