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

I'm loving Lightroom 4 so far, and I really love the idea of the new "book" feature. One thing that would make my life a lot easier is to have more size options, possibly even being able to create custom sizes. I most frequently use 8x8 or 10x10 albums. It would also be nice to be able to export each page as a .jpg for sending to album companies like Miller's or Cypress.

Hi

Love LR - using it from the very beginning.

the book module was very welcome to mee, making books often.

I must say, that i was disappointed when the beta 4 showed up.

The book module is far to ristrictive for creative use. You May have the oppertunity to free movement of the "picture- and textboxes". This means Rotate, Overlay for other frames, individual frames on a pic and things like this.

It is standard features on free "bookmaker" programs 🙂 on printerservice websites. See and try the free http://www.smilebooks.com/thank-you-f...

and http://www.smilebooks.com/photo-book-...

that is the freedom we need to make creative books.

Sorry Adobe freinds, but I hope this is a VERY early version ;-)

Keep the spirit

Best regards

olimage

I am just trying out the new book module and really like it very much. there are nice templates and graphics. however, i hope to see proper layouting options added in the final version.

For example:
- to create my own templates like it is possible in the print module.

I was asking myself why did adobe not take this nice aproach of picture packages over to the new book module?

For clear voting i opened separate, additional Feature requests close to this topic

cheers, Aron

Hi all,

I think it would be very nice if any company can produce its own custom templates for LR. For example local book-maker companies. Do you plan to publish APIs or procedures to allow this?

I really love you new Book module and I think this could get even more...

Pavel Pola

I would very much like to see page sizes like A4 in the Book module in Lightroom 4.

I am not likely to use Blurb much as I have my own Epson R2880 and like printing myself. But I would like to use the Book module for better layout.

Cornelia proposed a feature request suggesting that the print module could be used to create new book templates.

Thanks for your responses, Cornelia and Matthew.

Aperture and InDesign are not an option for me. I've read the Blurb software adds a watermark to PDF files. The search continues...

Re Applications I Use for Books. I use Blurb, Aperture and InDesign for books. I do not use Lightroom

In summary.
Blurb.
The Blurb app is very good and make a show of Adobe in terms of use of templates. I have two criticisms of the Blurb app. 1) Tedious to get images correctly on the page and preserve sharpening and 2) I have to re-enter my meta data. Obviously only works with Blurb.

Apple apps.
I have held off for the moment getting too committed to Apple apps because a) I am mainly a Windows user and b) hoping that 4.1 would have progressed the critical issues (not optimistic at all, at all now). I think their implementation of metadata text fields is superb and should be a model for all field placement by Adobe on a book, print, slideshow or web page and in their product suite Lightroom, Photoshop and InDesign)
InDesign.
I have done books using Ver 5 and 5.5. I found version 5 to be extremely hard work and tedious. I found major improvements with ver 5.5 (use of Caption tool avoids double entry of data plus drag and drop of image preserves native ppi and so preserves sharpening..as long as you do not re-scale inside InDesign). I was delighted to see the Caption tool within InDesign. Finally, Adobe gives us access to our metadata. However, several aspects re implementation of the Caption tool within InDesign are seriously clunky (especially in relation to layers and groups). I can write a paper on that subject and have posted suggestions to Adobe on the specifics. I am happy to reply to any queries.

http://forums.adobe.com/message/42068...
http://forums.adobe.com/message/42068...

I'm not quite angry ... I'm just extremely disappointed in what Adobe is offering. To the point where I have not yet purchased the upgrade to Lr 4, though I did participate in the public beta and used the 30 day trial for v4.0. This is the first time since the very first beta of Lr that I have not plunked down my cash for Lr because with each earlier version, Lightroom was worth EVERY penny in the way it impacted my workflow. This is the first time where I have not been convinced that Adobe had my best interests at heart. Currently, I'm holding off to see if there is an Introduction from Apple to a new version of Aperture in the near future ... Lr 3.6 is doing fine for me now ... but if Aperture, which I am currently using for books/albums and slideshows, shows any promise, I will move to that for my workflow.

I have no issue with the point that Blurb is the first vendor on board for the Book module, though I take great issue that the Book module was designed specifically for the Blurb business model, and Adobe expects the rest of the Universe to adopt their methodology and conform to their structure in order to participate.

The Book module should have been designed to create and export books to ANY vendor ... not a closed system.

To the point ... The Library and Develop modules do not read only Canon RAW files and expect other camera makers to conform ... the Print module does not only print to Epson printers and expect other printer firms to find a way to participate ... the Web module does not create files that only Internet Explorer can render shunning other browsers ... So why was the Book module deployed as a one-trick pony tied to a single vendor with such limitations that either take great effort to work with other vendors or options? It flies in the face of nearly everything that Adobe has developed in the past and is extremely disconcerting to say the least when trying to understand the motives and decision making behind the scenes to get us to this point.

As it stands now, the Book module is an incomplete half-measure for many users. I for one will not wait another two years just to see if there will be any improvements.