Hi there,
Working on a wedding album. I don't have inDesign and have always just created a 2 up vertical workspace with all my tools etc over on the right. I size the windows to 15% so everything fits on the screen and work that way.
Problem is each window has its own rulers and the smart guides etc work only on the window I'm in so there's a lot of calculation etc. going on to get things on facing pages to line up with or space like elements in the other window. I google for solutions and everything I see seems to relate to inDesign, which is too expensive for me for the amount I'd use it. I'd prefer to just learn how to do this in Photoshop as my Laptop is really struggling with the latest editions ...crashing a lot, not shutting down and using double to quadruple the ram it did before the 2015 updates to PS an Lr were released. Adding inDesign to all that would probably be the last straw.
Workflow is:
- In Lr select and rate ones I'll use with 3 stars
- Color label any of those needing PS attention ...red
- Do the PS edits and remove color label in Lr
- Select all the 3 star images and export to a "Selects" folder at 12" on the long side and 300dpi hightest quality jpegs
- In PSCC create 2 identical 12.5"x12.5" 300dpi files (for a 12x12 book ..and different for different sizes) and set guides for bleeds and safety
- If using a pattern or image background ...go to that folder and drag in what I want to whichever file it works best on as a left or right
- Copy that layer to the facing page window and flip it horizontally
- From the Selects folder drag in whichever images I want for the two pages as smart objects
- Add any borders etc ..and copy the layer styles to other images as needed
- Movie, size and align, making use of smart guides and spacing popups
- If I find any photos need different touch ups I flip to LR, find that photo, edit it in PS and save it, then export it to the Selects folder again from Lr, overwriting the one that is there ...that way it automatically updates in my PSD since it is a smart object and the changes are visible in Lr. If I just double clicked the smart object it would open and I could modify the jpeg in the selects folder but Lr wouldn't know about the changes
- When done, each side is saved as a separate jpg or pdf depending on where it is going
So all the above is being done on individual pages in a 2up vertical workspace.
It would save tons of time if I could have them in a single workspace to capitalize on using rulers, smart guides etc, and to have some images spread across both facing pages. I only tried that once and it didn't turn out so haven't since.
Working on this one as shown in Windows Explorer at the moment so you can see what I mean ..
In the page 27/28 workspace it took awhile to position the tops of the two outside photos level. I wasn't worried about the bottom and I'm still not sure the tops are perfect. Also that quill pen just floats on its own layer and for some reason I even had trouble lining those two up and it would have been so easy if they were on one page to start with. I guess I could have merged the first one with the gradient background then flipped the whole thing ...always easier in hindsight.
I've test driven various book creation programs but prefer doing it this way as I found composing using the others ...took me longer and left me less satisfied than just starting from scratch this way. Often when starting the next spread I just use the prior one as a template then just 'replace contents' for the photos, backgrounds etc. and re-size and re-position as desired. I kind of like that freedom.
Some of those book creation programs like Album DS offer very creative masks that feather into the images etc. I haven't figured out how to create re-usable ones that I can pull in like an image and apply to selected images like that. Than one can wait until I learn this stuff. I found to use their program ...two apps of it had to be open as did PS and I needed LR as well and my laptop was on life support fast ...albeit I had video tutorials running on another monitor at the same time. (doing all that prior to 2015 releases was never a problem with my system but sure is now )
Sure hope someone can advise on working as one wide page then splitting into the lefts and rights so they can be sent to printer as individual jpgs or pdf's with necessary bleeds etc
Thanks for persevering through this and for any suggestions.
jj
