Questions on printing photobook

Just a quick post to answer some of the questions from my last post:

macchiato queen asked:

1. For shutterfly printing, does that mean that for single page layout, I should add a white border to the page for Shutterfly to crop away when printing (so that I don't lose the sides)? 2. And for double page, I add a white border to the 3 sides on the "outside" and take 3/8 inch of the other page for the border at the fold?

No I don't add any white borders to the page (whether single page layout or double page layout). I don't think the printing process would be cutting so precisely, so that would pose the risk of having a silver of white border left on the layout. I want my pages to extend all the way to the edge.

If there are items on my layout that are near the edge and I don't want to risk them being cut off, this is what I do. Before I save the jpegs, I select all the layers on my layout except the background paper layer, (ie, all the photos, mats, elements, words, text layers) and edit/transform them a little smaller on the layout, such that they would be still visible after the cutting. The background layer is left intact extending all the way to the edge, so that my page will not have any white border no matter where it is cut.

Here's an example. This page is as it is originally on my photoshop file, it had elements quite near the edge which I did not want to be affected.

Before I load the page onto shutterfly, I had reduced the size of every layer except the background layer, such that the elements are now at least 0.25 inches from the edge.
And here is how the page looked printed!


Wendy has written a wonderful article on The Daily Digi on how to do it, she does a much better job than me! She also has lots of products in her store to resize for printing, which has received great reviews. I wish I know how to do actions like hers, that would save me a tonne of time! So do go check her out.

Shamnalee asked: where do you print your photo books? how do the two page templates work?
Well I printed at Shutterfly.com. For more information on using the two page templates, see this post and this post too. Hope these help!

Thanks Mima and Jenny for sharing where you print, may I ask if your experience is for printing loose pages or binded photo books? Thanks!