Designing a Photobook using Adobe Indesign

Last updated: 27 Sept 2010

Creating a Momento book design using Indesign has never been easier by using the template files provided.

Read these instructions carefully before starting your book design using Indesign. We recommend that you print this page for reference.

Important notes:

• Your files will be exported in Adobe RGB but will only appear correctly if have embedded colour profiles in your image files
• Indesign doesn't automatically compensate for loss of page-spanned images in the gutter of a bound book: see instructions below

Before starting:

• Download the Momento Indesign Files (Click here if you are using CS2 or CS3)
• Extract the contents to a convenient location
• Load the Colour settings file:
  • In Indesign's Edit menu, select "Colour Settings…"
  • Click "Load" and select the file "Momento-Adobe-Colour-Settings.zip"
  • Click OK
• Install the PDF export settings file:
  • In Indesign's File menu, select "Adobe PDF Presets > Define…"
  • Click "Load" and select the file "Momento-PDF-Export-Settings.zip"
  • Click Done

• Load the Flatten settings file:
  • In Indesign's Edit menu, select "Transparency Flattener settings…"
  • Click "Load" and select the file "Momento-Indesign-Flatten-Settings.flst"
  • Click OK
• Set the Transparency Blend Space
  • In the Edit menu's Transparency Blend Space item, select Document RGB

Designing your pages:

• Open the Indesign Pages template file of the desired shape and size.
  • Pages can only be designed as Grand (A3) or Regular (A4)
  • Sizes smaller the supplied PDF can be ordered via the website
• Make sure that guides are visible - Ctrl+; or Command+; to show & hide
• There are 4 different coloured guides to assist you when designing your pages:
  • 
  • Black: Page edge; where the page will be trimmed
  • Red: Bleed; extend images to this line to ensure print-to-edge
  • Magenta: Safe area; keep all important content within this line
  • Light Blue: Gutter; indicates the 5mm that is lost in the binding process and helps position images spanned across 2 pages.

Spanning images over two pages:

• Spanning images over two pages must be done manually
• Place the same photo on both the facing pages then manually crop and position them so that the same part of the image appears on the light blue gutter guide.
• A correctly spanned image appears like this, with 5mm of image duplicated in the gutter...
• 

Designing your covers:

• Ensure you have completed the design of your pages so your cover can be designed with the appropriate spine width
• The Cover templates have been setup so you can design your cover as a Dust-jacket, a Printed Hardcover, or both, in the one design.
• Open the Cover template file of the desired shape and size.
  Note: you must design and supply a separate PDF for each size that you plan to order.
• Make sure that guides are visible - Ctrl+; or Command+; to show & hide
• First set the 4 guides to indicate the cover folds to match the number of pages in your book
  • Use the Zoom tool to zoom in to about 400% and at each of the 4 locations marked across the top of the document, drag the existing guide to the correct number of pages on the scale.
  • 
• There are a number of coloured guides to assist you when creating page designs:
  • 
  • Magenta dashed lines: Safe Area; because folds and cuts aren't exact, keep your important content in the Safe Area
  • Light Blue lines: Folds; indicate where the cover will be folded. You must adjust these (described above)
  • Pink block: Dust-Jacket area; extend images to the edge of this area for print-to-edge
  • Light Blue block: Printed Hardcover area; extend images to the edge of this area for print-to-edge
    Note: if you are designing a Dust-Jacket and Printed Hardcover in the same layout, ensure both the pink and light green areas are filled

Saving your pages and covers as PDF files:

• Once your designs are complete, open your Indesign files
• Select Export in the File menu
• Set the file type to "PDF" and click Save
• Select "Momento PDF Export Settings" in the PDF Presets menu (don't change any settings)
• Start the export

Check your export:

When viewing the exported file in Acrobat (Pro or Reader), the colours should look correct. If an image's colour doesn't look correct, then select the offending images in Indesign and look at "Image Colour Settings" in the Object menu – this will tell you what the tagged profile for that image is – if there is no profile attached, then you will almost certainly see colour problems until you use Photoshop to resave the image with a profile.