Introduction to ProAlbum-Designer v3
By Kjell Post, info@pixbookdesign.com
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TABLE OF CONTENTS |
1. About ProAlbum-Designer
ProAlbum-Designer is a set of actions with Javascript code for Adobe Photoshop® that enables you to design photo books in a quick and efficient manner. With hundreds of templates (and more if you want to design your own) you can create spreads faster than ever.
ProAlbum-Designer currently support albums from Saal, Eirikuva, Markus Schmuck, QT Albums, Vision Art and Folio albums. With the Downrez tool, you can design spreads for a universal square album and then later resize them for a specific album.
This manual describes version 3.0 of ProAlbum-Designer and all subsequent versions 3.x that might appear later to fix potential bugs.
2. System requirements
This manual and distribution is intended for Adobe Photoshop CS4 and CS5. It doesn’t matter whether you are using Mac OS X, Windows XP, Vista or Win 7. You need to have a certain amount of Photoshop experience.
After ordering ProAlbum-Designer, you can go ahead and download ProAlbum-Designer from the download page. Make sure the zip file is unpacked before you proceed. We will refer to this folder as your ProAlbum-Designer folder and it should look something like this:
3. Installation
If you have been using ProAlbum-Designer version 2 previously, you don’t need to uninstall anything. However, you can uncheck BookDesigner-Add in Bridge’s Preferences > Startup Scripts, simply to clean up the Bridge menu. Then do the following:
- Start up Photoshop.
Note: If you are using Windows Vista or Win 7, you must start Photoshop as administrator: right-click on the Photoshop icon and select “Run as administrator”.
- In Photoshop, do File > Scripts > Browse… and choose install.jsx in your ProAlbum-Designer folder.
- You will be presented with the following window:
- Uninstall is only necessary if you need to come back and uninstall ProAlbum-Designer, including previous versions. Unless you experience problems, this step is not necessary.
- Now send me an email with the Signature (the 8 characters, use copy&paste to avoid mistakes). I will reply with an activation code as soon as I can, usually the same day.
If you move to a new machine or update Photoshop, you will need to register again to obtain a new activation code. It doesn’t cost anything and I will be happy to help you.
- Click on Install to go ahead with the installation. This will install a demo version of ProAlbum-Designer which you can activate later when you have the activation code.
- After a few seconds, and if everything goes well, something like this should appear:
- The installation program can load the action file and delete older version of ProAlbum-Designer’s action files.
- After installation, restart both Photoshop and Bridge. When you start Bridge again it will ask you if you want to activate the scripts: answer Yes.
- Choose Button mode in the same fly-out menu and you should have a set of colorful buttons like at the beginning of this document.
Congratulations, you have now successfully installed ProAlbum-Designer.
ProAlbum-Designer will be in demo mode until you activate it. You can use all the features except Downrez, but your spreads will be slightly distorted. Sorry, no free lunch!
4. Activation
To activate ProAlbum-Designer you need the 8-character activation code. I will send you the activation code after you have sent me your signature and verified your purchase. Please note that the activation code for version 3 is different from previous versions.
- Click on “About ProAlbum-Designer” and the following window appears
5. Book spreads - quick and easy
A book is produced one spread at a time. A spread is a double page. The book printer (QT, Saal, Eirikuva, etc) prints books in many different formats (15×15, 20×20, etc) and there are functions to create blank spreads for each type of book. For now, we are going to assume that, e.g., a 20 page album consists of 10 spreads. If you are planning to print a book where, e.g., the first left page must be left blank, you must handle this yourself.

With ProAlbum-Designer, you can design a spread in less than a minute. These are the usual steps required to make a spread:
Later, we will discuss how you can move images around, enlarge them, add borders, change background color etc. But let us start with the preliminiares.
5.1 Preference settings
Click on the red button “Preferences”. This is where you manage all the settings for ProAlbum-Designer.
First, there is a list of album manufacturers to choose from. Each of their albums is defined by its spread size (in pixels), resolution and guidelines that indicate bleed allowance. Additionally, some albums have the option of covers.
If you are designing a square album, it is wise to make spreads for the Universal album. When your spreads are ready, it is easy to make smaller spreads for a specific album using the Downrez tool. If, on the other hand, you are designing with a specific album in mind, feel free to choose it in the list: templates are scaled to the chosen album’s format before images are dropped in†. With that in mind, we have sets of templates for square, vertical and horizontal albums. If you change to, e.g., Eirikuva 30×20 cm, ProAlbum-Designer attempts to change the Template folder to Templates-Horizontal.
† There is one exception to this scaling-down rule: if the selected album is “Template”, the template will not be resized but rather left in its original size. This is useful if you use ProAlbum-Designer for non-book purposes with your own templates, for instance creating a huge collage for printing or a 900 px wide collage for your blog.
When starting a new album design, set Page folder to be the folder where your spreads will be stored. When you save a spread (by clicking on “Save spread”) it will go to this folder. Unfortunately, this doesn’t work in Windows so as a work-around we recommend changing the Save dialog to the “OS dialog” and then select your target folder as a Favorite, so that you can quickly go to the right folder.
The Document name is the suggested name given to the spread before you save it so that you quickly can change it to, e.g., “Spread040″. I would suggest giving your spreads a unique name, for instance the name of the couple who just got married, in order to avoid accidentally overwriting spreads from other projects.
The remaining preference settings are of less importance and therefore discussed later in this manual.
5.2 Image files
When images appear on the spread they are converted to smart objects. Smart objects enables you to shrink and enlarge images back and forth without quality loss. Even if the spread is saved and later loaded, your images have not lost any quality.
In ProAlbum-designer all templates are in the sRGB color space. Your images may be stored in another color space, for instance the larger Adobe RGB. Depending on your Photoshop settings you may or may not get conversion questions when importing files from Bridge. Refer to the Photoshop menu Edit>Color Settings… but make sure this conversion keeps you in sRGB as this is the color space all album companies want.
5.3 Selecting and moving things around

It is very important that you familiarize yourself with Photoshop’s selection and transformation tools. Most of the time you want to have the Move Tool (press V) active and check the Auto Select Layer in the upper left corner. Photoshop will then automatically select the layer corresponding to the image you click on. This makes it possible to drag images around on the spread: simply click on an image before you perform an operation on it.
For instance, if you wish to enlarge an image, first click on it. You will see that the corresponding layer in the layers palette is highlighted. Now press Cmd-T (ctrl-T in Windows) and control points will be laid out for you to scale the image. Remember to hold the shift key down to maintain the aspect ratio. If the image you are scaling is much larger than the page, some of the control points will appear outside the spread. Press Cmd-0 (ctrl-0 in Windows, that’s a zero) to zoom out far enough.
Another important feature of Photoshop is the ability to select several images. There are several ways to do this, they all assume you have the Move Tool active.
- Click on the first image. Then hold down the Shift key and click on the remaining images, or:
- Use the mouse to drag a selection around the images you want to select. This works well if the images you want to select are already grouped together.
- You can also click on the corresponding layer in the layer’s palette but this can be difficult as you may accidentally select a template hole.
To de-select images, simply click somewhere in the background or do Select > Deselect in the menu.
6. Templates
Templates are compressed TIFF-files with a layer for each template. The one distinguishing feature is that each layer must be named $PBDTPL-n where n is a number. (Templates can also be PSD-files, but as of version 3 we now ship built-in templates in compressed TIFF-format to save space.)
Templates are named Template-number- followed by a string of “H”, “V”, “S” (describing the holes) and then either “X”, “Y”, “XY” or nothing at all. For an example, see the template on the right. The number after Template isn’t important but I like to store templates with consecutive numbers. The string of “H”, “V”, “S” describe the holes as being either Horizontal, Vertical or Square. The holes do not have to be listed in any specific order, i.e., Template-35-HHSVV-XY.psd would have done just as well. The final characters have the following meaning:
- “XY” if the template can be flipped both horizontally and vertically as well, i.e., no symmetry along the x- and y-axis.
- “X” if the template can be flipped horizontally as well, i.e., no symmetry along the x-axis.
- “Y” if the template can be flipped vertically as well, i.e., no symmetry along the y-axis.
- Nothing at all, if the template looks the same when flipped vertically or horizontally.
With the introduction of version 3 of ProAlbum-Designer it is now easier to save and name templates. Simply use the button “Save template” and let ProAlbum-Designer suggest a name. Once you approve the name, ProAlbum-Designer will save the template as well as the necessary icons used for the template dialog window.
When Bridge suggest a template, based on the images selected, it will obviously compare the orientation of the selected images with the orientation of the holes in the templates. A match is considered exact if each horizontal/vertical/square hole has a matching horizontal/vertical/square image. A match is considered OK if we can put a horizontal or vertical image in a square hole, or a square image in a horizontal/vertical hole. The definition of square is loose: if, e.g., the width is within 10% of the height, an image or hole is considered square.
The template editor described below has more information on how to make your own templates.
7. Actions
Now let us go through the actions in the Actions palette and see what they do.
About ProAlbum-Designer
Tells you which version you are running and if your copy is up to date. If you are reporting a problem with ProAlbum-Designer, press this button to see which version you are running.
In the demo mode, the “About…” dialog lets you enter an activation code to unlock your copy of ProAlbum-Designer. Refer to the Activation section earlier.
When your copy is unlocked, the “About…” button will notify you of any updates to ProAlbum-Designer. If it is a minor update, e.g., going from 2.1 to 2.2, you can click on “Update” and ProAlbum-Designer will update itself. For major updates, e.g., from 2.1 to 3.0, you must go to the download area and install over again.
The “About…” button informs of any updates (left); minor updates can be performed with the click of a button (right).
Preferences
This opens up a dialog which allows you to customize ProAlbum-Designer and work faster.
Let us go through the various preference settings. Each setting has a tool-tip description which you can see by hovering with the mouse over the corresponding item.
Album: When starting on a new project, choose the album company and album type you are working on here. This setting will be used when creating a new spread. The special album called “Template” tells ProAlbum-Designer not to resize the template to any format but rather leave it “as is”.
Spread folder: This is the folder where your album spreads are stored. When you save a spread, ProAlbum-Designer will go to this folder. If this preference is not set, ProAlbum-Designer will by default go to your home folder. This feature does not work in Windows. Instead, in the “Save as”-dialog, switch to the OS dialog and save your designated folder as a favorite by right-clicking on it.
Template folder: This is the folder where ProAlbum-Designer will look for templates that match the current selection in Bridge. You can have your own folders, or use one of the template folders that were included.
Overlay folder: This is the folder where your overlays are stored. When you run Add overlay, ProAlbum-Designer will automatically go to this folder. Overlays are discussed in more detail later.
Document name: This is the prefix given to a document when you create a new spread.
Border width: This is how many pixels thick a border will be when you add a black or white border to your images (see White border, Black border, etc).
Instruction layer: the instruction layer is generated when you click on “New Spread” or create a new cover, i.e., if you don’t work with templates. The instruction layer is initially turned off, but if you turn it on you will be given descriptions on critical areas. When a spread/cover is saved, the instruction layer is turned off so it doesn’t appear in the exported JPEG image by mistake.
Creates a blank cover based on how many spreads you have or what material is used for the cover. Normally, this button is seldom used. Instead choose the image(s) you want on your cover in Bridge, right-click and choose “ProAlbum-Designer > Make cover”. You can the move the image(s) around, enlarge them, frame them, add text, etc. Guide lines show you where the spine of the album is, if you want to put text there.
Not all albums have the option of putting images on the cover. Also, the size of the cover document depends on how many spreads you have. We therefore recommend that you design the cover last, when you know have finished all spreads.
Save cover
Run this action when an album cover is finished and ready to be saved. You will be asked to save the cover in Photoshop’s own PSD-format, so rename the file before you put it in the right folder, e.g. Cover.PSD. ProAlbum-Designer will also create a high-quality JPEG of the cover – this is used when ordering the album. The PSD file is used only if you need to go back and edit the cover.
New spread
If, for some reason, you don’t want to work with templates you can start with a blank spread and add images to it via Bridge. This action creates a new, blank, page spread for the album chosen in the Preference settings.
Save spread
Run this action when an album spread is finished and ready to be saved. You will be asked to save the spread in Photoshop’s own PSD-format, so rename the file before you put it in the right folder, e.g. Spread-013.PSD. ProAlbum-Designer will also create a high-quality JPEG of the spread – this is used when ordering the album. The PSD file is used only if you need to go back and edit.
It is recommended that spreads are saved with consecutive numbers, for instance Page-001.PSD, Page-002.PSD, etc. A useful suggestion is to name your spreads Page-010.PSD, Page-020.PSD, Page-030.PSD, etc, so that it is easy to insert a spread Page-015.PSD if necessary.
Fg color background
Sets the background to whatever the current foreground/background color is in Photoshop. If you want a white or black background it is probably easier to use one of the next two actions.
White background, Black background
Sets the background to white or black. This is particulary useful with full page bleeds that have been made transparent (see the Opaque action). For instance, if the background is white and the bottom layer is set to 50% transparency, you will have a nice background that doesn’t take away too much detail from the images lying on top. We use this occasionally with detail shots of glasses, food, dresses, flowers and other decorations.
If you work with templates, it is usually better to switch to a black background after you have filled all the holes or you won’t be able to see them!
Fit
This action will enlarge the selected image as much as possible while keeping it within the document. If the original image is somewhere on the left page, Fit will fill the left page. Conversely, if you first push the image to the right page and run Fit, the image will now fill the right page.
Fill left page, Fill right page
These actions will fill either the entire left page or the entire right page with the current image, which is assumed to be a vertical image. Unlike Fit, parts of the image may be outside the page. By default, a filled image is aligned along the bottom part of the page. You can move the image around afterwards, of course.
Fill spread
It is quite common to create full page bleeds. Normally the proportions of the image does not coincide with that of the page spread. With the Fill spread action the whole page spread will be covered by the image, which is assumed to be horizontal. Parts of the image may be outside the spread afterwards. Please note that the image is not cropped but can be moved around afterwards using the Move Tool (V) and pressing the arrow keys to nudge the image one pixel at a time. Hold the shift key down and you will be moving 10 pixels for each arrow key click. Use the Send backward action to reveal images that have been obscured by this operation.
Color <-> BW
This action changes the selected image(s) to black & white by adding a black & white adjustment layer. If you click on this button again, the adjustment layer is removed, turning it into color again.
Enlarge, Shrink
Enlarges (133%) or shrinks (75%) the selected image(s). The percentages have been chosen as to cancel each other when used consecutively. Even if the Transform tool (Cmd-T or Ctrl-T in Windows) is also useful for scaling images, it is faster and more precise to enlarge/shrink several images by the same amount.
Note that several images can be enlarged/shrunk together by first selecting the images and then running either Enlarge or Shrink.
Match up, Match down
When doing free layout, or designing templates, it is often important to make two images the same size. Trying to do resizing by hand is tedious and error prone. These operations assume that you have two (2) selected images. In Match up, the smaller image will be as large as the larger of the two. In Match down, the larger image will be as small as the smaller of the two.
ProAlbum-Designer looks at the relative positioning of the two images so that, e.g., if the two images are above each other, their widths will be equal afterwards. Conversely, when the two images are next to eachother, their heights will be equal afterwards. Therefore, you need to rougly place the images before you run Match up/down. Matching does not currently work so well when borders have been added so you may want to add borders and dropshadows afterwards, when the images have the right size.
Check DPI
This action uses the resolution of each image and its current size to determine whether the image has been enlarged too much. The corresponding layer is colored according to the number of pixels per inch: green (sufficient), yellow (caution) or red (bad). Currently the threshold for green is 200 dpi.
The number of pixels for an image is baked into its layer name when ProAlbum-Designer imports the image from Bridge. Most JPEG images yield such information but if the number of pixels can not be obtained you have no way of checking the quality of that particular image.
The layer color is not continuously updated—you need to run Check DPI to update the color indicators. Also, Check DPI does not go into overlays to check on the insets. If you wish to check an overlay, you first need to double click on its smart object thumbnail in the layers palette to open the overlay in a separate document. You can then run Check DPI in that document.
Optimal enlarge
If an image has been marked red or yellow by the Check DPI action the question immediatly arises, “how large can I make the image?” With the Optimal enlarge action, the image is scaled down (or up) to a 200 dpi setting, i.e., as large as possible without showing signs of pixels. The 200 dpi threshold is course a little arbitrary and the image can probably be slightly larger without looking bad.
Tilt left, Tilt right
These actions will turn the selected image(s) 5º left or right. You can do other angles with the Free Transform tool (Cmd-T on a Mac, Ctrl-T in Windows). Notice that this action can by performed on several images at once.
Opaque
Makes the image transparent. Use the number keys to quickly set the transparency, for instance 0 for 100%, 2 for 20%, 33 for 33% etc. This action is mostly used when the image on top of the Background layer is a full page bleed.
Delete image
Removes the image(s) currently selected. Since CS4 you can now use the Delete key as a shortcut, even if you are not working with the Move tool.
Bring to front, Send backwards
These commands move the current image up or down through the layer stack. You can also grab a layer in the layer palette and drag it wherever you want it to be.
These commands also work on “dropped” images, i.e., you can have templates with overlapping holes, drop images into them and then use Bring to front and Send backwards to decide which one you want to be on top.
Drop
Drop only makes sense when you work with templates. If you have created a spread by a template suggestion from Bridge, you can come back and replace images.
In it simplest form, the Drop command drops an image into a template hole. The image will be shrunk or enlarged to fit the hole. The hole that overlaps the image most will be used. If the image doesn’t overlap a hole, it will be dropped into the first-numbered hole. If another image is already occupying the hole, it will be deleted. When several images have been selected, the Drop command drops them all into their holes. You can enlarge, shrink, rotate and move around images that have been dropped. Borders can be added with, e.g., “Black border”. Images can be swapped with the Swap command (see below).
If you drop an image that has already been dropped, it will be re-aligned within the hole with the following policy: if the image is smaller than the hole, it will be enlarged to fill the hole again. If the image is not completely overlapping the hole, but is sufficiently large, it will be moved back to cover the hole. This is useful if you want to make sure that the hole beneath is not showing through.

(left) before dropping images; (right) after both images have been dropped into their holes.
If you find it difficult to “aim”, i.e., to avoid having the image being dropped into another hole you can either (a) make the image smaller before you drop it or (b) use the swap command (described below).
To release an image from its hole, use the Release button (see below).
If you find yourself clicking on the Drop button a lot you should consider creating a keyboard shortcut for it. In the action palette’s menu, de-select Button mode so that your action palette looks like this:
Next, double-click to the right of “Drop” and the following window appears:
Select any function key you want. Now you can drag images around with your right hand and drop them with your left index finger on F2!
Release
Release does the opposite of Drop, i.e., it release an image from the hole. If several images have been selected, they are all released.
Add overlay

An overlay is like a bevel mat, i.e., a placeholder for one or more images. Overlays have largely been replaced by templates but we have decided to keep overlays for reasons of backward compatibility. Overlays can be downloaded from ProAlbum-Designer’s Overlay page.
To use the Add overlay action, first select the images that will appear in the overlay by clicking on the first image and then Shift-clicking on the remaining images. When you click on Add overlay you will be prompted for an overlay file – these are PSD files that you keep in a special folder which you can register in your Preference settings.
ProAlbum-Designer will then drop the overlay on the spread, move the selected images into the corresponding holes and finally bundle the overlay and the images into one smart object. The overlay object can be moved, scaled, rotated and treated like any other image.

You can edit an overlay by double-clicking on its smart object thumbnail in the layers palette (see right). A new document with the overlay and its contents will open up. In CS4 you can remove the link between each image and its mask and move and scale the image around inside the hole.
When you save and close this document, the changes will be reflected on the original spread.
ProAlbum-Designer employs some shortcuts as well. Let us say that you have three images selected and you choose an overlay with only one hole. ProAlbum-Designer will then apply this overlay to each of the three images. This allows you to quickly add a nice frame to all your images on a page.
If the orientation of one or more images does not match the corresponding hole in the overlay, you will receive an error message.
Swap
This action will swap the two currently selected images around so that image 1 moves to image 2’s location, and image 2 moves to image 1’s original location.
This is particulary useful for moving images around in a template or overlay. For overlays, double-click on the overlay’s smart object thumbnail in the layers palette, select two images, run Swap and the two images will swap places.
As a special case, if one of the layers selected is a hole and the other is an image, the image will be dropped into the hole. This is useful if you find it difficult to overlap the image with the intended hole.
No border, No shadow, etc
These actions gives you a black or white border, and/or a shadow on the currently selected image(s). It also works on images dropped in holes.
It is unfortunately difficult (impossible?) to have a Photoshop action add an effect (such as a drop shadow or border) to an existing layer effect. That is why ProAlbum-Designer’s action palette looks a bit like a pizza menu where there are n toppings and 2^n pizzas to choose from.
You can change the border thickness through the preference setting Border width.
New Template
Templates are regular Photoshop files. If you inspect them you will see that each hole is on a layer of its own which is transparent, except for the black rectangle that marks the hole. This rectangle (which can be any shape, actually) is a mask to which images are clipped by the Drop command. The only requirement is that the layers are named $PBDTPL-n where n is a unique number. Templates are saved with a certain naming convention, see the section on Templates above.
The editor is a tool for building templates. It is not for everyday use, but can be useful if you are interested in experimenting with templates. It accepts two box structures as arguments, one for the left page and one for the right. The template will be built on a page spread, the same size as the book you have selected in Preferences. When the editor has finished, you can move the holes around, enlarge or shrink them, rotate them or flip the whole canvas and finally save the template with your other templates.

A template for a 30×20 cm book, built with both arguments set to HBOX(B(2,3),B(2,3),B(2,3))
The argument for left and right pages is a box structure. A box is defined as either
- The string FullPage() which makes a hole as large as the page.
- A hole B(w,h) representing a hole with the aspect ratio w×h, for instance B(2,3), B(1,1), B(2,3).
- A horizontal group HBOX(b1, …, bn) representing a horizontal sequence of boxes b1 to bn.
- A vertical group VBOX(b1, …, bn) representing a vertical sequence of boxes b1 to bn.
Downrez
This action pops up a dialogue for batch-converting larger spreads to smaller spreads. It is only intended for square albums, preferably the Universal album which is intended for album designers who needs to provide different sized square albums for, e.g., wedding couples and their families.
Start by specifying the input folder and the type of album you wish to downrez to.
Because square albums are rarely exactly square, you will inevitably face the question of how to deal with minor differences in proportions. Therefore, the Downrez tool lets you choose between three different policies: fill in, fit in and stretch.
We recommend fill in, which means that page spreads will be shrunk and then cropped. You can test how many pixels are cropped off with the Test button.
If you instead choose fit in, Downrez will shrink the page spreads and then add background colored pixels. This is normally something you do not want so we urge you to not use this option or, if you do, take care of the artifacts afterwards.
If you choose stretch, the spreads will be shrunk and then stretched to fit. A small amount of vertical stretching is usually OK but beware of horizontal stretching as it will make people look wider.
Downrez will automatically suggest a name for the output folder and will never overwrite existing files. Downrez works with both JPEG and PSD files: you can choose if you want Downrez to only process JPEG files, only PSD files, or both.
8. Updating spreads
A new feature introduced in ProAlbum-Designer v 2.2 is the ability to update spreads. Suppose you have designed your album, i.e., you have a folder with all the spreads. You now decide you need to fix a few images in the album. Rather than fixing the images and re-build the spreads there is now an easier way: select (in Bridge) the spreads that needs changing, then in Bridge: Tools > Update spread(s).
This will open up each spread and for each image, load the JPEG file again and replace the old image. As of version 2.2, ProAlbum-Designer “remembers” where each JPEG file on a spread comes from. If the updating script cannot find a JPEG file (because it has moved since you did the spread) it will ask you find it.
All updated spreads (both JPEG and PSD files) will be stored in a sub folder called “Update-20110815-1758″ so that no old spreads are overwritten.
The update feature makes it possible to have the following album layout workflow:
- Convert all raw images you need for the album to small JPEGs, e.g., 900×900 px. (The Image Processor in Bridge, found under Tools > Photoshop, is a great tool for these jobs.)
- Do an album layout with the small JPEGs.
- Show the layout for the client, if they are not happy, go back to step 2.
- Now retouch all your raw images to proper high res JPEG files and overwrite the small JPEGs.
- Finally, select your spreads in Bridge and run Tools > Update spread(s). All your small JPEGs will be replaced with the retouched high res files.













