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.
Good summary. I will look into ListView as a work around for the lack of a working book module. I have been using the book module just to organize pictures and pages. Then I use the print module with custom templates for each page type to create one jpeg for each page. Once I get all the pages in jpg format, I go to the software from the book printing service, and I manually sort the pages using the book module as a guide. This is a tedious process similar to what one would have to do without a computer.
I wonder what would be a good forum to exchange ideas for a better workflow.
It would be great if one could get a collection with the pictures in a Lightroom book module sorted as in the book and with tags noting which page template was used.
I wonder if a working book module could be created as a plug-in. If someone where to do that, I would be ready to buy it.
Listiew provides the Metadata of your choice from Lightroom in an Excel or text file which you can then use to merge with a Photoshop, InDesign, Word or Publisher mailmerge style document. I have used all of these options. The disadvantage is that you can only use a single template, so not good for books. The disadvantage of Photoshop and InDesign is that the workflow is tedious (I have written JavaScript to automate this in InDesign and Photoshop, but still tedious) and you can only work with a single template page layout at a time. The advantage of Word is that I can run a script to get rid of the soft page breaks, so I end up with a document which has a flow of photographs, with professionally constructed Titles, Captions, Location, Date/Time, Copyright, etc. This is perfect for creating PDF documents or web pages, where I can use the full editing power of Word or Publisher to adjust the layout to my needs with the perfect marriage of image and metadata, perfectly formatted.
What is really aggravating is that Adobe provide us with the tools to manage metadata with an image, but seriously constrain our ability to use the metadata with our images. The annoying thing is that the feature is in the Slideshow module (which I do not use) but not in the Print module, which I use all the time. The Book module is crippled, so do not use that. I use JavaScript + Mailmerge + Photoshop to produce high quality PSD's for printing of images, but the techniques I use are beyond the scope of most Creative Suite users. Shame on Adobe for making it so difficult for us to work with our images and metadata.
A tip re Listview. There is a setting which allows you replace a space by another character (eg underscore) in column titles, to make mail merges less painful.
I would love to spend a month with the Adobe Lightroom and Creative team to show them what really needs improvement to streamline workflow for the serious user.
Sorry for the long post... but I thought this info might be useful to you. You can email me directly if you want to ask any specific questions. I
This is the fundamental flaw with the book module and has been since its inception. The padding option is just that ...padding. The option to move cells should be there for text and images, on individual book pages and also the ability to apply same editing options to template pages.
The native Blurb app is better than the Adobe book module, but we are then forced to create massive amounts of intermediate work files. If we then need to adjust the size of an image we have to re-create the image again, if you want to be careful re your sharpening settings. Nightmare stuff.
Following the release of Lr6, I am just reviewing my personal wish list relative to the top requests in this forum. I notice this is in the top 10 requested by users to Adobe, but has been ignored completely in LR6.
This request was originally posted more than 3 years ago.
Searching the web about this topic I found some information about the possibility of creating custom page sizes and templates for the book module by editing template LUA files that can be found in the Program files\Adobe\Lightroom folder.
I have not tried it yet, but if it works, it would help in cases when when the user needs just a few custom templates and book sizes, and it is willing to go through the trouble of creating these templates.
When the Book module was launched initially and this issue arose, Adobe promised publically on one of their forums that they would publish a means by which templates could be adjusted. As far as I am aware (and I am eagerly open to correction) that has never happed.
For me, modifying templates is just a poor workaround. It will cause an iterative approach to dealing with small adjustments needed on individual pages, depending on the nature and size of images and text. It would be worse than the "padding" solution. Real world needs the ability to tweak templates on the fly on a page by page basis, and if the need applies tweak and save the relevant template as well.
As there was not an official Adobe means to deal with this I can use InDesign. As this is too labour intensive for me most of the time, I only produce books under extreme duress. If the Book module was more usable, I would create a book for every project I do, trip I take, etc. Bottom line, if Adobe are getting a percentage of revenue from Blurb for books created from the Book module then they are losing at least 95% of the potential.
Thanks for the links, I will explore later in the week, when I will have some breathing space.
I agree that this would be a very poor workaround, only practical for computer savvy users that need few additional templates that are not changed for individual pages.
If anybody from Adobe is reading this, I hope they realize that they still need to offer a flexible book module.
Based on the methods Santiago linked to above, a while back, I started working on a web based tool that would allow at least for the creation of custom templates.
The idea was to use this tool to create custom layouts, download the template file that you would add to Lightroom's templates folder, and then use them as needed inside Lightroom's Book Module.
I went as far as having a working user interface prototype, but then stopped working on it because I was sure Adobe would include it in the new Lightroom version.
The struggle I was having with it was finding a way to convert jquery into Lua, maybe via some kind of parser that would allow for the generation of the needed file.
Since I am not that familiar with Lua, I was wondering if anyone else had any suggestions on how to go about it. I know there are some skilled people around here that are more familiar with Lua tools and Lightroom development.
It may be possible to do a custom template editor as a Lightroom plug-in. This would be the best option, but it would take a significant amount of work to make it general, and Adobe can make that work useless anytime by offering an updated book module. It would be nice to know what Adobe's plans are.
I am not familiar with LUA. However, modifying the template files seems relatively simple once you know the numerical values defining the page size and position of the photo cells within the page. Calculating the position is easy, if based on number of rows, columns, margins and space between cells as in the print module. I will try this at some point. Having your GUI would be helpful, it could also create the jpeg files in the template folder.
I am building several large photobooks (200+ pages) from RAW images in Lightroom. I love direct integration of the book capability into LR because color corrections made in LR are directly applied to the photobook. I am also impressed with the stability of the module; my last book exported to a 1.2GB PDF with 1000+ images and never crashed.
However, I am unendingly infuriated by the inability to modify the page layout. The template collection is helpful but is never sufficient to meet the needs of a given page -- there are always tweaks needed.
When can we have the ability to modify photobook page layouts in LR?
It is possible to modify templates and create new templates by modifying files with extension .lua that can be found in the Lightroom installation folders. As far as I know, this is not documented. It is not user friendly either because you have to type the coordinates and frame dimensions in a text file without the ability to do interactive changes. However, I successfully use this to create books with different sizes as required by suppliers other than Blurb.
I would be very easy for Adobe to implement custom templates. I don't understand what they are waiting for. The book module without custom templates is not very useful.
I gave up hope of Adobe making improvements to the book module and have taken the painstaking steps of building my book pages in Photoshop and incorporating them into Lightroom.
I just downloaded LR6 hoping to use the Book module for the photobooks for my clients. I am glad i just downloaded the trial version cause the options are so constrained and very few options with sizes. It is disappointing and i certainly wont be paying for the full version.
Sadly, I have reverted to using Microsoft Mail merge for 90% of my needs, which allows me to put images, titles and captions, where I want, with fonts, character sizes and alignment professionally laid out.
After a shoot, I do a quick selection, add Titles, Captions and Location info in Lr and export to jpg. I use the Lr Listview plug-in to export this info to a text file. I have a Macro in Word which then with a single click creates my document. I then save this to PDF.
I can fine tune the Word document as required. I can have this completed in draft form and emailed to the client within an hour of finishing the shoot.
I use InDesign when I want to craft a book. I would produce a lot more books if I could choose where to place images and text within Lightroom, so if Adobe are getting a percentage of Blurb sales then they are just losing more and more business.
There are huge advantages to keeping this within Lightroom, which I would prefer to do, but Adobe obviously choose to allow us suffer with the current crippled module and only provide lip service to the concept of workflow.
How ugly. I transitioned from Aperture this year, and, while LR has some good tools - it is pretty poor at the traditional creative/publishing side of things. Books are a glaring example.
It's been several years that this subject is on discussion... My personal opinion is that it should not be to Adobe to improve the book module. Instead, companies (such as Blurb or Cewe in Europe, or other photobook publisher) should develop plugins that enable us to create photobooks directly from Lightroom in the right format of the publisher. Does this sound possible?
In my opinion you could easily have both. Adobe should give the user the option of creating and modifying the size and layout of book pages. The user should have the option of saving his/her layouts as templates. Book printing companies, could also develop and provide templates appropriate for their books. You don't have to choose one or the other.
This would be like other Lightroom features such as develop presets, print loayout templates, etc, where the user can change settings, the user is able to save them, and you can also find third part solutions.
Agree with you. On a commercial point of view, I don't understand why other companies are not interested in developing such plugin. It will be new clients for them!
The problem for potential developers of a book template plugin is that Adobe could release a new version with custom book page layouts, thus making their effort worthless. I thought that would be the case for versions 5 and 6, but I was wrong.
this is not possible if Adobe does not provide the SDK needed for the book module. If it was we would have lots of plugins for book module since a long time
After scouring the net, the only solution I found to create custom template is to use slynn1324's Lightroom Book template editor which can be found at :
https://bitbucket.org/slynn1324/light...
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