Hardcover photo books are an elegant way to preserve your precious memories and to create meaningful gifts. Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Classic’s Book Module provides all of the tools that you need to design professional-quality books and then to order them from Blurb.com for on-demand printing. The video tutorial below will teach you how to turn your digital photographs into tangible page-turning treasures!
Preparation is Key
Before you begin the book design process, make sure that all of your chosen photos are meticulously edited and organized. Gather up all of the images that you want to use for this project into a Collection and then arrange your photos so that they are in order.
When you switch over to Lightroom Classic’s Book Module, the first and last images within this Collection will automatically become your book’s front and back covers. You can shift things around later but establishing the correct sequence for your images before you leave Classic’s Library Module will save you a lot of time and effort.
Crafting Your Masterpiece In Lightroom Classic’s Book Module
- Choose Your Canvas: Select a Blurb book format that complements your aesthetic vision, your photo’s dimensions, and your budget. You can choose from a variety of book sizes and paper types.
- Design with Efficiency: Utilize the Auto Layout Presets feature to quickly and consistently format your book’s interior pages. If none of the Adobe sample layouts suit your needs then take a minute to design and save your own Auto Layout Preset.
- Adjust As Needed: For vertical images or for photos that require a unique placement, customize each page’s layout settings. You can adjust the margins, spacing, and image size as needed to create a visually pleasing composition.
- Interior Page Refinements: Personalize your book with a background color that complements your photos. If desired, add page numbers or captions to enhance the narrative.
- Design Your Cover: You can adjust the front and back cover so that your book will immediately capture a viewer’s attention. You can add text along the book’s spine and personalize the front cover with a captivating title or your own name. You can play with fonts, sizes, and colors to create a visually cohesive cover design.
- Save Your Work: Once your book is ready, create a “Saved Book” within Lightroom Classic to preserve all your design choices.
- Upload and Order: When your book is perfect, you can send your book design and all of your images directly to Blurb.com for printing. Once your layout has been uploaded, you can place your order online and in a few days you will be able to hold a beautiful book in your hands!
Thanks to Lightroom Classic’s Book Module, you can transform your digital memories into books that will bring joy to you and your loved ones for years to come!
Two Words of Caution
For optimal color accuracy, consider calibrating your monitor before embarking on your book-making journey. Uncalibrated monitors can distort colors and brightness, potentially impacting the quality of your final printed product.
Also, it is possible to add text inside of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Classic’s Book Module. For example, adding a title to the spine and cover of your book is easy. It’s also easy to add a simple caption beneath, or around, each of the photographs inside your book. However, adding long blocks of text is more difficult.
If your project requires precise control over extensive paragraphs of text on your interior pages then you should consider switching to a more powerful layout program like Blurb’s BookWright software or Adobe InDesign.
