Provide a way to create new pages completely from scratch by laying out the position of the picture frames and text frames instead of using just the provided templates. I like to do my own layouts that match the text.
Also can we have double page layouts where they are linked and cannot be broken apart.
[Sorry, I think I posted this in the Reply box earlier].
I love and can't exist without Lightroom for the Library and Develop modules but I'm afraid the Book Module is most disappointing and quite literally a pain to use - my arm has a case of RSI trying to adjust the wretched padding and offsets. The fixed templates are one thing but several basic layouts don't exist or they have black frames with no option to change the colour - or I could not find it.
I agree absolutely with the comments above and endorse their suggestions - it needs a complete overhaul but I suppose that means one will have to buy the upgrade LR5 to make use of it. Will I upgrade for that? I don’t think so – there are much better options out there.
I have used a local book vendor and their software is a breeze, albeit very expensive, by comparison to Lightroom + Blurb. At first I thought it was my lack of knowledge of the module but I have just completed a 60 page book and think I know my way around, including LR help. When LR 4 came out the Book Module held such promise but how disappointing!
Is it me or it's just impossible to resize, enlarge or reduce the photo cells?
How could Adobe release something so restricted like this? Even my $0.99 Diptic app on the iPhone and OSX allows me to simply drag, resize and zoom in on each photo and each photo cell!!
Of course Diptic cannot beat the convenience of Lightroom with its custom collections and direct link to multiple versions of images, but are you serious?! No resizing or changing the photo windows/cells?
No, it's not you. It's just that the Book Module is not ready for prime time and it's lack of functionality really drags down the overal impression of LR many have of what is otherwise a wonderful product.
What is very odd is that LR does have most all of what is needed over in the Print Module where, when using Print Package and Custom Package layout styles you can resize cells as well as move them around and have them overlap. Why they couldn't adapt that technology over in the Book Module is a mystery. Maybe the Book Module developers are on a different floor in the Adobe building than the Print Module developers.
However, I suspect that there were issues working within the boundries of the Blurb API that prevented full functionality in the initial roll out. The key, IMHO, will be what shows up in LR5 now that they've had time to work with Blurb to overcome some of these shortfalls. Of course, Blurb may be disappointed in how few orders they've gotten through the LR Book Module and may not be all that interested in investing more development time working with Adobe on these problems.
I guess we'll just need to wait and see. For me, right now it's sort of a "Watch this space" module. If LR5 comes out without giving us full creative control of page layouts, then my view will change to "Ignore this module and remove it from the Module Picker"
"Maybe the Book Module developers are on a different floor in the Adobe building than the Print Module developers. "
Ironically, the same fellow largely responsible for the Print module (Kevin Tieskoetter) ... also did the Book module ... it's really weird how Adobe can do something so right (i.e. - Print module) then do something so wrong as with the Book module ... especially a company with two decades of background in PageMaker and InDesign ... not to mention a firm with the resources of $4.4B (yeah, that's a "B" as in Billion) in annual revenue ...
You can read what was the thinking in the Book module development in this interview:
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.
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.
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
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 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!
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 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?
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.
_______________________________________________ Victoria - The Lightroom Queen - Author of the Lightroom Missing FAQ & Edit on the Go books.
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.
I'd like to point out that, in Lightroom 4 beta, allowing a book to be exported as a PDF is probably worthless. As most book publishers manage to have unique book sizes, only Blurb has the sizes in the current book module. This wouldn't be worth diddly as a PDF sent to another publisher. Please consider either incorporating proper templates for more book publishers or allowing plugins from those publishers that will let the user determine where they want their book produced. Did you notice that Blurb uses CMYK?????? Not nice when coming from ProPhoto RGB.
I have given up on Adobe on this one. They have all the tools to make this very slick.
We have all the metadata in the Lightroom catelog, but cannot place it properly on the printed page in the Print Module.
We get tiny incremental improvements to the book module, but Adobe do not seem to be prepared to address the elephant in the room, which is.... allow text boxes and image boxes to be placed as the user wishes on a book page and allow these book pages to be used as a template. Ok... the intial design of the book module may have been flawed from this perspective to get a sub optimal (I am been gentle) product to market, but there has been ample opportunity to correct this by now.
Obviously Adobe has had bigger fish to fry, such as creating and launching the Creative Cloud (no small undertaking) - then weathering the outrage from photographers related to the price of the Cloud (now re-mediated by the Photographers subscription plan).
I have no insights into Adobe (although I worked for them for 4 years in the 90's) but my speculation goes like this.
1) Adobe decided to compete with other consumer image SW products in the non standard output arena and decided to do books and web.
2) As Adobe is not a "printing" lab, they needed a partner to do the actual printing.
3) They did some research and were able to cut the best deal with Blurb. Perhaps with constraints and restrictions (exclusivity for a number of years?). But certainly with estimates of the new business Blurb would get (what's in it for Blurb)
4) To meet the next release date for LR, they slammed together what they could in the short amount of time available as most of the time had slipped away negotiating with Blurb and probably other vendors. Anyone who's worked on projects for big corporations know what I'm talking about on this one.
5) Uptake by users was not as vigorous as anticipated (perhaps due in part to the weak implementation).
6) Some Harvard MBA was brought in and did an analysis that determined in this day and age of everything "Cloud" and "Kindle", the market for physical books was not likely to grow very much and that this was not the place for continued investment, especially as it may take resources away from the development and launch of the CC and other projects centered around electronic delivery of media
7) CC launched and as with all such things has taken the best part of a year for the dust to settle
8) Now, (several years after Book Module first appeared), usage has not increased (self fulfilling prophecy from consultant?) and Blurb is pissed that the work they put into the book module implementation has not resulted in the expected new revenue. So, even if Adobe approached them with Part B, they may not be interested in throwing good money after bad. And, Adobe may be thinking the same thing.
9) Result: Don't expect much (if anything)
Anyway - That's the screen play as I image it played out.
Thanks for the detailed response. I have got past the point where I have any expectations in this area.
It is fairly sad that the Blurb standalone software is better than the Adobe book module in most respects. I suspect a lot more money has been spent on the Adobe Book module, but in my view their application architect got it wrong, so a lot of money wasted.
I also think a service provider should do a job properly or not do it at all. Half baked software is worse than half baked food.
I do not know who was looking for Maps module, but possible the same MBA was in on this. If the effort to produce the map modudule was invested in the book module then maybe we would have a book module which drives throughput. As far as I am concerned, these modules just bloat the basic app.
I know it is early days for the ipad module, but why have all the Develop features in a machine which is hardware constrained and ignore the very basic Library features, especially ranking, which the ipad has the potential to do a good job. So, the iPad module is also a non runner for me. I am not overly upset about this, I can bring a MacAir when I need to. I assume it will evolve with time, as solid state devices become the norm. Right now I only use the Library, Develop and occasionally the Print Module.
The best present I could hope for in LR 6 would be add real world usability to the Print Module, Book Module and the Library component of the iPad module. Version 7 can explore new modules again if the marketing people need to tick a few more boxes.
Actually I do make use the MAP module and am satisfied with it's implementation. I geo-encode all my images. I was doing this way prior the introduction of the Map Module using external software (I capture tracklog data with a WBT202 device and use GeoSetter SW to add coordinates and location keywords to image files). The map module can do pretty much the same thing although it doesn't have quite as many bells and whistles. Out of habit I continue using my old workflow but have replicated it with the Map Module to see if it worked. Even though I don't use the Map Module to do the actual encoding, I do use it for finding my images and tweaking locations.
I 100% agree about the need for Metadata management capability in the LR Mobile, but before that they need to expand to the Android OS (I think this first release is Apple only). I do find it quite puzzling that the main usage of LR (as an image management tool) was not included in V1. But, this certainly now answers the question of "why did they bother with smart previews" a release ago. Obviously LR Mobile was on the drawing board and this was a critical component to make it work. They already had "Export from catalog" and "Import from Catalog" so I'm not sure what the road block was in including Library module functionality (or at least keywords, rating and ranking) in V1.
I was very excited about the ability to add gps data to images a long time before Lightroom existed and had this embedded in my workflow. I purchased various tools based on their ability to handle gps data. Now, if I need a gps tag I simply take a photo with my iPhone. I set my cameras to UTC, irrespective of what part of the world I may be in, so it is always easy to reverse geo tag any image. I have a bunch of gps devices, some quite expensive, collecting dust in a dark corner somewhere.
I think Smart PreViews are a smart move for lots of reasons. Maybe some day they may provide the basis for an enterprise and properly networked version of Lightroom with a real database back end.
I am very critical of the incompleteness of the Print and Book module because these are basic workflow needs. Kudos to Adobe for releasing the iPad module in Ver 5 (even though in my view it is incomplete and really a beta test drive for hopefully more mature functionality in LR 6). If the rating flags were included I could use this app, as it stands LR mobile is just a pretty a icon on my iPad. How
frustrating.
I've been an avid Lightroom user since the first beta. And I recently took a class that helped me see the importance of making photo books for my clients. However, when I tried to make a photo book in Lightroom, I discovered that most online clients gave me much more ability to customize my layout that Lightroom. And I'm currently considering a switch to Aperture since finding that it handles this need to fully customize photo pages and spreads with ease.
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