How to Get Started with Adobe InDesign
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Read MorePhotoshop Tutorials & Inspiration for Beginners
How To’s, Inspiration, and Resources for Aspiring Photographers, Designers, Content Creators, and Crafters
Looking to get started with InDesign? This tutorial is for you!
Read More*** This post has been updated to make it even more awesome! *** Let's be real.
I appreciate scrap booked labors of love as much as the next gal, but honestly, if my future (yet-to-be-conceived) children are to have any chance of having their memories live on in an analog format, I can't carry on with the fantasy that someday I'll make scrap booking a regular part of my life. Maybe for a special gift, but definitely not a monthly/yearly thing.
Thankfully, I found a painless alternative.
I've been stewing about how I can make it easy to make sure that our family memories (and bits of daily life) have a life beyond a dusty ol' pile of hard drives.
(This is one of my favorite What the Duck comic strips by the genius Aaron Johnson)
I generally recommend that each time you download photos (whether from your phone, or your "real camera"), pick your 10-20 favorites and order some prints. When they come, just drop them in a photo storage box. Getting fancy with glue and scissors is nice, but totally not required.
Of course, if you're like me, as diligent as I am with taking care of client images, when it comes to my own personal photos—I'm lucky if I download them 3 or 4 times per year. In fact, I've gotten to the point where—like lots of folks—most of the time, the only camera I have with me is my phone.
And the most action my personal photos ever see is if they happen to get posted online via Instagram, etc. So it made the most sense to find a way to make a book from my Instagram images.
And since sifting through my entire photo collection in search of the images I happened to post to Instagram is not likely to happen (like trying to find a needle in a haystack), I was on a mission to find a better way.
Enter Blurb. There are a lot of book-making solutions out there (especially when it comes to Instagram and other social photo sharing sites), but many leave much to be desired in terms of design flexibility, ease of use, and product quality.
Having been a Blurb fan for years, I already knew that I wanted them to print my books, but the online tool they provide for printing your Instagram images has some sort of bug that jumbles the images out of order if you try to add more than the default of 52. And since I was planning to include roughly 250 images, this was a serious concern. (This is really too bad, as otherwise this tool would be so great!)
Blurb also makes a book plug-in for Lightroom, but after playing around with it for awhile, though the interior page layout options had what I wanted (a single square image per page), I found the cover layout and material options to be limiting (compared to the choices Blurb offers elsewhere) and ultimately I wasn't able to cobble together the book in the specific way I wanted. So, I turned my attention back to Blurb's free desktop application (called BookSmart).
Here's the Step-by-Step
I wanted a single image per page with plenty of white space around it, so I wrote a Photoshop action to build out each 4x4 image with a nice white background to fill out a 7x7 page. You can write your own, or download my custom action here (for a 7x7 book). Then batch run the action on the whole folder via Bridge.
Enjoy!
PS: Save 20% on your Blurb books through Dec. 8th with the code ANY20
2013 is off to a busy start! It's conference season in the industry, and I'm thrilled to be presenting at three of my faves. If you have plans to be at one of them—I hope you'll join me and come say hello!
I'll be teaching various combos of my Wicked Fast Workflow and InDesign Basics at the following international photography events:
SWPP | London Jan. 11th & 12th
ImagingUSA | Atlanta Jan. 20th
Also in Atlanta: I'll be speaking at the Mpix Pro booth at 1pm on Jan. 20th and at the SMUG Mug group at 8:30pm on Jan. 20th
WPPI | Las Vegas March 13th
Drop me a note and let me know if I'll get to see you!
Have you seen Adobe's new SWAPP publication yet? (It's FREE and available here via iTunes.) Check out the 2nd issue (blue cover) for my quick video tutorial to learn how to make a Facebook Timeline Cover using a lightning fast combo of ID, PS, and BR! Don't have a tablet? Watch the tutorial video here on YouTube.
I've created this book in both InDesign (for myself) and... under duress.... in Photoshop (by request for other photogs who are self-proclaimed InDesign virgins and wanted my designs in Photoshop format). I'm just happy I lived to tell the tale! :) I can't stress enough the importance of learning how to use InDesign in conjunction with Photoshop. They are two fabulous programs... each with their own specific purpose. There is a reason they both exist. Neither one fares well on its own.... but together? They're best friends. A truly dynamic duo!
Here are the links for the resource files I created especially for the AsukaBook "Ask the Expert" webinar series. I hope you find them helpful! (I'm quite fond of the pdf.... so if you like it, I'd love to hear about it!) Enjoy!
For the curious souls who want to see my Alphabet Book design in its entirety, it's here!
Khara Plicanic. Instructor, Photographer, Designer, Advocate. Here you'll find tools, inspiration, and empowerment to help you on your own creative journey.