Expert: LizaL - 5/28/2006

Question
I am preparing a trade paperback book for printing. I have three
separate cover images(front cover, spine, and back cover). I need to
send them as one image, landscaped. Would photomerge do the
trick or is there another way to join the images? Also are there any
other tweeks I may need to do for printing the cover properly?

Fred  

Answer
Hi Fred,

A few thoughts on your book cover:

1. Photomerge is great for creating panoramas. If your three images have been shot in a sequence and would lend themselves to being a panoramic view, then Photomerge is the tool for you to use, definitely.

Here's a link to a PDF that tells you how to create a panorama with Photomerge:

http://www.pixelgenius.com/tips/rodney-photomerge.pdf


I think if you want to make a successful panorama, and have Photomerge do it for you automatically, you need to have images that are the same dimensions (so they'll line up automatically, and save you the trouble of manual placement).

But if you don't have images that are the same size, or that were shot in succession and would make a good panorama, you could still use Photomerge.

Take a look at this tutorial -- although it seems to be missing the last photo (the end result!), I think it still gets across the point that you can use Photomerge to grab your photos and piece them together for you.

http://www.informit.com/guides/content.asp?g=photoshop&seqNum=175&rl=1

It also looks like this guy did some manual placement, and blending. So even if Photomerge didn't do what you expected, it would still be a starting point for merging your photos. You could manually place the photos where you want them -- tweak their placement, in other words.


2. You could always do your covers the old-fashioned way, if you didn't want to use Photomerge. That is, take the size of your front cover, your spine, and the size of your back cover, and add them together. You need to know ahead of time if the images will bleed off the edges of the covers, or if there will need to be margins, instead. Make your canvas size in Photoshop this size, and drag your photos in, putting them on separate layers, of course.

You could use guides to mark off your document, like this:
http://little-works.com/all_experts/coverlayout.jpg


3. Some tweaks or hints for printing this cover properly:

-- Make sure you know ahead of time exactly what size the finished cover is supposed to be. The publishing company's production manager, and/or your printer can tell you this.

-- Don't do any type for the cover in Photoshop. Photoshop is a bitmap program, and handles type poorly. The best workflow for a book cover is to edit and enhance any and all bitmap artwork (including photos) in Photoshop, then save it in a format that would be compatible with a page layout program.

For instance, you could edit a photo in Photoshop, then save it as a TIF or an EPS, and place it in a program like Quark or InDesign, and do all the cover type there. Page layout programs are designed to handle the editing of type -- not bitmap programs like Photoshop.

-- Do you know the size of the book, yet? You'll need to know how thick the book's going to be, in order for you to do the art for the spine, unless you're doing something that's panoramic and will wrap around the book, and the placement won't matter. But if you have three separate images and one has to fall directly within the spine area, you'll have to know ahead of time how thick the book's going to be.

-- My last piece of advice, and one I give to everyone who's having something printed commercially: Establish a good rapport with your printer (or the person in charge of handling the files for production). Ask them ahead of time any and all questions concerning production -- especially trim sizes, file formats for submitting artwork, etc. And ask to see some sort of a proof, if possible, before the entire job is printed (like a Matchprint proof, or even a press proof, if they can arrange it). Always defer to the printer when having something printed commercially.

Hope this helps.

Lisa