41. CREATING A CUSTOM AUTO LAYOUT

CREATING A BOOK is really a labor of love, and you spend a lot of time organizing pages in a manner that makes sense to you. However, you can streamline a lot of the process by using the Auto Layout options.

If you know you’re going to be adding individual pictures on the left page and multiple pictures on the right page, you can save that layout option as a preset, making it easier to quickly create a layout with the click of a button later on.

In the Auto Layout panel, the Preset drop-down menu has an option called Edit Auto Layout Preset (Figures 41.1 and 41.2). Clicking on that will allow you to create a standard automatic layout for the left and right pages in your book. The template options that you see in the Auto Layout Preset Editor are very similar to the template options you would see if you clicked on the arrow in the lower-right corner of a selected page (Figure 41.3).

You can specify how you want the images to be positioned on the page and whether or not you want to add photo text. You can also decide whether photos should be zoomed to fill the page—in which case they will likely be cropped—or zoomed to fit the page.

Once you’ve configured your layout options, click on the Preset drop-down and select Save Current Settings as New Preset (Figure 41.4). Give your preset a name and click Create (Figure 41.5). Click Save in the Auto Layout Preset Editor, and your new preset will appear in the Preset drop-down menu in the Auto Layout panel.

I don’t want you to lose any work that you’ve done to create a book, so let’s talk a little bit about the Create Saved Book option that you see in the top-right corner of the main workspace (Figure 41.6). When you select this option, Lightroom saves the layout you have created inside the collection itself. It saves page backgrounds, type, organization, and all of the pages that you’ve made, so you can always come back to this layout if you want to. It also saves all of the pictures that you’ve used in this layout.

Figures 41.1–41.2 Editing the Auto Layout Preset.

Figure 41.3 Whenever I make a book, I don’t like adding any more than three pictures to a page. But how many you add is entirely up to you.

Click on Create Saved Book, give your book a name, and select the collection in which you want the book to be saved (Figure 41.7).

The name of your book will appear in the Collections panel under the collection in which it was saved (Figure 41.8).

Figures 41.4–41.5 Saving a new Auto Layout Preset in Lightroom.

Figures 41.6–41.7 The Create Saved Book option will save your book and all of its settings in one spot so you can go back to it later.

Figure 41.8 Your book will appear in the Collections panel under the collection in which you saved it.

Now you can click back on the collection (it should be directly above the saved book layout in the Collections panel), select Clear Layout in the Auto Layout panel, and then apply your preset to the images in the collection by selecting it from the Preset drop-down and clicking Auto Layout (Figure 41.9).

At this point, if you want to move an image around in the layout, you can always click-and-drag the image onto another one to swap the two. Using the Multi-Page View will help you to see how best to organize and arrange your images. You can drag images on top of one another and swap them out until you get the layout that you want.

As soon as you’ve confirmed all of your layout choices and you’re happy with the book you’ve created, you’re ready to send it to Blurb. Click on Send Book to Blurb in the lower-right corner of the Book module, and you will be prompted to sign in to the Blurb website where you can complete your purchase (Figure 41.10).

If you’ve selected the PDF or JPEG option from the Book drop-down menu in the Book Settings panel (see Lesson 37), the button in the lower-right corner will say Export Book to PDF or Export Book to JPEG. When you click on it, you can choose where you want to save the PDF or JPEG file on your computer (Figure 41.11).

Figure 41.9 Your new layout—in the push of a button.

Figure 41.10 Sending the book to Blurb.

Figure 41.11 Saving your book as a PDF or JPEG.

Figure 41.12 The cover image for my book.