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How do I revert back to version 1.8? And some suggestions for future upd...
BookSmart
I don’t know about you folk, but I’ve found the latest Booksmart software (version 1.9.0 Beta and 1.9.1) to be a questionable ‘update’. My reasonably powerful computer is chewing on this buggy software (in both new and old books) where it didn’t before. I generally use only about 4 photo templates for my wedding albums (full page bleed, two vertical full page images, two horizontal full page images and a 4 way window) and zoom images out so they can sit where I want them. However one has been removed (two horizontal full bleed photos to a page). In its place, we’re now faced with a plethora of unattractive, chopy templates that are often neither square nor rectangular. Have you considered asking blurb users which templates they like or actually use and thinning them out? Or even better, make a repositionable photo box that can be drawn on in and resized (see below for suggestions). So my question to all is: Can I still download Booksmart version 1.8 for PC anywhere? Or does anyone have it on FTP I can log into and download? It felt much faster and had more versatile templates. Suggestions I’d find really useful in later updates: - Why can’t booksmart give us a repositionble photo box function where we can draw on boxes and scale them to the size we want, then zoom the picture in & out within that box? It’s done in loads of other photobook software (e.g. photobook.co.uk). I’d consider using other companies if I didn’t love the dust jacket and print quality at Blurb. - The same applies to text boxes. Why can’t we have the flexibility to draw a box where we want it and type in it. I find myself having to make [Enter] spaces in small fonts to get the titles in a place I want them. A draggable, scalable box would make the software so much more powerful. With a rotate font button would be great too, to type up or down a text box. - I’d love to see a double page spread template, for large group shots etc. I understand there’d be a central loss in the margin, but I’ve seen it done in other software. - When previewing, or going back to the edit book screen from the preview, can it automatically resize the book on screen to fit the screen window? Because every time I end up having to zoom it out to see it. - Perhaps make ctrl+mouse wheel a zoom in and out function, like in MS Word. - Have a box next to the photo zoom +/- so I can type 68% in instead of messing about trying to drag it back and forth for a specific zoom. - Possibly more complex to implement would be an option to make an 8×10 book into an 11×13 book, so we don’t have to lay it all out again if we want a large and regular size book. - this 1/8" print trim border for the bleed could be approximately shown / hidden on the page, so we have an idea how much we’ll be loosing. - Photo Templates with text always come up with "Click to Add Text" and page numbers, and are a pain to manually delete. Can there be ‘no text’ and ‘text’ photo templates? - Finally, I see your new books and version of Booksmart doesn’t compress images so much, which is a bonus for quality, but this eats up disk space on the windows drive. Can you add in an option to save the book on another disk (ie. outside my documents). It would be great if you could implement these features! Otherwise – good work Blurb for an ace product!!
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