This is a gorgeous layout, but some of the text on the
right page gets a little lost in the gutter.

Making a photo book of scrapbook layouts is one of the most popular uses of Inkubook, so even though I’m jealous I can put my envy aside in the interest of helping to bring more beauty into the world.

It’s not uncommon for someone who’s working on a layout book to ask our support department the following question: “How do I need to size my layout so that it fills the full page?” Consequently, we’ve prepared a PDF that will hopefully fill in some of the blanks. This PDF addresses such things as

• What is the size of the page before it’s trimmed?
• How much of the page is trimmed off?
• If I have text on my page, how do I avoid having it run into the gutter?

I could go into all of those details here, but the PDF describes it much more concisely than I ever would, and it includes four very nice diagrams that show all the trim lines. It’ll be better if you just check it out.

If you’re still having difficulty knowing how to size your image after looking at the PDF, our support team is standing by to answer additional questions. You can access our live chat support service through our Support page, or you can email support@inkubook.com.

Use Sets

Adding Photos to Sets in Flickr

Sets in Flickr allow you to group photos into virtual albums. Unlike real world albums, you can put individual photos into multiple sets. Prior to building your Inkubook, it would not be a bad idea to create a new set specifically for the book. Then you can then go and grab all of the photos in one fell swoop.

Rotate Your Photos

While Inkubook allows you to rotate your photos, it is within the context of your book and can only be done to one photo at a time. We are working on adding additional functionality here, but in the meantime there is always Flickr. If you have a lot of photos that need to be rotated, Flickr allows you to do so en masse via their Batch Organize tool. Simply drag the images into the editing pane and select “Rotate” from the “Edit photos” menu.

Edit Your Photos

Editing Photos in Flickr with Picnik

In a previous post, I had mentioned one of my new favorite image editing tools Picnik. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that Flickr and Picnik have partnered to provide image editing services to Flickr members. To access the tool, simply select an image and click on the “Edit Photo” icon above it. You’ll be taken to an editing screen with all of your favorite Picnik tools. These include the basics of rotate, crop, resize, exposure, colors, sharpen, red-eye reduction, and auto-fix in addition to the rich Create toolset that allows for all kinds of powerful effects (see here for more details). Upon saving, the updated image is added to your Flickr photostream.

Name Your Photos

While we try to make it as easy as possible to identify your photos in Inkubook, there are some things that are really hard to see – the perennial “Is Kit making a stupid face?” question, for example. There is no easier way to identify a photo than with a good descriptive title. Be sure to add titles in Flickr prior to importing photos into Inkubook to avoid searching for that one good shot.

Other Important Stuff to Know

Import Order

Flickr exports photos to Inkubook in the order that they were loaded into Flickr. Any organizing and reordering that you do on Flickr will not have any affect on this. Import order is also affected by the sizes of photos, such that when Flickr exports a really big photo at the same time as a really small photo, the smaller photo is going to move a little quicker and is going to show up in your Inkubook photo collection first.
The largest impact here is going to be on the new Inkubook Autofill feature (a topic that we’ll touch on in a future post). The happy coincidence is that Autofill is great at grouping photos, and importng them from Flickr in the order they were photographed makes this even better.

The Benefit of Being a Pro

Finally, there are benefits to being a Pro. At Flickr, that means, in addition to all of the other pluses, that Inkubook can import your full size image, which will work in virtually all of our photo templates. For those who are not Pro members, we are only able to access the large size, which is a 1024 pixels wide, and may cause a few of those annoying low resolution alerts to appear.

Flickr and Inkubook are pretty much a match made in heaven. With a little forethought, you can use some of the tools and resources within Flickr to make the process of building your photo book all that much easier.

That is where Doozla comes in. Doozla is a drawing app for the Mac from Plasq that contains all of the right tools for kids to experiment and express themselves while doing little damage to the computer itself (no guarantee against a peanut butter covered mouse, though).

The program opens full screen to prevent meddling minds from exploring other applications and system settings. It provides kids with the basic tools for drawing in a variety of colors and shapes, coloring book templates, and realistic backgrounds in which to insert their masterful contributions. They can even use the built in iSight to snap self portraits to modify as they see fit. The whole experience is a lot of fun and quite addictive (even for parents). As an add-on, the system uses a fun voice to call out changes in tools and colors within the application. It’s the ideal environment for your child to channel his or her inner Picasso.

Drawing in Doozla

Coloring in Doozla

Drawing on a Background in Doozla

Drawing on a Webcam Shot in Doozla

Once your child is done, you can save or print their artwork. Even better, you can preserve it forever in their very own Inkubook. Doozla is available for download at www.plasq.com/doozla. It costs $24.95, but there is a free 30-day trial.

Picnik is photo editing awesomeness, online, in your browser. It’s the easiest way on the Web to fix underexposed photos, remove red-eye, or apply effects to your photos.

Seems like it would be tough to undersell yourself in a paragraph that uses the phrase “photo editing awesomeness,” but that’s just what Picnik does here. I previously posted on using GIMP to edit your images. While extremely powerful, GIMP is likely a little more tool than most users need. That is where Picnik comes in. Picnik offers the standard tools for rotating, cropping, and resizing your images, plus it has some additional tools like color adjustments, red-eye reduction and sharpening. All these things can be very valuable, but they don’t exactly exemplify “photo editing awesomeness.” The awesomeness comes in under the “Create” tab, where you can access a slew of filters and enhancements that achieve stunning effects with absolutely minimal effort.

Panography-ish Filter – Create Effects within Picnik

The interface for Picnik is perhaps the most usable I have seen for an image editing tool, better than even iPhoto. Applying effects is as easy as clicking a button and then playing with the associated sliders (even this description doesn’t do justice to the simplicity). There are 33 effects in total (two of these are available only to Premium Members). The results of all are dead-on and would require some heavy lifting in Phototoshop to achieve.

The samples below demonstrate the results of a handful of my favorite filters:

Original Image

Boost Effect

Cinemascope Effect

1960s Effect

The beauty of Picnik is that it provides an environment where you can play with your images without risk of destroying them, and once you get started it is, quite honestly, hard to stop. Best of all, Picnik is free. Some advanced features, like full-screen mode, additional effects, and the ability to work with a greater number of photos, are available for a $24.95 annual charge. It is a great way to add some awesomeness to the photos in your drop-dead gorgeous Inkubook.

The downside to most advanced image-editing programs is that they can cost hundreds of dollars. In the interest of helping you get the most bang for your buck, we will from time to time bring tools to your attention that can give you a lot of results for not a lot of moolah.

When the goal is keeping money in your wallet, you can’t do much better than free, and it just so happens that we know of a program that meets fits the bill. GIMP (or the GNU Image Manipulation Program) is a free, community-built program that strives to match Photoshop feature-for-feature. You can get it for Windows, Macintosh and Linux, here.

You’ll be astounded by just how powerful this application is. It can help you execute just abut any modification to an image that you would like, such as reducing red-eye, removing unneeded details (like ol’ Cousin Rudy), and fixing perspective distortion, and those things just scratch the surface.

When you have some time to play around, give it a try. For some users, it may be a little advanced and have a steep learning curve, but if you have a little patience and an adventurous spirit, it’s worth your while to give it a shot.