P: Ability to create custom book templates/sizes from scratch

Book module desperately needs, at the very least, user defined custom page sizes (forget the book cover) when printing to JPEG and not to Blurb. Let users define the page size or spread the safe guides for bleed. The automation included in the book module is fantastic and would save untold amounts of time manually doing book layout for printing to professional labs and bookbinders. At the moment there's no way to create anything other than Blurb's standard book sizes even if you're not using Blurb. Nuts.

Exactly what functionality do you think has been removed? While I would agree that the page sizes are limited, I'm not aware of anything being removed.

If you want to change the book size, you'll need the settings in the Book Settings panel, top right.

I haven't used Book in Lighroom for a while and imagine my surprise when trying the new version and discovering that it's become much more restrictive with the latest updates.

Doesn't Adobe care about the users outside of the US? I don't know what Blurb is and don't care...and everyone needs more size options to choose from.

Maybe I missed on something, but now when I exported a page from Book as jpg I couldn't choose a size for it, and I got a jpg size 693 × 594 which is way too small for my needs.

Anyone have some tips for this? Where did I go wrong?

I agree. We need flexible layouts. In addition we need layouts on various size papers. I wanted to do a layout on 8.5 x 11 paper and Blurb doesn't allow it, just 8 x 10. We should be able to do layouts like the Print module.

I don't have an issue with Blurb, their quality is ok, though they are a bit behind the times as they don't do a lie-flat page option.

The only issue I have is that we don't have any sensible control over page layouts and I simply can't do the designs I want to in the book module compared to the stand-alone book creator, which makes it worthless to me.

The really annoying thing is that level of control is there in the print module already!

Custom Page Size is really required. Blurb's printing service is a joke, no good quality at all.

The book module should allow the user to create custom layouts and the freedom to set page sizes. Choices for borders for individual photos should also be given. These are very basic features that should be included. The absolute minimum would be to have the same options as the print module.

I'm agree we need to be able to create cell photo, move cell etc. But for metadata extraction capability you can already do in the book module using the text panel

Currently I prefer to use the Blurb plugin Blurb and BookSmart http://www.blurb.fr/lightroom-plugin

The Blurb method of bookmaking is EXTREMELY LIMITED and lacks the ability to customize pages (such as adding more photographs to pages, moving photo layouts around, placing text boxes in various places across the page, etc.). Apple's Aperture 3 currently offers this and it is great! Their book module allows for COMPLETE PAGE CUSTOMIZATION.

The addition of custom template creation was a welcome addition in LR5.2. Unfortunately you didn't go far enough. We need to be able to create cells and move them. Also the handling of text is very cumbersome at best. We need text addition capabilities like the Print and Slideshow Modules with broad metadata extraction capability. Julieanne Kost's Lightroom 4 workaround by creating templates in the Print Module and saving them to the Book Module as images is too, too cumbersome. We need Custom Cells and Custome text creation and saving as Auto Flow templates.

Also Autoflow should be able to flow at minimum two different templates, one for landscape orientation images and one for portrait orientation images.