How to create photo book from Album without cropping

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How to create photo book from Album without cropping

I just came from vocation and try to make a cool photo book out of my "best pictures" selection. Most images are "as is" from camera, so have "standard" aspect ratio: H/W.

I also happy about composition and would like to keep all or most of it.

I tried several "cool" templates, but can not get results I want: iPhoto randomly place my images on random template, but the painful issue is that it is also randomly crops my images to fit these random layout. It probably try to make it look "cool", but it does not make any sense and does not look cool.

I can do it all manually and select template for every page, also, changing mask for every image (for some minimum of mask still crops more then half of image, so page layout have to be changed). I have about 200 pictures I picked for album and I am not happy about doing it 200 times.

It may work for me if iPhoto just flow images without cropping for fit? Extra bonus would be if I can select images I want "big", "medium" or "small" 🙂

Can iPhoto automatically create a simple PhotoBook for printing without killing most images with random and some times more than 50% cropping?

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.4)

Posted on Jan 4, 2011 8:24 PM

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Answer 1

LarryHN

Level 10

106,142 points

Jan 4, 2011 10:30 PM in response to AstroBoy555

What camera do you have? - generally DLSRs use a 3:2 ratio & Point and Shoot cameras 4:3 - iPhoto is built around point and shoot or 4:3 ratio photos

LN

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Answer 2

AstroBoy555 Author

Level 1

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Jan 5, 2011 9:00 AM in response to LarryHN

Canon S90 - it is Advanced P&S. When I say crop I does not mean a little bit on sides 🙂 I mean iPhoto 11 some times crop 50% of image, some times try to zoom on faces. At any rate, most images just rendered useless. Say you have normal landscape picture of person holding some thing in his hands. iPhoto made super wide strip out of it to fit in 1+2 kind of layout, so what you see is upper half with face, object in hands completely out and you can not change mask as at minimal settings it is still cuts more than half of image out.
I tried many Themes, but I can not find one that would not destroy my images, that are very typical, hobbits images, with margin usually big enough for small fit crop, but as it is my trip record I would like to keep (naturally, no?) all details in.

Zoom of face may be cool, but when the rest of image lost, what the point?

I can go one by one, but this is time consuming for 200 images. It just make sense to have "preserve image" settings or "simple" photo book template some where... but I can no find it: all settings in iPhoto are kept to minimum , Apple style 😟

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Answer 3

AstroBoy555 Author

Level 1

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Jan 5, 2011 9:05 AM in response to LarryHN

I found in help that rating photos supposedly helps image flow to place a higher rated images "more permanently". (big?) but I think it tries to keep same day images on one page, so most 5 stars images I wanted a full page are turned to small images and some zero star became full page.

So I have to change layout one by one again.

I wonder what I do wrong and how other non-pro users get around this? This is a first time I wanted to make cool hard copy book as a present, but it just does not work for me for a very typical scenario ...

What I do wrong?

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Answer 4

LarryHN

Level 10

106,142 points

Jan 5, 2011 10:17 AM in response to AstroBoy555

A good general step for strange issues is to renew the iPhoto preference file - quit iPhoto and go to "your user name" ==> library ==> preferences ==> com.apple.iPhoto.plist and trash it - launch iPhoto which creates a fresh new default preference file and reset any personal preferences you have changed and if you have moved the iPhoto library repoint to it. This may help

This does not affect your photos or any database information (keywords, faces, places, ratings, etc) in any way - they are stored in the iPhoto library - the iPhoto preference file simply controls how iPhoto works - which is why renewing it is a good first step.

LN

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Answer 5

Old Toad

Level 10

215,706 points

Jan 5, 2011 2:06 PM in response to AstroBoy555

In those cases where the photo is not the right size ratio for the frame have you tried Control-clicking on the photo and selecting "Fit Photo to Frame Size" in the contextual menu?

With few exceptions, the frames in books are designed for photos with a 4:3 size ratio. If they are not that ratio you'll need to try the Fit Photo to Frame Size option.

OT

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Answer 6

AstroBoy555 Author

Level 1

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Jan 5, 2011 7:58 PM in response to Old Toad

From what I see iPhoto book templates are far from 4:3 and this is exactly why I have this issues. iPhoto tries to fit images to cool layouts and if image has different aspect (standard 4:3 or 3:4) it will ruthlessly crop it. It will not even bother to look for next image with closes ratio, but take one closest by date and crop it instead.

Example: you have 3:4 and template cell has 4:3: no problem, iPhoto will chop the redundant parts 🙂

In some cases ration is even cooler: 1:1 or 2:1 and as cool as it may look in the book, part of the image will be gone.

What I can not find is one un-cool template that will just auto flow my 200 images without chopping big parts off. Having my 5 star images printed on full page would be a bonus. 🙂

I probably need to go one by one...

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Answer 7

AstroBoy555 Author

Level 1

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Jan 5, 2011 8:05 PM in response to Old Toad

Thank you for 'Fit to Frame" tip - I still have to go one by one (200 time), but I can at least keep layout auto flow created and avoid dropping images, then re-flow and brining new pages from back of book.

Is there are way to set this "Fit to Frame" option global for a book?

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