I have some questions regarding master pages in Aperture's book designer and hope someone can help.
1. Is there a way to make a master page or a regular page into a two page spread? I have accidentally deleted the original two-page spread that comes in the standard custom book theme and can't find a way to bring it back. I don't want to start over because I've created quite a few custom master pages and don't want to lose them. It's frustrating that you just can't copy/paste pages and master pages between books.
2. Is there a way to change my custom theme book size without losing the master pages and layout I've created? For weddings I make an album which is 15x10 and a photo book from a different manufacturer which is 15x11 so I need to add an inch vertically without losing anything.
3. Is there a way to use the themes provided in Aperture (e.g. Modern Lines) and create a book with a custom size using those master pages? I am using Aperture to design wedding albums which are a different size, but I like the master page designs.
Thanks
I thought I might share that I have just worked out how to integrate Aperture with InDesign. Apologies if this is obvious but to me this is a revelation as I find InDesign’s features much more mature and flexible than Aperture’s limited book designer. Here’s how I did it.
1 - Make sure full size previews are being generated in Aperture (i.e. in the Previews preferences select ‘Don’t limit’ and crank the quality right up). You may need to re-render your previews by holding down Option while clicking Generate Previews.
2 - Drag the photos directly from Aperture into Indesign
Note that InDesign is using the jpeg previews and not embedding the actual RAW files. I have not found this to be detrimental to image quality. For example I compared a 12MP Canon 5D Mark II file stretched to 30x10 inches as a TIFF resized in Photoshop, with a JPG exported from InDesign. The difference in quality is negligible and would not show up in print - try it yourself.
The beauty of this technique is, you get all the sorting, keywording and cataloguing features of Aperture and the beautiful design flexibility and page reuse / libraries of InDesign. As an added bonus, if you make any adjustments to the file in Aperture and switch back to InDesign, you can just click the ‘!’ icon in the Links panel to update the layout instantly. This works best if you have dual displays i.e. Aperture in grid mode on the left and InDesign on the right.
Too easy!
Jay,
Sounds like a great solution for those willing to invest the money and time into InDesign! In fact, I’d love it if you would write up a post to this effect over in the User Tips section.
Do you still need the original questions answered? I’m quite sure you can do all of these things except perhaps #3, but I need to spend some time in there to be sure. If you don’t need this answered anymore, I’ll disregard for now.
@PhotoJoseph
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Hi, I have this same problem, can someone help:
Is there a way to change my custom theme book size without losing the master pages and layout I’ve created? For weddings I make an album which is 15x10 and a photo book from a different manufacturer which is 15x11 so I need to add an inch vertically without losing anything. I have created my photo book in Aperture and want to upload it to Blurb whose page dimensions are slightly larger. Thanks