4. Spreads: A spread is two pages side-by-side. A designer sees two pages as one environment. Therefore, Gary's Actions set up your pages as spreads, and the books we print for you through Cornerstone Albums allow the images to beautifully spread across the page gutter (the split in the middle). This is good news for you: The bride and groom kissing can span the whole spread and you don't lose any of the image in the book fold. You'll begin to appreciate this feature the more you design! One thing to note: Usually books start with Page 1 on the right. Therefore, your first spread might just be half of a spread. If you want the opening spread to span two pages, just start with a blank page for page 1 (but you still have to pay for it even though it's blank). Same goes for the last page of your book, except it will be on the left. Confused? Go pick up any book and you'll see. The inside front cover is followed by a right-hand page.

Advanced info about spreads: The way the book is printed and bound requires the pages to be printed out of order. Therefore, after you design the book as a reader would see it in spreads, our free actions will create split pages (left and right hand pages) that will make the printing easy and fast. When you have completed your design and have your client's approval to print the book, you'll run Gary's Split action (see preparing your files). It saves you money by doing a little of the prep work yourself. It will split your pages into right and left single pages. So don't be alarmed when you create your book as spreads but the see the final pages as singles. For anyone who likes lingo, you are converting your "reader spreads" (the way a reader sees them) into files that the printer will put into another order called "printer spreads." You'll have pages that are numbered 1, 2, 3, 4, and the printer will make sure the final book reads in the order you envisioned to begin with.

5. Bleed: It sounds worse than it is. A bleed is when the image or design goes to the edge of the page. It's a nice effect, to have ink go to the corners of the book. Here's a secret on how it's done: The image really doesn't print off the edge of the page. That would make a mess! What happens is the book is printed on bigger paper. Then the printer cuts the paper down to the edge of the image. Why do you care? Because you will lose a tiny bit of your image in the cutting process. Therefore, the images that bleed should not have critical detail right at the edge of the paper because it will get chopped off! It is approximately 1/8" that gets cut off. You don't have to do anything different in creating your bleed pages. Just position your images so they touch the edge of the page and Cornerstone will cut the book to final size. In case you wondered, all books are printed on a little larger paper than the final, and trimmed down for that nice, uniform look. So go ahead, bleed away!