Iphoto book page layout changes with the addition of a photo problem.

Daniel,

What I discovered when making my book is that the layout will change sometimes due to the orientation of the photo you are inserting. Pay close attention to the orientation of the frames for the photos. If you don't want the layout to change, then insert a photo with similar proportions. (Landscape in a landscape space, portrait in a portrait space.) You may need to crop a photo to the opposite orientation if you really want it placed in a certain space. Alternately, placing a differently-oriented photo in a frame can cause iPhoto to show you a new layout that you couldn't access through the design choices. You might like one of those and want to get it on purpose.

Yes, Smtr’s diagnose is spot-on. iPhoto does alter the layout depending on the orientation of the pics you place.

If you want to avoid that, you'll need to crop the pics in advance to either portrait or landscape format. I prefer to first duplicate the respective images in the library and crop the copy to use in the book.

Cheers Martin

Hi all,

Ok, this is officially driving me crazy. I'm having the same issue with a 6 picture layout page as Dan, except I want the big panaramic style horizontal on the bottom (just like it shows me in the 'page layout' selection.

No matter what I do, it seems to default to making the horizontal panaramic photo/drop zone a vertical photo. I've cropped the photo to make sure it has extra wide dimensions but that doesn't seem to work. I've rearranged all the other pictures, which are dropped in their spots with the correct orientation.

I also tried starting fresh and adding a new page, but it won't even give me a blank layout that has the panoramic horizontal on the bottom-- even though that's how it shows in the 'page layout' when I select it.

I've made several books before so I'm not new to this, but for some reason this just doesn't want to work for me. Am I missing something here??

Any help is greatly appreciated!

-SS

No, never worked for me either.
The preview simply doesn't reflect the actual layout.

Hey Martin,

Thanks for the response... Just to clarify--so you were never able to get that actual layout to look that way at all?

No, the panoramic image that appears at the bottom in the preview, turns into a portrait format image on the actual page.

Ok-- thanks again.

By the way, if iPhoto doesn’t behave the way I want, I use another app such as Indesign or Photoshop to assemble the images the way I want and then import that as a single image back into iPhoto – you won't be able to tell the difference.

I hadn't thought about that. I'm definitely a photoshop beginner, but I'm sure I could do that.

How do you set up the original page? 8.5 x 11 w/ transparent background? What color profile do you use and what export settings?

Thanks for the suggestion...

As a first step I save the “wrong page” as a PDF from the print dialogue. That gives me a template for positioning guide lines in Photoshop that match the sizes and margins in the book layout.

Then I open that PDF in PS. You will be prompted for a resolution and colour mode, use 300 pixels per inch and RGB mode. (If you've ended up with a multi-page PDF in the first step, PS allows you to select a specific page to open.)

When PS has rasterised the page, press Apple + R and position your guide lines by pulling them out from the page rulers – you might want to increase the magnification to 200%. Align the guide lines with the edges of your images.

Now you can delete the dummy layout image and fill the canvas with white. (At this point you might want to save the image as a template for future use.)

One by one you can now precisely place your images and crop them along the guide lines – Snap to Guides needs to be enabled for that. Once you’re satisfied, flatten the image and make sure it’s in the sRGB colour space. If not, go to Image > Adjust > Convert to Profile... to change it.

I save mine as JPEGs at maximum quality, but for instance Tiff would work fine, too.

Thanks for the great instructions, Martin. This will come in handy for my next book.

Cheers.

Thanks Martin-- I'll give that a try!