Below are some tips useful for designing albums when using Photoshop. Please follow them, and designing your album will become pure pleasure. ;)
What is a spread? You can find the explanation HERE.
You can download the template files HERE to design an album in Photoshop. Each album is designed using a dedicated file (the file name corresponds to the album size being designed). Therefore, when designing a 10x10 album, open the file named 10x10.psd in Photoshop; when designing a 30x30 album, open the 30x30.psd file, and so on.
Please remember that one file represents one spread. The minimum number of spreads in an album is 5, and the maximum is 50 (the base price includes up to 10 spreads in an album, with each additional spread charged according to the price list).
To design a spread, we will use the template appropriate for the 30x30 album size.
The blank file, once opened in Photoshop, looks like this:
(All the examples below are screenshots from Photoshop, which is why a black frame is visible around them.)
Each file has special guides that are extremely important and useful for further work. If the guides are not visible, you can enable them by following the path: View -> Show -> Guides.
What do the guides indicate?
- The center vertical guide marks the middle of the design—this is where the album will fold in half. :)
- The outer guides, indicated by blue arrows, represent the approximate trim lines (bleed area). The margin of error when trimming the album with a guillotine is +/- 2mm, so it is crucial that the photos extend to the edge of the template or are placed inside the guides.
- The inner guides, indicated by red arrows, define the safe area for the design. All text, frames, and important elements of the design must be placed inside both guides, or the photo can be extended to the inner guide, ensuring equal margins around the album.
At this stage, you can add photos to the template. The best approach is to add photos in their original size and then transform them using the Ctrl+T command ("grab" the corner of the photo and hold Shift).
When designing a 30x30 album, each spread should be designed in a consecutively opened 30x30.psd file.
When saving the spreads, they should be saved in order: 01, 02, 03, 04...10, 11, 12. The "0" in spreads from 1 to 9 is extremely important!
Example 1
The spread below will be printed with an equal white border around it—CORRECT.
The photos are extended to the inner guide.
(close-up of the top right corner of the above spread)
Example 2
The spread below will be printed without a border around it—CORRECT.
The photos are extended to the edge of the template.
(close-up of the top right corner of the above spread)
Example 3
The spread below will be printed with an uneven border around it—INCORRECT.
The photos were not extended either to the edge of the template or to the inner guide.
(close-up of the top right and bottom corners of the above spread)
Please note that at Crystal Albums, we do not verify the correctness of the uploaded files.
SUMMARY OF THE ABOVE EXAMPLES:
- Photos should be extended either to the edge of the template or to the inner guide.
- Any arrangement of photos within the area defined by the inner guide is allowed.
- Even if the photos in Example 3 were stretched between the edge of the template and the inner guide to the same height, there is still a high risk of uneven borders due to the margin of error when trimming the album with a guillotine, which is +/- 2mm.
- When saving spreads, they should be saved in the order they will appear in the album, starting with 01, 02... and so on. The quality of the designed spread should be set to 10:
