Hi, I'm previewing an 80 page book before submitting to Apple and the preview has two issues. Firstly, the left-side pages all have a quarter inch or so chopped off. Secondly, color ramps done in Photoshop and used to background photos are appearing in the preview as stepped colors rather than gradually scaled ramps (as if the color resolution is far lower) although ramp looks smooth in Aperture. Are these issues just part of the preview process and not reflected in the end product or do I need to do further editing? Many thanks for any help on this.
Sean,
This was an interesting experiment for me. I suppose I should have known this before, but I hardly ever do books, and in hindsight it’s obvious (at least the trim part).
The edge trimming you’re seeing in Aperture is normal, I’d say. There has to be some trim allowed, or the physical cut on every printed page of every book would have to be hand done with laser precision. There’s always a little “bleed” such that the cutters can chop a page and still have maybe 1/8th of an inch either way. Actually in my test I’m only seeing 1/15th of an inch trimmed (0.067”, or 15 pixels at your page size) off the top, and a little more on the side. That’s pretty damn good.
I tested this by creating an 8.5” x 11” @ 300dpi page in Photoshop, as you did, and drawing 5 pixel borders at 5 pixel intervals around the edge, then dropping that into the Aperture book. Here’s a close-up of my TIF file: [screenshot]
When dropped into the book, and looked at closely, here’s what I see: [screenshot].
On the top of the image, the inner-most black border is visible. The blue and outer black are trimmed. But if you look at the notes on the screenshot, you’ll see the difference between the “visible edge of image”, which will be the actual printed page that’s delivered (within 1/8th of an inch or so), then there’s the “bleed edge, with trim” which is what’s delivered to Apple and cut off to give you a full-bleed print. The “edge of picture box” is the handle of the picture box, and while you absolutely could drag that in to fill the “visible edge of image” and see on screen your entire image, once printed and physically cut, you would most likely see either a tiny bit cut off, or worse, a white edge on the page.
So there has to be some bleed in what is delivered to the printer.
I then did a print preview, and looking at the PDF, I do see most of the image, but I still see a tiny bit of trimming. Seeing more of the image here than you do in the book layout is expected; after all the PDF is what they will print and cut. The book layout is showing an estimate of what to expect, understanding that there will be some trim — again about 1/8th of an inch is, I believe, industry standard tolerances. [screenshot]
Finally regarding the banding, I’m seeing a little bit but I don’t know enough about graphics rendering to know whether this is a problem in the file, differences in how Photoshop vs Preview renders to screen, a color space issue, a limitation of PDF, or any other possible explanation. You said dark red to mid grey and I missed that until after I created it so this isn’t the same as yours, but this is a pretty extreme example I think, but once printed I believe the bands you see would be virtually invisible. There are of course limits to how many colors a printer or a screen can reproduce, so if you’re creating an extremely gentle transition, then there may just not be enough colors to reproduce that cleanly. [screenshot].
Finally, as far as comparing to iPhoto goes, I really can’t explain that at all. The trim I’m seeing in the PDF from Aperture is so slight that I’d call it irrelevant; maybe the page design in Aperture is actually 8.466667” wide instead of 8.5” which would account for the 10 pixel trim (5 on each side). Are you not seeing the banding either from iPhoto? In that case I’m at a complete loss, I’m afraid.
Interested to hear your response!
@PhotoJoseph
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Joseph, thank you for a very comprehensive response! I had to go ahead and redo the album in iPhoto as I wasn’t keen to lose the €100 cost of the book to proof it. The proof I did from iPhoto didn’t have the banding and didn’t have the quarter inch lost off one edge. I omitted to mention that the pages that I had errors on were 22” x 8.5” 2 page spreads (two 11” pages side by side but in one tiff file). On iPhoto these may well have had slight cropping in the print process but the cropping was centered on the page, the problem in Aperture was that the cropping all happened on the left edge of the left page which made the error too big to ignore. Similiarly, the very obvious banding in the Aperture proof was not there in the iPhoto proof so I felt the only safe thing to do was to go with the iPhoto order. It was unfortunate as it meant I had to use the iPhoto presets for front and back covers rather than the designs I was using in Aperture. I have not had the need to have books printed til now but my daughter got married last April and I did her wedding albums for her hence the need. I have been involved in prepress and graphic design since 1981 so I am aware of bleeds and tolerances but the two issues I was seeing were not acceptable, especially as the same issues were not present in iPhoto’s proofs. I do really appreciate your input but am sorry to hear that we are no closer to resolution. Kind regards, Sean
Sean,
Regarding the double-page spread, did you try centering the photo in Aperture? Once it’s on the page, you can double-click the photo (while in Edit Content mode) and slide the picture around. Perhaps it just needed to be centered so the trim was even on both sides?
Do you still have the book in Aperture? If so, could you export the full PDF from Aperture, then do it again from iPhoto, and upload those two PDFs for me to see, along with the original TIF file where you saw the banding? If you don’t have your own place to host the files, you can upload them here to the DROPBOX under the MORE menu (top of this window).
@PhotoJoseph
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Hi Joseph,
I have uploaded a file to your dropbox called FromSeanB.zip. [download here] It contains an image and the following note…
This is a file from Sean B demonstrating the crop to the left edge of a two page spread in Aperture. There are actually two images here, the outer image is a page from the PDF generated by Aperture when doing a book preview, the inner image shows a screen grab of the display as it is inside Aperture before export. In the image taken directly from Aperture you will note that the left edge contains an extra quarter inch of image. The right edge in Aperture shows a tiny amount less image than is shown in the ‘book preview’ image.
This clearly demonstrates the amount of cropping from the left edge of the image (quarter inch) and actually shows slight negative cropping on the right edge.
Strangely enough, if I slide the image fully to the left in Aperture (obviously the aspect ratio on the 2 page spread is not equal to Apertures sizes) the right edge of the crop remains identical although the left edge takes off another quarter inch.
To try any of this yourself just create a 22” x 8.5” 300dpi image in photoshop and save as a tif - I’d imagine any other image editor would do the same and probably jpegs and pngs would also do the same. Then drag it into a double page spread in an Aperture book and export it as a preview.
Sean,
The PDF preview that is generated is what’s sent to Apple — so if you see problems there, then you will see them in print. (I assume you’re previewing from the “buy book > preview” button?)
I’m not sure about the color ramp, but you definitely shouldn’t be seeing trimmed pages in the preview from what’s in the book layout. What theme are you using? I’ll try to reproduce the problem here.
@PhotoJoseph
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Hi Joseph, thanks for the reply. I am in Aperture 3.3 using the Picture Book theme, large hardcover 11” x 8.5”. I am creating two page spreads in Photoshop CS6 and saving as TIFFs (11” x 8.5” at 300dpi). These are being dragged into two page spreads in Aperture with no text or any other stuff. It’s an 82 page book so I spent about four hours redoing it in iPhoto (the only loss was having to use iPhoto’s front and back cover which was not what I wanted). The preview from iPhoto did work fine both for the clipping and the gradients so I submitted that to Apple and ordered a single copy. The preview in Aperture was indeed done from the buy book/preview option although in iPhoto the previewing is done by ctrl clicking on the bgrnd of the page and selecting preview. I would be most grateful if you could try opening a 2 page spread, tiff, with a color ramp from say dark red to mid grey in a preview from Aperture to see if you can see the same issue. Many thanks, Sean.
Curious Sean.Thanks for the file. I’ll share this and see if I can’t get any traction on it.
@PhotoJoseph
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