Ways To compile multiple Photoshop documents

[Guest]

Dear all member!

I am attempting to compile multiple Photoshop documents (containing text and illustration layers) into a single PDF and embed the fonts. The documents are the inside of a fixed format children's book for submission to Bookbaby.

I know that I need to take care to avoid rasterizing but that's about it. (I know I should have used InDesign.

I'm learning it currently but I'm nowhere near proficient yet and the book is completely finished in PS so I'd like to use it this time if I can.) I also have Bridge, InDesign, Illustrator and Acrobat Pro from the CS6 Suite.

Thanks in advance for your time and expertise.

[Derek Cross]

Unless timing is mission critical, I suggest you learn some InDesign and create your book with that. When you state "fixed format", do you mean Fixed Layout ePub, if so, InDesign 2015/17 is perfect for this format, particularly if you need in due course, to convert your book to the mobi format so that it can be sold on Amazon.

Lynda.com have some excellent online training videos such as Creating Fixed-Layout EPUBs with InDesign CC (you can get a 10-day free trial).

There is an Adobe ePub forum where you can get further help.

[melissapiccone]

Saving from Photoshop will flatten your files, so your text will be flattened. It doesn't print as well as it would from Illustrator or InDesign. If it's almost done in PS, I would just output all of your pages from there to make a PDF. You don't need to worry about the fonts if you do it this way. Learn InDesign for the next project.

My hobby is digital scrapbooking. I use Photoshop. My text is not as crisp at it could be, but it looks fine to me. If your pages are 300ppi, your book will look fine, too.

The other thing you could do, is just bring a flattened image of your graphics into Illustrator or InDesign and do the text in there. So, use the graphics as a background with text on top.

[Conrad_C]

thanhvanchi wrote:

I am attempting to compile multiple Photoshop documents (containing text and illustration layers) into a single PDF and embed the fonts.

There might be hope since you kept the text layers in the Photoshop documents. If the "fixed format" you're talking about is for print, you can use the Save As command in Photoshop to save copies of those Photoshop files as Photoshop PDF, which can preserve text and vector shapes. That would be let you avoid rasterization. Next, you said you have Acrobat, and that will let you combine all of those Photoshop PDF files into a single multiple-page PDF file. BookBaby wants a PDF/X-4 file, and Acrobat could produce that.

But before you do any of that, you should first have a talk with BookBaby. When I took a quick look at their web site, it looks like they have specific requirements for how to prepare the book files and how to hand them off. Their requirements are so centered around page layout programs that you should check with them to make sure that assembling Photoshop PDF files with Acrobat will go through their system without problems. One part of their requirements says "Text files must be in our templates" and it doesn't look like they have any Photoshop templates for text. So the first thing you want to do is talk to BookBaby and make sure pages made in Photoshop will actually work if you submit them.

If by "fixed format" you mean Fixed Layout EPUB, there may not be a way to get there from Photoshop; you may have to start over in InDesign. Again, BookBaby can probably provide the best advice about that from the point of view of their production process.