Hints and Tips for Formatting iPhoto Books
If you want to go beyond the basics, here’s what you need to know about formatting iPhoto books!
One of the reasons iPhoto is so fantastic is its ease of use, but that doesn't mean there aren't any tricks to formatting iPhoto books. You can produce a great looking book in a matter of minutes, but some people just aren't satisfied with using iPhoto's preset specifications (you know who you are!). Fortunately, formatting iPhoto books is almost as easy as putting them together!
Assuming you've done the basic formatting (i.e., formatted and arranged your photos to your liking), here are some of the changes you might want to make -- the things not quite as obvious when you look at iPhoto's menus!
1. Resizing and cropping photos
So here we have a normal iPhoto book set out exactly as iPhoto likes it. The problem is, I don't want the photos exactly those sizes (or you want them cropped differently). The top one is okay, but the bottom one has a lot of background. The current focus is on the huge ball of yarn, while I want it on the bunny. The easiest way to do shift the focal point would be to resize the photo.
This is one of those little tricks in formatting iPhoto books that's very easy to do, but Apple doesn't tell you about! All you have to do is...
DOUBLE CLICK!
Seriously. That's it. Double click on the photo you want to resize and crop, and you'll get a little pop up window allowing you to resize your photos as you see fit.
There we go -- much better!
2. Messing Around with Layouts
When formatting iPhoto books, you might find that you want to redo an entire page. That's another thing that, fortunately, is really easy. iPhoto is very helpful and saves all the changes you've made to the picture (so now that I've adjusted my bottom bunny, the photo will stay adjusted when I shift to a new layout).
To change your page type, select the page you want to work with and choose a different number from "page type." In iPhoto '08, you'll find this under "Layout."
Here I've gone from two photos on a page to four. As you can see, the changes I made to the photo remains. However, I now have two blank spaces to fill, which I can do by dragging new photos into the frames. iPhoto automatically makes resizes and fits the photographs into their new slots.
Changing themes is easy too, but you'll have to do a little more formatting than with changing layouts. Here I've switched from the photo corners theme to the crayon theme:
As you can see, the change in frame size means I'll need to do some work readjusting my photos. Fortunately, all it takes is a double click!
There's nothing hard about it: formatting iPhoto books is as easy as twitching your index finger.
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