BookSmart
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If you are using one of booksmart templates you shouldn’t have a problem with the text part of the cover. I have made several image wrap books and my advise to you is to make sure the entire area of the workspace is filled – then make sure there is nothing that is critical to your design near the edges (7/8" should be good). If you do not fill the workspace with your photograph then you possibly will see the background color on your cover. The same is true of full bleed pages in your book. When you go to "preview" mode in booksmart you can see there if any background is showing. I believe you have asked this question before – are you talking about the book you have featured on your website? If so and if the image’s you have downloaded there are an example of the book you are doing – you can see the background color in your photo’s – which means it will probably print the same way. I don’t see that you have published any books yet so I’m not sure how you are getting a thumbnail on Blurb yet? Or is it a private book right now? It’s always best to fill the workspace completly – making sure there is nothing critical to the photo near that 7/8" edge. I hope that helps….... |
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The instructions I’ve seen for imagewrap are saying 1" from the edge. |
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Yes, the book is private at the moment, unil I am ready to announce the sale, which I can’t do until I get grasp on the cover thing. So, how do you set an image back from the edges one inch but still have the thumbnail of the book’s cover show the cover as full bleed, as I want it to be? My entire photo is critcal, so the only option I see is to move the photo away from the edges one inch. How can you fill the entire workspace yet have nothing critical within one inch of the edges of the book? What am I missing here?
Thanks, Daniel |
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Daniel, If your entire image is critical you just cannot have an full-bleed ImageWrap cover that will prove acceptable to you. The outside edges of the photo will be wrapped around the outside edges of the cover. The thumbnail view on the website will not show that. For example if you have an image like this one and insert it into a full-bleed image container on your cover what you see below is how the cover will look in BookSmart and how the thumbnail will look in the Blurb bookstore. If you did a hardback with with dust jacket this is again how the cover will look. But if you order an image wrap the cover would look like the second photo with (in this case) part of the heron’s head wrapped around the cover.
What is meant by having nothing critical with 1" of the edge is to use a photo like this one where "losing" some of the trees and foreground as they are wrapped around the cover will not matter…
If all of your photo is critical I would suggest using an alternative cover layout that does not use a fill-bleed image, I can’t see any other way of you getting a successful outcome however much you fiddle with moving the photo away from the edges. Sorry. .........Tony |
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Tony, Thank you. Now that is clear. The confusion comes in the terminolgy that Blurb uses, I think. When they say to set the image back from the edge, I took it to me just that... I moved the entire image one inch from the edges of the book, leaving a border. However, what you have said is clear. Thanks again, Daniel |
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Beautiful job of explaining what I was trying to say – Tony!!!! I agree that Blurb needs to improve their instructions on this as it is very confusing unless you have done a book and see how it prints. |
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Bebensee, My thanks go out to you as well :) Daniel |
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Just a question then: what if you add a solid colour bleed 7/8” around your cover photo? Then only the solid bleed would be wrapped and your photo would stay intact. Does this make sense? Is this an option? |
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Oh, and to add one more dimension to this: do you have to do this for all 4 sides of the photo? I assumed that for the front cover, you wouldn’t need to worry about stretching because it would go into the spine, which is already defined in Blurb. Any comments? |
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I would be very very hesitant to do what you are suggesting. I think if you follow Tony’s beautiful example above you will be happy with your results. If your picture has critical areas close to the edge of the photo you may want to do some work in photoshop to adjust your center – or choose a different template that won’t cut the critical parts of the picture off by being to close to the edge. |
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webshaun, it is the outer edges of the book that are affected, the edge of the image at the spine isn’t. Have a read of this FAQ and watch the video. You’ll see that adding a border such as you suggest will leave you with a solid colour strip showing at the outer edges of the cover of your book. You could try adding a 3/8" border but I would not expect the binding/wrapping process to be an exact science so there is a danger that a tiny strip might show on one of the edges of the cover. From what I can see the Imagewrap process is not really designed for what you are trying to do and fiddling to try and get around what it does do may not give a good result. .........Tony |
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Thanks very much for the advice. I think I am going to try to add a border though. I figure if I have the exact dimensions of the cover (10.19” x 8.51”, I believe) and add a slight 1/8” bleed of the photo, THEN add the extra 2/8” as a border, I might just be able to get away with having a full bleed on the cover page. I just can’t afford to lose any part of this image, so I’m left with no other choice. Too bad Blurb hasn’t figured it out that we need trim guides built into Booksmart. I will let you know how it works out :P |
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Although I recommenced against it I can understand why you want to try and wish you luck. It’ll be interesting to see how you get on. There have been a number of posts on this topic and if you succeed there will be others who will follow your path. .......Tony |
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This is a very helpful thread! One thing I still need help with is the spine. If my title is intended to be centered should I make it off center in my jpeg? That will allow for the outside edge to be wrapped and the spine edge to be in the original position without loosing any portion to the "wrap". It seems like the wrap image is enlarged on all sides (imposible to enlarge on only three edges) and then slid to the right to align the spine edge correctly at the edge of the spine. This would mean that my "centered" title would move off-center to the right slightly for the finished image wrap book. Does this make sense? Correct? |
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Okay, so I’ve received my blurb book and I wanted to share what I’ve learned: It worked PERFECTLY!!! I couldn’t expect it to work better. What I did was I set my file size to 9.888" x 8.267" (this includes the bleed area). I then set my image (exactly what I want shown on the cover) in the centre of this file exactly 5/16" from the top, right, and bottom edges. This ensured that the image border would wrap over the edge of the book, but that the solid bleed colour was only seen on the inside flap. Here is an image of how the cover looked (with handy trim lines):
- The yellow lines (x4) indicate the ‘safe’ area for placement of things like text Note that you don’t have to worry about the left hand side, because the spine is unaffected by this. Anyway, I hope this helps you all. If you have any questions, please feel free to send me a message. Happy Blurbing! S.
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Ack! The image won’t show up. Try this link: http://s645.photobucket.com/albums/uu172/webshaun/?action=view&current=BlurbTrimEG.jpg |
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Oh, and in response to RCPhil8, my spine worked perfectly fine the way it was set up in Booksmart. I’d recommend working with the spine that way. I’m not sure that answers your question though…
S. |
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S, I#m glad it worked out OK and thanks for posting the details, very useful. …….Tony |
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hello First thanks for this thread & the image with the details of the cover by webshaun !!! All the best PB |
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HELP: ImageWrap Cover
