digest

MagCloud: More than just magazine

milnormag12 Comments

MTMheader

I first heard about Magcloud in a hotel lobby in Atlanta during a photography conference. A young photographer created a serial portfolio of sorts using the Magcloud magazine, and when he placed the publication on the table in front of me my first thought was “That is a real magazine.” I was instantly hooked, flew home and built my own Magcloud series. For those of you who don’t know, or those who didn’t grow up thinking about photography, the magazine holds a special place in the heart of most image-makers. As young photographers we dreamt of seeing our images on the pages of the big magazines. A cover was beyond comprehension.

Over the years I’ve made many different Magcloud magazines. I’ve created issues to sell, others to promote and others for fun, but Magcloud is far more than magazine. The platform offers a diverse range of publication from the flyer and pamphlet size piece to a wire-bound, 11×14 tabloid style publication and even a poster if I find the need. They also make two of my all time favorite trim sizes. The digest, a 5.25×8.25 in portrait or landscape, as well as an 8×8 square. As a storyteller, retired journalist and residual photographer these two pieces, combined with magazine, keep me very, very happy.

MTMshifter

Digest is the perfect size for a mailer or promotional piece, but also plenty nice enough for a small run, art publication or something to sell as a compliment to a larger book or magazine. The one you see here details my website and the range of work you would find if you visited the site. I buy stacks of these then hand them out to people I find inspiring or those I want to collaborate with.

The 8×8 square is a perfect, modern format. I don’t know about you, but the vast majority of images I make with my mobile phone are in the square format. Plus, I’m still a diehard Hasselblad user, so all my portrait work is square format, which lends itself perfectly to the 8×8.

Both of these formats offer saddle stich or perfect bind, discounts for volume and both domestic and international shipping. And remember, with print-on-demand you only need to order one at a time, so experiment, test, tinker and see what format fits you best.

-Dan Milnor

MTMbook

Using Photoshop to Create a Vacation Photobook

Meghan Cordella11 Comments

Following up on last week’s blog post about using the new Book Module in Adobe Lightroom 4 to create Square MagCloud publications, today we are looking at an easy way you can use Adobe Photoshop to create a vacation photobook with MagCloud’s landscape-oriented Standard and Digest products. We’ve also added new Software-Specific Instruction Packets for Photoshop to our Getting Started page for all of our product sizes. These downloadable folders contain MagCloud-specific templates and instructions for Photoshop CS4 and newer, as well as step-by-step instructions to help you create your publication from scratch using any version of Photoshop.

1. Pick Your Photos

To get started with your photobook, the first thing you need are photos. For the photobook we’ll be creating today, all the images will be full-bleed and extend to the edge of the landscape-oriented pages. As a result, landscape-oriented images will work best for this type of book. If you wanted to use both portrait and landscape-oriented photos, then one of our Square products might be a better fit. You can find instructions for using Photoshop to create an 8″ x 8″ or 12″ x 12″ Square publication on the Getting Started page on the MagCloud website.

In addition to the orientation of your photos, the resolution is also important. We recommend using images that are 300 pixels per inch. Therefore, if you want to create a small Digest size photobook, you should use images that are at least 2550 pixels wide by 1650 pixels tall, or roughly the largest image size available from a 4 megapixel digital camera. If you want to create a larger Standard size photobook, your images will need to be higher resolution – at least 3300 pixels wide by 2550 pixels tall, or roughly the largest image size available from an 8 megapixel digital camera. If you are using high quality images from at least an 8 megapixel digital camera then your images should be fine for either size, however you can check the manual for your camera to be sure, or check the dimensions of your images in the file information on your computer.

2. Create Pages in Photoshop

To create each page in your photobook, including the front and back covers, open the image you want to use in Photoshop and go to Image > Image Size. Make sure that the boxes are checked next to “Constrain Proportions” and “Resample Image”, select “Bicubic Sharper” from the dropdown menu, and set the Resolution to 300 pixels/inch. If you are creating a Digest size publication, set the width to 8.5 inches. If this causes the height to drop to less than 5.5 inches, then set the height to be 5.5 inches. Note that this will cause the width to be greater than 8.5 inches, but the image will be cropped to compensate for this in the next step. Similarly, if you are creating a Standard size publication, set the width to 11 inches. If doing so causes the height to drop to less than 8.5 inches, then set the height to 8.5 inches and allow the width to go above 11 inches. When you are finished, click OK.

Next, go to Image > Canvas Size. Select “inches” from the dropdown menu, if it’s not selected already. If you are creating a Digest size publication, set the Width to 8.5 inches and the Height to 5.5 inches. If you are creating a Standard size publication, set the Width to 11 inches and the Height to 8.5 inches. Click OK, and when you are warned that some clipping will occur, click the button to Proceed.

If you would like to add any text over your full-page image, like a title on the cover page, you can do so now using the text tool. Keep in mind that Digest publications will have 0.125″ trimmed off the top and bottom edges, and 0.25″ trimmed off the outside edge (the right, in the case of the cover), and since the trim can vary slightly in either direction, it’s best to keep any text at least 0.25″ inside of this trim line. Similarly, landscape-oriented Standard publications are trimmed 0.125″ on all sides, and also have holes punched on the inside edge for the Wire-O binding (the left, in the case of the cover). Therefore, if you are creating a Standard size photobook, it’s a good idea to keep text 0.25″ inside the trim line on the top, bottom and outside edge and 0.5″ inside the trim line on the inside edge for this size of publication. If you will be adding a lot of content, it may be helpful to add guides to remind yourself where the trim will occur.

When you are happy with the look of your page, go to File > Save As. Select “JPEG” from the Format dropdown menu and make sure that the box next to “Embed Color Profile” is checked. Your color profile may be something other than the sRGB profile shown in the screenshot at right, but embedding your color profile will help ensure that our Indigo presses are able to reproduce your images with the best color possible no matter what color profile they use. Select a name for your file and choose where you want it to be saved on your computer, then click Save. I recommend saving all your page files to a new folder and naming your files numerically, with the cover as Page001.jpg, the inside front cover Page002.jpg, and so on, as this will make it easier to create your final PDF. In the JPEG Options window that appears next, select “Maximum” from the Quality dropdown menu and select the radio button next to “Baseline (Standard)” under Format Options, then click OK.

Repeat these steps for each of the pages in your photobook, resizing and cropping one image for each page. If you want to include pages in your book that don’t include an image, as I did on the inside front and back covers in my publications, take a look at the templates and instructions in the downloadable Instruction Packets on the our Getting Started page. These instructions and templates start with a blank document in Photoshop, rather than modifying an existing image file.

3. Combine Pages into a MagCloud-Ready PDF

Once you’ve created all of the pages for your photobook, it’s time to combine these pages into a single multipage PDF using Adobe Acrobat Pro. Open Acrobat and go to File > Create File > Merge Files into a Single PDF. Click the button to Add Files and select all the page JPEGs you just created. Sort the files alphabetically by name to put the pages in numerical order, or use the Move Up/Move Down buttons to rearrange the order of the files. When you are happy with the order, select the largest file icon on the far right where it says File Size and click Combine Files. When prompted, choose a name for your final PDF and click Save. Your PDF is now ready to upload to MagCloud!

If you don’t have Adobe Acrobat Pro, an alternative method is to use Adobe’s subscription-based CreatePDF service either online or within Adobe Reader to convert your JPEG files to PDFs and combine them. The other option is to save your pages as PDF files out of Photoshop instead of JPEGs, and then combine these single page PDFs into one multipage PDF using a PDF viewer like Apple’s Preview. You can find instructions to do this in the Instruction Packets on the Getting Started page. The downside to this method is that it will result in a PDF that is much larger than the method using JPEG files, and you may be in danger of going over MagCloud’s 300MB file upload limit.

[UPDATE 1: Adobe Bridge is also another good option for combining your Photoshop files into a single multipage PDF. After you’ve created your pages, open Bridge and select all the page files. Click on the Adobe Bridge “Output” workspace and choose the PDF output option and the relevant page size for the product you are creating. Set the Layout to 1 column and 1 row, and make all margins 0″, then click Save. This will export a PDF that is ready to upload to MagCloud. Thanks to our reader Chane for this tip!]

[UPDATE 2: CreatePDF converts JPEG files to 72 dpi PDF files, which results in PDFs that are roughly 4x the dimensions they should be. Therefore, if you will be using CreatePDF to create your multipage PDF, it would be best to export your page files from Photoshop as PDF files. Note that CreatePDF only allows you to combine 10 files at a time, so you will need to combine your PDFs in groups of 10 and then recombine those. Thanks to our reader Jeffrey for these tips!]

You can see the photobooks I created in Photoshop and Acrobat Pro using these instructions on the MagCloud website: Digest and Standard

MagCloud for the Wedding Photographer

Lauren5 Comments

Whether you are a professional wedding photographer with a studio space and a team of five, or you’re flying solo, it’s important to present your business in the most professional and appealing way possible to your clients. MagCloud is an easy and affordable way to publish lookbooks, promotional tools and affordable products that that you can sell as a part of your business’s offerings. With easy publisher settings you can offer any, or all of your publications in both print and digital formats.

A number of photographers have already discovered the value of MagCloud for their business. They are using the service to promote themselves at trade events with a brochure or glossy catalog, provide lookbooks to potential clients, print proof books for existing clients; and even as a sales tool intended to up-sell clients to an entire gallery of prints rather than just one or two.

Let’s explore some of the options available for your wedding photography business:

Portfolio and Catalog:

At just 20¢ a page for Standard size or 16¢ for Digest size, MagCloud offers full-color, full-bleed printing on HP’s beautiful Indigo presses–a true advantage for today’s professional photographers.

For example, if you want to create a full-color soft-bound book to highlight your photography and present your services, you could do so in a 28-page Standard-sized perfect-bound publication for just $6.60 a copy. Yep, you read that right, $6.60 a copy. And you don’t have to buy 100 to get that pricing, you could order them one at a time if you like, or drop-ship them to an address list of potential clients who have seen your work online and are interested in learning more.

**Want to create one of your own? If you use Microsoft Publisher, we’ve already got a great basic 4-page catalog template to get you started. Don’t use Publisher? Feel free to use the design as inspiration for your own services catalog.

Lookbook:

If you’d prefer to woo your customers before revealing all of your pricing, or would just prefer to have something less time-sensitive for showing off your work, we suggest creating a lookbook. Lookbooks are a great way to express your style, showcase your best work, and really tell your potential customers who you are.

Some publishers have started to use our ultra-portable Digest Landscape format to create a marketing piece that shows off their best work in a portable format that doesn’t break the bank.

What’s great about this idea is that the Digest Landscape’s compact 8.25″ x 5.25″ size makes it easy to keep on hand. Should you meet someone who is interested in hiring you, you can easily hand off the book to a potential client and not cringe at what it costs to replace. And with a max page count of 384, you could create a lookbook that includes hundreds of images, worthy of your coffee table. At just 16¢ a page for our Digest Landscape publications (plus $1 for perfect binding), you can create an impressive 60-page lookbook for just $10.60.

Album for family and friends:

Waiting for that big beautiful album can sometimes take weeks, or months, so while your bride is still excited about the wedding and singing your praises, why not surprise her with a mini photobook, or cool glossy magazine of photos from her big day? She’ll be thrilled to show off your work to her friends and family, and with our 3-day print turn around time, you could surprise the happy couple before they get home from their honeymoon.

You could also create a similar album as a product for your newlyweds to give as a thank you gift to extended family, bridesmaids and groomsmen.

Sales tool:

If you sell more than just digital packages, you know how hard it can be to sell prints–especially large prints (like the elusive 20″ x 30″ canvas) or collections of images, intended to be displayed as galleries. Most clients can’t envision what a gallery of their images could look like–”How would they arrange them? Where would it go?” That’s why some photographers have created booklets to help their clients place their orders. Diagrams and examples can help customers to envision a gallery in their home so they can select prints that work well together. If you went so far as to create this publication and save it as a template, you could drop a few of the customer’s images into the gallery diagrams creating a customized booklet to really seal the deal.

Proof Book:

It seems just about everyone has made the switch to online galleries for proofing, but there is something to be said about proofing photos in print, especially when you are planning to buy them in print.

So why not put together a proof book for your client to accompany that online gallery? This way your bride can have something in hand when she talks to her parents or grandparents about that 20”x 30” canvas. You could even go so far as to include your print pricing, packages or gallery inspiration guide into a custom publication to help encourage larger sales.

Showcase for Vendors:

If you’ve been in the business for awhile, you probably have already had a number of referrals come not just from happy brides, but also from vendors. You know that impressing a location rep means your images might get highlighted when they tour brides-to-be around their venue. Event planners love to show off your beautiful photos of their meticulously-planned soirées, so why not give them access to your photos in a way that not only highlights their work, but at the same time shows you off? We’ve seen photographers partner with venues and service professionals to create custom showcase publications for their specific businesses, but imagine how popular you’d be with everyone down to the makeup artist if you created a showcase book for each wedding and shared it them for their own promotional uses? Every time they show off that booklet, their client will see your brand.

Annual Retrospective for past clients:

If you do more than wedding photography, it makes sense to remind your clients of this. Then, as your wedding clients become growing families, they can make you their photographer for life – there to document their pregnancy, baby photos, family portraits and even high-school seniors.

Creating an annual retrospective photography magazine to highlight favorite sessions from the previous year is a great way to remind customers that you do other types of photography. Similar to a portfolio, this sort of publication can really highlight events, press-opportunities and sessions that occurred during the past year. Clients highlighted in the publication would surely love a copy to show off to their friends, and it keeps you top-of-mind for their next photo-worthy occasion.

Client Gifts:

A number of wedding photographers send gifts to their couples at their anniversary, or around the holidays, so why not create a calendar template that you can customize for each couple?

Swap in photos from their big day, add their anniversary to the calendar, and voilà! You’ll have a product that costs you $5.60 + shipping (a 28-page Standard publication) and reminds your bride how fabulous you are every day of the year.

Print or Digital? Why Choose?

There is a constant debate about print vs. digital, arguing why one is better than the other. Here at MagCloud, our motto is “Why choose?” What’s great about all of these ideas is that if you like, any one of them could also be enjoyed and shown off on the iPad or as a digital download to any PC or tablet device. With just a few clicks you can use one PDF for both print and digital purposes, just opt-in for digital distribution when you select your print pricing and finishing options.

More:

Along with all of these great ideas, you can also use MagCloud to print professionally bound Contracts, Employee Handbooks, Style Guides, Posing Guides, Workbooks, and Lighting How-to’s for workshops. Want more inspiration? Browse more wedding photography publications on the MagCloud website.

Have you used MagCloud as a promotional piece or product for your wedding photography business, or have you been inspired to create something from this post? Share your ideas in the comments section below.

Put MagCloud to Work: Publish a Business Brochure

LaurenLeave a comment

A wise person once said ‘You never get a second chance to make a first impression’. In fact, it just takes a few seconds or a cursory glance for a person to make a judgment about us. Our subsequent actions, behavior and professionalism may change that perception slightly, but not to a great extent.

So it stands to reason that how you portray your business to prospective clients is almost as important as how you do business.

Whether you are a fashion designer, a multi-media training company, an industry consultant, a yoga studio, or a niche photographer, putting your brand out there in a professional manner is extremely important.

One could argue that a brochure is just as important as your business card. It is an important marketing and sales tool, one in which you can do a little bragging and shamelessly present your business in the most positive light. It is your opportunity to create a lasting impression, so be sure that it is a good one.

Whether you are a company with a staff of 2, 20 or 20,000, MagCloud is a great tool for affordably publishing and distributing your brochures in a professional format. Our full-color, full-bleed print options in both standard and digest trim sizes give you the choice to create a robust brochure of multiple pages, or something simple and portable, like a four-paged digest handout. Digital distribution options also make it easy to share your brochure digitally to a desktop, laptop, the iPad, or other mobile device.

MagCloud’s ship-to-group feature makes it easy to drop-ship seasonal information or annual brochures to your clients around the world. Or, if you are a small business, its on-demand functionality means that you can distribute individual copies as needed to interested clients, allowing you to maintain a professional appearance without exceeding a limited budget.

Once you have these great logistics and beautiful print quality, the only thing holding you back is content, and design. Here are a few tips for gathering the content you should include in your brochures, and how to effectively assemble it into a professional-looking publication.

Getting Started:

Who are you talking to?

The first thing you need to know is what you want your brochure to accomplish. That ties directly into the target audience and what the message of the brochure will be. Identify your target audience and speak directly to them. Never try to address everyone. Once you know who your audience is, it will be easier to target your messaging and articulate that your product or service is a solution to their needs.

What is your message?

Always include a meaningful headline. Your headline should clearly communicate your main point so that even if the reader reads nothing else, they will understand what you are about.

Tell the whole story in your writing. Be concise, but remember to write your body copy in plain English. Don’t use jargon or industry lingo, instead pretend you’re explaining your message to a friend.

It’s helpful to use succinct, pithy copy. Avoid long sentences. Keep your message to the point. Use subheadings liberally, as they break up long copy and help draw a reader through the text. Ideally, a reader should be able to get a good grasp of your message by reading only the headings and subheadings.

Designing Your Brochure: 

When all of your information is gathered and your writing is done, you can finally get down to the business of designing. You’ll want take into account the basic elements of good design – organization, consistent styling, balance, color, and so on.

Lay out your brochure cleanly and professionally. The design should draw the reader in and ease the process of reading. Remember that erring on the simple side will be easier for your consumer than an over-designed, distracting or hard-to-read brochure.

It’s great to use graphics to provide balance with text, but be sure they are relevant to your content. Use graphics that grab your reader’s attention and underline your message. Whether it’s a picture, logo, or stock image, just be sure it relates to your message and brand.

As with any design there are some things you’ll want to avoid. These include:

  • Avoid over-used typefaces, such as Arial and Helvetica. Read more in our recent blog post.
  • For content type, keep the point size under 12.
  • Don’t use more than three type faces in a brochure.
  • Generally don’t use more than one alignment.

If you feel lost…

Starting from scratch on a brochure can be challenging. Some great resources for design inspiration can come from other designs. Try searching the web for brochures in your industry and see how your design stacks up against the competition. You don’t want to copy someone else’s design, but it’s a great way to get inspired.

Also check out the stock templates available within most design and word-processing software. If you aren’t a super-savvy designer using InDesign or Quark, you’ll be amazed what you can do with Apple iWork Pages, Microsoft Word, and Microsoft Publisher. For those who are confident in their skills with the software, but looking to get a more professional look, you can also investigate altering templates from Stocklayouts or Inkd, just be sure you are ready to tweak these designs as they are not all perfectly sized for output through MagCloud.

Have you published your company’s brochure through MagCloud, or found other great resources for inspiration and design? Please share them in the comments below.

Make a Big Impression in a Smaller Package

Meghan Cordella2 Comments

Continuing our series on publishing your portfolio through MagCloud, today we take a look at a few design ideas for using the new Digest product to present your work in a more compact format. Digest publications provide the same professional image quality and finishing you’ve always gotten with MagCloud, but with a trim size of 5.25″ wide by 8.25″ tall, they take up only about half the space in your bag. Plus with a cheaper price point (16 cents per page) you can stretch your budget a bit further, and get your work into the hands of even more potential customers.

The question is, how to design within this more constrained space and still highlight your work? To help you get started, we’ve listed a few ideas below…

Use Both Pages

Take full advantage of the available space with images of your work spanning both pages, and bleeding off the trim edges. If you are going to be opting for perfect binding and want to place your images across the spine, be sure to check out our tips for designing for perfect binding.

Highlight One Piece of Work Per Page

Place one image per page to create a kind of photobook. This format is particularly conducive to lookbooks for fashion collections, with each page containing one look.

Combine Images and Text Across a Spread

Make a photo of your work the focus of one page, either with a full bleed or as a contained image, and then include descriptive text on the opposing page. This way each spread focuses on one project, combining both imagery and text to tell the story of each piece of work.

Think Outside Portrait Orientation

Until we are able to offer a true landscape product, show off your work in a landscape format by rotating your content 90 degrees, such that the spine of the publication is on the top edge of the page. If you want to add some practically to your portfolio, and ensure it gets kept around for the coming year, use this rotated format to make a mini calendar, with each month highlighting a different piece of past work.

Create a Themed Booklet with a Segment of Your Work

When photographer Trey Hill learned about our new Digest format, he used it to combine a collection of his images into a photo story called Untouchable. These are images that are included as part of his larger 2010 Photography Annual, but the smaller form factor offers a more focused look at the story this series of photos tells. See for yourself how Trey has used this smaller format to tell his photo story: we’re taking 25% off the production costs on all print orders of Untouchable from now until the end of October.

Have you had a chance to experiment with our new Digest format to create your portfolio? Let us know in the comments what your design strategy has been.

Good Things Come In Small Packages: New Digest Size

Patty25 Comments

Many publishers have asked for more product sizes. Well we are happy to announce a new product type called Digest. At 5.5” x 8.5” it’s approximately half the size of our current Standard product, and is available in both perfect bound and saddle stitch versions.

And with a smaller size comes a smaller price point. While there are lots of things that go into creating a high-quality finished publication, another benefit of Digest is that it allows us to reduce our overall production costs, specifically those related to paper and ink.  Those savings help bring our per page cost down to $.16 per page vs. $.20 per page for our larger format. Smaller publications also mean lighter packages, which can reduce shipping rates.

The Digest product offers an overall more compact and affordable publishing solution.

Publishing for Digest is similar to how you publish today you just need to modify your PDF settings for a smaller trim size (5.25 x 8.25).


For step-by-step instructions on how to create your PDF, check out our Getting Started page.

Let us know how you plan to use the new Digest product in the comments section below.