Liz and Nick Guestbook

mmmatt · August 22, 2011

Hey guys. I have shown a few guestbooks here before. I'm liking how this is turning out so I thought I would solicit some extra eyes before I print it next week. Here is the original e-session thread These images are of course from the e-session and will be printed in a book with an image on the left side of each spread and a signing page on the right. This will be a 40 page, 10x8 blurb book

cover

title page (still waiting on the text)

signing page(s)

p02

p04

p06

p08

p10

p12

p14

p16

p18

p20

p22

p24

p26

p28

p30

p32

That's it for now!!! A few more pages to go and then off to the printer. Any coments or crits are appreciated.

Thanks
Matt

Shima · August 22, 2011

Great layouts, I really like this idea! I might have to copy you in the future, that's a great way to use their engagement photos instead of only using just one for a big poster board...

Saturday's wedding the bride and groom has printed a decent size copy of one the images I took at their engagement session and then had it framed with an engraveable metal thing which was kind of neat, I'd never seen that done before. But I like your guest book idea a tad better

WillCAD · August 22, 2011

I'm lovin' it, Matt. Great idea, superb execution. I particularly like the signing pages with black and white photos as the background and color photo insets.

mmmatt · August 22, 2011

Thanks Cat. I include this in my higher end packages because it is such powerful advertising on the day of. I pay about $55 from blurb to print them, and people hover around the guest book all night. so many people never get to see the e-shoot images. I have done 7 or 8 of them now so I can use previous books as a template and now I only have 15 hours or so into each one. I just use different color overlays and different images to make them all unique and I use a lot of otherwise undelivered images for backgrounds since proper focus or composition isn't so important. It is cool enough to get most people to jump up to the bigger package so at the end of the day I get paid for my time doing it.

Steal away... it is a great idea and works well for me. It was a request of one of my clients a couple years ago and just took off. Most of my clients are now ordering them.

Will, thanks friend for the kind words. I'm not sure you get the idea though. The parchment sheet is the signing page, so even pages (on left) are montages and odd pages (on right) are signing pages.

here is another one I am working on and for this one I used a sample of the lake from one of the shots as the overlay for each page and the signing page

cover 2

signing page 2

p02

p04

p06

p08 (check out her fingers throwing leaves in the background)

p10

p12

Matt

FlyNavy · August 22, 2011

Wow! Well done.

mmmatt · August 24, 2011

Thanks John!

Moogle Pepper · August 24, 2011

Nice!

But what kind of pens will they use to write on it?

Dark on dark, isn't very fun for the eyes.

mmmatt · August 24, 2011

Moogle Pepper wrote: »

Nice!

But what kind of pens will they use to write on it? Dark on dark, isn't very fun for the eyes.

I'm not sure what you mean... the pages people sign are oposite the picture pages when the book is open. Every other page is a sign in page. When open, each spread is a montage on the left and a blank page on the right. They are a medium parchment in the case of the first one I showed and a soft green rippled water in the case of the 2nd. That isn't to dark to sign!!

As for the pen, I use black, permanent, acid-free, used for scrap booking, felt tip pens. Sharpies can degrade the paper, ball points can damage the image on the other side.

For the record I have done signable prints that were dark for musicians, and used silver sharpies although they will eventually degrade the print. Those are awesome and work really well, but for this it is just an acid free scrapbooking pen

WillCAD · August 24, 2011

Sorry, Matt, I had mistakenly thought that the montage pages with light backgrounds were the signing pages.

I actually think they would make nice signing pages. The b&w images you used for the backgrounds seem light enough, and if you added some signing lines and maybe a header or footer in the same font and color you used on the title page, those light parts of the montage pages would be great siging pages. Pages 2, 10, 12, 14, 18, 20, 22, 26, & 32 (of the first set) all have a lot of space for such lines.

I'm just spitballing, or course.

as to the choice of which color scheme, my personal preference is for the colors in the first one. Something about the golds and browns and the parchment background really appeals to me.

I'm very curious about the printing and binding process. Do you do it in-house, or is it something you get from a lab? What kind of materials and binding will be used? And, of course, how much will it cost you to produce?

mmmatt · August 24, 2011

WillCAD wrote: »

Sorry, Matt, I had mistakenly thought that the montage pages with light backgrounds were the signing pages.

I actually think they would make nice signing pages. The b&w images you used for the backgrounds seem light enough, and if you added some signing lines and maybe a header or footer in the same font and color you used on the title page, those light parts of the montage pages would be great siging pages. Pages 2, 10, 12, 14, 18, 20, 22, 26, & 32 (of the first set) all have a lot of space for such lines.

I'm just spitballing, or course.

as to the choice of which color scheme, my personal preference is for the colors in the first one. Something about the golds and browns and the parchment background really appeals to me.

I'm very curious about the printing and binding process. Do you do it in-house, or is it something you get from a lab? What kind of materials and binding will be used? And, of course, how much will it cost you to produce?

I print with Blurb on their premium paper and it is about $55 per book shipped. But... looks like that isn't how it works now. I just logged into blurb and they are now requiring files at 72dpi instead of 300dpi. They just added a new "pro" section with more paper options and some other cover options and whatnot so I can't believe that they expect resolutions now at 72dpi... I'm waiting on an email back to figure this out, but it looks like blurb may not be what I use now. that will totally suck because these are all designed to the pixel of what their specs were last year when I printed. Not excited about trying a new printer right now!!! I think I may stat a new thread about that, and see if anyone knows of another good inexpensive printer. ***edit*** Actually... that is not the case. I was just a 10th of an inch off on my cover template. I'm not sure what is going on with the dpi though. When I convert to pdf presentation from cs3 (seems that cs5 doesn't do this now...) it goes from a 300 dpi jpg to a 72dpi pdf. I'm not sure what that means, but if the res is the same as others I have printed I am OK with it. these aren't the best print quality but everyone oos and ahhhs over them so iI guess I don't care what the numbers say. I'm simply not going to pay 200+ to print these from another printer.

As for signing on the black adn white backgrounds... I want a 4o page book and to only design 20 pages... they get signing pages on the right lol.

Matt

Bakko · August 24, 2011

well done indeed!
i love that the colors on the first set match the colors on the book

mmmatt · August 24, 2011

Bakko wrote: »

well done indeed!
i love that the colors on the first set match the colors on the book

Well I guess the eyedropper tool works then! I'm a touch colorblind so the subtlties escape me. On the first book I chose the brown trim color by sampling a spot in the uperish leftish of cover image. The diffuse background images are reduced in opacity to taste ~ 30-60% and then I drop a 50% overlay of the trim color over that but behind the main image. I should also mention that the trim you see on all of these is the trim lines for the pages. About half of it is trimmed off, and the rest is the "not safe for text" area of the edge of the paper. I usually just do a trim line like the first set or no line like the 2nd. With the trim line it is about 1/4" inch showing on the edges, but it isn't precise which is why I like to give a little bit of extra. $50 book you know...

anyways, thanks

Matt

mmmatt · August 24, 2011

OK... the res is still 300dpi... I was confusing pixels and points.

Matt

VayCayMom · August 27, 2011

Mat, have I told lately how great your work is?? Inspiring.

mmmatt · August 28, 2011

VayCayMom wrote: »

Mat, have I told lately how great your work is?? Inspiring.

Ha ha! Thanks Vaycay!

Matt

smurfy · August 30, 2011

I love your processing on these. Beautiful session. And "blessings and wishes" sounds so much better than what I call them: " guest book." Mind if I borrow that?

mmmatt · August 31, 2011

smurfy wrote: »

I love your processing on these. Beautiful session. And "blessings and wishes" sounds so much better than what I call them: " guest book." Mind if I borrow that?

No problem Smurfy. My very first client that got the original one of these came up with that. To be honest I didn't really like it at first, but it quickly grew on me. I have had a couple clients change the title.

As for copying this, or most anything I show around here, I am honored if you do. I have to say that if I saw someone duplicating this in my market ( Madison, Milwaukee, Chicago) to compete with me it would break my heart, but I understand that can happen and if it does it does. I thought about all of that stuff long and hard one day and I came to the conclusion that by sharing ideas I inspire others to share ideas with me, and the best thing I can personally do for the survival of professional wedding photography is to help out those who want to do it right. Those who choose to be hacks... different story!

BlueSkyPhotos · September 2, 2011

Hi Matt,
I am in your market, but you don't need to worry about stealing your idea:) I sell guestbook with about half of my wedding, but I don't put any title on them. I never have done that and none of my clients asked for it.
btw: Great work on your design.

mmmatt · September 2, 2011

BlueSkyPhotos wrote: »

Hi Matt,
I am in your market, but you don't need to worry about stealing your idea:) I sell guestbook with about half of my wedding, but I don't put any title on them. I never have done that and none of my clients asked for it.
btw: Great work on your design.

Ha! I'm not claiming an exclusive on guest books! Thanks for the compliment.

sphynge · September 2, 2011

How's the page - ink ratio working out for you?
Hey mmmatt,

I use Blurb as well and I've tested just about every option (pro or not) for paper with them. When I do my layout, I make sure that I leave enough white pages between full bleed photo pages, because I've noticed that they tend to make the paper "wavey". I noticed that your design basically uses ink on the entire page, for the entire book. Have you encountered that problem at all? If no, what paper choice do you go for? (I've been going for archival uncoated lately, it's so thick).

Thanks!

mmmatt · September 2, 2011

I haven't had any problems with wavy pages. the archival uncoated and the pearl are both new options since I printed my last books from them so I have yet to try either, I did get a swatch book though and they are beautiful thick papers. In the past I have used the premium paper in either gloss or matte and both were excellent to my eye. The book at the top of this thread I ordered in both the new archival uncoated and the premium matte to compare. I also ordered a previously done book in the pearl as a sample. The 2nd book in this thread will be ordered in premium gloss so I can compare all 4 in actual books. I have notice that the edges aren't perfectly symmetrical after being trimmed so I am afraid to leave a thin white border or anything. With image up to the edge it is perfectly seamless and with the darker boarder it is very close. The border shown in the first book is literally a template I made to shade both the trim area and the not safe for text area and then I just used it solid in the trim color. Ultimately it will be a 1/4" trim line around each page I hope.

Matt

sphynge · September 2, 2011

I love the archival paper
Gotcha - I had used premium all along but I'm on my 4th book with archival uncoated and can't go back. Only downside to using it as a guest book is that it's soooo thick that when you get in the 80 page territory they get really hard to flatten out to write on them.

mmmatt · September 2, 2011

sphynge wrote: »

Gotcha - I had used premium all along but I'm on my 4th book with archival uncoated and can't go back. Only downside to using it as a guest book is that it's soooo thick that when you get in the 80 page territory they get really hard to flatten out to write on them.

All my guestbooks are 40 pages. I do use blurb for what I call "proof books" though. In those I design the cover sort of like I do for a guestbook, but then all the interior pages are just centered images on a 7x7 or a 12x12 page. Those I usually do as 400 page books and I created an action to center each image in a batch on an appropriately sized page and save it as a pdf with a single click. I may have to test drive that with the new papers to see if there is an issue.

Matt

Liz and Nick Guestbook

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