Customizing Aperture Books

June 2, 2006 by Ben Long
Filed under: Features 

Apple’s Aperture provides a large number of output options. In addition to printing, and several kinds of web output, Aperture can also take advantage of the book printing services that Apple released with iPhoto several years ago. Aperture scores over iPhoto’s book printing service with more sophisticated design features that give you a lot more flexibility when laying out your book. Check out these tips and tricks to get the most from your Aperture books.

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In this article, I showed how you can edit and customize the underlying template documents that Aperture uses to create web galleries and web journals. These tricks rely on editing the HTML and CSS template documents that are stored inside the Aperture package. There are similar template files for Aperture’s book designs, but because of the flexibility of Aperture’s book editing tools, you don’t need to edit Aperture’s default book files – you can simply edit the book designs within Aperture itself and use a few simple tricks to overcome Aperture’s book layout shortcomings.

Book Layout Basics

To create a book in Aperture, begin by selecting the project that contains the images that you want to use in your book. Select the images that you’d like to include and then choose File > New > Book, or press the New Book button on the Aperture Toolbar. Aperture will ask you to select a theme and a book size. Themes specify overall design parameters for a book – background color, typeface choices, and layout options. You can change your theme later, so this is not a critical decision.

After you have selected a theme, Aperture will create a new book in your project and the Viewer pane will display the book editor.

The book layout tools are very straightforward. You can use the navigation panel on the left to select the page you’d like to view and edit. It will be displayed in the editing panel on the right. Using the buttons below the editing panel you can select whether you want hardback or softcover, and whether you want to view a single page or two-page spread.

Using the + and – buttons below the navigation panel, you can add or delete pages, while the Set Master Page button lets you select a new template for the current page.

Designing a page is very simple. Text blocks can be edited by simply double-clicking in them and editing the text. A gray box with a + in it is a picture box. You can drag an image from the Browser pane into any picture box to add an image.

So, using these simple tools you can work through the pages of your book, adding images and editing text. If you don’t like the layout of the current page, pick a new page layout from the Set Master Page button. Each theme has it’s own collection of Master Page designs. If you don’t find that the current theme’s Master Page designs fit your needs, try changing to a different theme by pressing the Theme button in the upper-left corner of the Book Layout panel.

Customization Basics

Apple has built a number of layout tools directly into Aperture. First, you can re-crop your images once you’ve placed them in a photo box by simply double-clicking on the placed image, and then using the Image Scale tool to zoom into the picture. Once zoomed, you can pan the image around within the box by simply clicking and dragging on it. You can also use Aperture’s Rotation tools to rotate the image within the box.

Note that none of these edits are applied to the source images in your project. These edits are only a function of the book layout.

Any image can have a custom filter applied to it. Select an image on a book page and then choose a filter from the Set Photo Filter menu on the Toolbar.

You can also freely edit the layouts of your page by clicking the Edit Layout button on the Toolbar. Once you’re in editing mode, you can use the other buttons on the Toolbar to create new text and photo boxes, control their stacking order, and add metadata boxes.

After creating new text or photo boxes, you can drag them into position and re-size them using their control handles, and then edit their content.

Metadata boxes are placed and sized just like text and photo boxes. For a metadata box to know what information it should display, it must be linked to a particular photo box. By default, Aperture will associate any new metadata box with the last photo box that you created. However, it is possible for a metadata box to end up incorrectly configured, and display the metadata from the wrong photo box. You can fix this by selecting both items by Command-clicking on them, and then control-click (or right-click if you have a two-button mouse) on the metadata box. You can then Link and Unlink as necessary.

If you want to create a photo box that is exactly the same aspect ratio as a particular image, place the image in the box and then control-click on the placed image, and select Photo Box Aspect Ratio > Photo Aspect Ratio from the pop-up menu. Aperture will resize the picture box to match the placed image.

Aperture’s layout tools are very flexible. Note that you can delete all of the items from the default layout and start over completely from scratch. If you create a layout that you intend to re-use throughout the book, then you should save it as a new Master page by choosing Save Page > As New Document Master from the Action menu beneath the navigation panel.

Finally, note that Aperture also lets you drag an image onto the page itself. If you drag an image onto the white background of a page, (or black, if you’ve chosen a theme with a black background) the page will highlight. When you release the mouse button, your image will appear in the background of the page.

Any page elements – picture, text, or metadata boxes – will appear on top of this image. When combined with a Wash Photo Filter, you can create screened backgrounds over which your other page elements will float.


Advanced Customization

Aperture’s layout tools have a few limitations. For text boxes, you are limited to only the typefaces and sizes specified in your chosen theme. Picture boxes cannot be rotated in artibtrary amounts, and you can’t select custom colors for either text or backgrounds. Finally, there’s no way to create drop shadows, glows, or other effects that might be useful for creating separation between overlapping photos.

However, you can easily exploit Aperture’s ability to place images directly on a page to overcome all of these shortcomings.

For example, if you want to change the background color of a page, simply go into Photoshop or another image editor, and create an 8.5 x 11" document at 300 ppi. Fill the document with your desired page color, then save it as a TIFF file and import it into the Aperture project that contains your book. Add the colored image to your book and drag it to the page background that you want to color.

Using this technique, you can create entire custom layouts within your image editor – create rotated, overlapping images with drop shadows; use custom, colored typefaces, and so on – then save the image out as a TIFF and place it onto the background of a page. If you’re an Adobe Illustrator user, you can create layouts in Illustrator and then save them as rasterized TIFFs for placement in Aperture.

Using this technique, you can create any layout that you like.

If you create your images at 300 dpi, you’ll find that all of your text elements and images will print at the same quality as Aperture’s internally-generated text and images. Apple’s book printing service now uses a 300 dpi printing process, so creating your images at this resolution will yield optimal results.

Unfortunately, Aperture does not include any color profiles for book printing, so there’s no way of soft proofing your books before shipping them off to Apple. After several rounds of experimentation, I’ve been unable to come up with any hard and fast rules for how images should be adjusted. Overall, though, it’s fairly safe to say that you need to give your images a 20-30% saturation boost to get their color back to what you might be expecting. If you’re working with high key images, then you might want to up the contrast a little to get your blacks back in line.

Surprisingly, I’ve had very good luck with low-light images, which rarely need any additional processing to get good book results.

Finally, note that if you want to use Aperture’s book editing facility to design your book, but you want to print it yourself (or send it to a different book printing service) you can output a PDF of your book by choosing Print, and then using the normal OS X Save to PDF function.

This article is a condensed summary of the Aperture Book layout section of Real World Aperture, which you can order right now from Amazon.


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Comments

20 Comments on Customizing Aperture Books

  1. Johnny on Mon, 5th Jun 2006 11:31 pm

    2. When do you think your book “Real World Aperture” will be available. Amazon is reporting that its not available yet.

  2. Ben Long on Tue, 6th Jun 2006 4:36 pm

    3. Hi Johnny,

    Real World Aperture is in the final stages of production right now, so I’m hoping we’re just a couple of weeks away. I’ll post a notice on the site when the book ships.

    Thanks for asking!

    –Ben

  3. Bobby on Mon, 12th Jun 2006 2:41 am

    4. Real World Aperture is really beneficial for me…..eagerly waiting to buy one.

  4. Dave on Sat, 24th Jun 2006 3:47 pm

    5. Hi,

    I’m trying to make a proof book in Aperture. I’d like to make it with all ‘content’ pages with a 12-up layout. In Aperture, under Master Pages, this is called an index page with the choices of either proof or detail.

    After you create the book, you can click on the black triangle of a specific page layout to change the layout to a different style. Unfortunately, you can’t select either of the Index styles because they don’t appear as options. If you select all or multiple pages, you can click on the black triangle to change the style of all the selected pages to the layout you choose. Again, you aren’t offered either of the Index styles, so you can’t change the whole book at once.

    Now, I have found that under the ‘Action’ menu, I can ‘Show Master Pages’, select one of the ‘Index – Proof’ layouts, and then under the “+” menu, I can “Add New Page from Master” to place that page in my book. If I want, I can delete all the original pages from my book, and add a whole bunch of new Index – Proof pages from the Master Pages list. However, when I try now to Autoflow all my selected or unselected images into these newly created 12-up pages, the images flow onto the pages randomly, and more importantly, out of order. If you try even to place the imges manually, Aperture tells you that you can’t do it with the following message:

    “Non-Pick Images: Only album picks (or stack picks if there are no album picks) may be placed on Book or Web Journal Pages. You can either extract images from their stacks, or option drag out of a stack to another location in the browser to create a copy which can then be included in your Book or Web Journal.”

    So now I have to go and duplicate all my images in order to put them in a book? Is this a joke?

    All I want to do is make a proof book for my client, where all the pages have 12 proof photos on them, and I want the photos to be in order as they are in the Album. The book style I have chosen is called “Proof Book”. Why is this difficult?

    1. I need Aperture to make a book for me where I can change the pages to whatever I want.
    2. I need Aperture to provide access to the page styles without limitation.
    3. I need Aperture to be able to Autoflow my images in order

    Has anyone else had this problem with Aperture? Does anyone know if I’m doing something wrong or if there is a simple solution to this? Any help is MORE than appreciated!

    Thanks!

  5. Praj on Mon, 26th Jun 2006 4:50 am

    6. Hi, does anybody know a way to use custom metadata for labels under the images? It looks like the “set metadata format” button only allows limited range of metadata. For instance, if you create a new metadata field called “notes,” it would be nice to have them appear under each image.

    Thanks!

    Prajna

  6. Alec on Sun, 2nd Jul 2006 9:25 am

    7. You can format text .. click command-T and you’ll get a slightly modified version of the OS X font dialog box where you can choose fonts, sizes, colors, and some kind of shadow thing.

  7. Dolores on Mon, 10th Jul 2006 12:39 pm

    8. I would like to print out my own book and crease/fold the pages myself. Other than stapling the pages together, can Aperture suggest any alternative ways?

  8. Kevin Swan on Mon, 10th Jul 2006 4:26 pm

    9. This is retarded. You can make a custom page, but you can’t save it to a new template. So, you have to recreate it every time. I want to do what someone else above does… have a simple 12up page, but this software doesn’t allow you to do it.

    Ridiculous.

  9. Forrest Jerome on Thu, 13th Jul 2006 12:53 pm

    10. “Unfortunately, Aperture does not include any color profiles for book printing, so there’s no way of soft proofing your books before shipping them off to Apple. After several rounds of experimentation, I’ve been unable to come up with any hard and fast rules for how images should be adjusted. Overall, though, it’s fairly safe to say that you need to give your images a 20-30% saturation boost to get their color back to what you might be expecting. If you’re working with high key images, then you might want to up the contrast a little to get your blacks back in line.”

    i also reached this conclusion, but based on the fact that kodak is usuing a CYMK printing process, i applied a proofing profile of “generic CYMK” and the saturation on my images flattened out. i have adjusted a set of images and made a test book. i also made the discover that contrast needs some adjustment as well as saturation. key here is that onscreen proofing is visible only in the main viewer, not in the book layout.

  10. Steve Barry on Sun, 19th Nov 2006 12:20 pm

    11. Just a little quicker way to create a custom background solid color or otherwise – create a new version of any high resolution image in your project, open in external editor, fill with the color and save and use the new version as your background. The new background will be automatically imported.

    Steve

  11. Jeanne on Sat, 17th Mar 2007 11:28 pm

    12. You most certainly can change the font and size in the text boxes in the application, just go to “Edit” > “Show Fonts” the font menu appears and you can also preview what the font looks like, change the color and all the other neat things Apple applications have in their font menus. Change your website and the text for your next priting.

  12. Sean Hoyt on Wed, 13th Jun 2007 6:21 pm

    13. When you export to PDF, can I specify the dpi of the book? I belive that the target size from Aperture is 8.5×11″. I want to export and upload into Blurb’s 13×11″. I’ll loose 1/2″ on each size as I maximize the 8.5×11″ image, but if I can specify the output dpi to be higher than 300, then the upsizing will work. Anybody with experience?

  13. Jeffrey Folinus on Sun, 16th Mar 2008 9:10 am

    14. We recently did a small softcover book in Aperture 2.

    Cover photos were nearly dead-on, but exact same image inside the book was washed out.

    So it may be necessary to have different image versions for each.

  14. flotski on Mon, 17th Mar 2008 6:51 pm

    15. Just got Aperture 2.0.1 in which I’m trying to create a book. When I select a theme from the pop-up and click on “choose theme”, the pop-up dissappears and nothing happens. No book layout is showing in the project window. I tried this with and without a preselection of photographs. Does anyone have an idea about this, did I miss something?

    Help would be highly appreciated.

    Thanks,
    flotski

  15. Mark Manta on Tue, 7th Oct 2008 7:26 pm

    16. Probably figured it out by now but you have to look down the column of projects and you’ll see “untitled book” – that’s it.

  16. Jesus on Tue, 24th Mar 2009 11:35 am

    17. Why cant I shoose between softcover or hardcover?, I just finished a book and when I whanted to buy it, Apperture only presents me with a Hardcover option.

    Thanks,
    Jesus

  17. Peter on Tue, 16th Jun 2009 7:07 am

    18. Regarding this part:

    “If you create your images at 300 dpi, you‚Äôll find that all of your text elements and images will print at the same quality as Aperture‚Äôs internally-generated text and images. Apple‚Äôs book printing service now uses a 300 dpi printing process, so creating your images at this resolution will yield optimal results.”

    This is incorrect, having done specific tests. Text generated inside Aperture will always print sharper than a 300dpi, imported image of the same text. This is because Aperture-generated text is printed with only black ink, whereas the image text is a patterned mix of the 4 CMYK inks. If you examine it with a loupe you can see this clearly. “Image text” below about 10 point really starts to suffer, looking washed out and ragged.

    Currently experimenting with hacking an InDesign-generated PDF into the aperture-generated PDF (click Reveal in Finder when the book has been made, to see the aperture PDF before it’s sent).

  18. Kim on Wed, 20th Jan 2010 11:45 am

    19. I had created a book and tried to see what it would look like with a different back cover without deleting the original so I duplicated the one i had and changed it a little. Then when i made up my mind with one of the design, I couldn’t delete one of the duplicated back cover. I spoke with people at Apple and they told me I had to redo the book. Is there anyway to delete the back cover?

  19. Deb on Wed, 21st Apr 2010 8:37 am

    20. How the heck to you simply change the color of the background? Tell me you do not have to go to Photoshop & create a colored background there and save it as a Tiff and then import it into Aperture JUST to change the background color in a box. I can easily change font colors, but not background colors. Why is this? Help!

  20. Flora on Mon, 28th Jun 2010 1:30 pm

    21. In iPhoto book, there is a page format in the “Snapshot” theme that displays 1 photo broken up into lots of smaller framed photos – similar to a collage, but using 1 image.
    For some reason this page view option is not available in Aperture.
    Is there any way to export this master page view from iPhoto into Aperture?

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