Spine Placement

Obverse_Books · March 2018

Just wondering if there's something obvious I'm missing but is there any way fo visually checking the placement of oyur spin on a full wrapround cover other than blowing up the tiny image you get on thefinal revision check for paperbacks?

Downloading the cove ris no use since there are no guidelines in place for the spine and I find that even if I exactly follow the measurements supplied on the wizard the spine is often a mm or two out.

Just Kevin · March 2018

Tiny image? The PR PDF one can view is not tiny. But can I ask why you are using the Advanced One-Piece Cover Wizard in the first place?

Em_Press · March 2018

Make yourself a cover template using the old cover designer. Add gallery plain colour background to distinguish the spine. Download, open in photo editor, place your cover over it as alayer, reduce opacity to see your spine against the template. Resize, reupload.

Paul_Lulu · March 2018

@Em_Press offers the best work-around currently.
For our part, we're developing a "book-view" tool that does let you review the book in your browser with trim/bleed marks.
If you want to have a look at it, we're using it on our Lulu xPress site at the moment. Just create a project and add a cover or use one of our templates, and the final step before finishing your book will be the viewer (you don't have to buy anything to view this).
Sometime in the not-to-distant future this should become a standard feature of the Lulu wizard.

Just Kevin · March 2018

The actual dimensions of those fold/trim etc., marks would also be useful. Not to mention why there may be or not be a reason for using the Advanced Cover Wizard in the first place.

Em_Press · March 2018

I like your signature, Kevin. It cheers me up.

Obverse_Books · May 2018

Just Kevin said:

Tiny image? The PR PDF one can view is not tiny. But can I ask why you are using the Advanced One-Piece Cover Wizard in the first place?

The PDF view does not contain any guideline for where the spin will end up on the finished book. ASnd I'm using the One Piece Cover Designer because I want professional covers, and the other Lulu design options for covers don't offer that, imo.

Obverse_Books · May 2018

Just Kevin said:

The actual dimensions of those fold/trim etc., marks would also be useful. Not to mention why there may be or not be a reason for using the Advanced Cover Wizard in the first place.

I'm not sure why the actual dimensions matter - my point is that there is no way to tell if the spine is in the exact right position save for ordering a copy of the book. But thanks for the attempt to help, anyway.

john_m_haines_books · May 2018

What Em said a while back really does work, use the old system to create a 2 or 3 plain coloured cover file (at the very least 2 colours, ensuring you fill in the spine area with a different colour from the front and back sections). However, and perhaps this is what the problem has been: instead of plonking your own single cover file onto the one from Lulu - (I can see why you say you can't identify the sections when you do this / if you did this), instead you'll need to be able to create your own separate front cover, spine and back cover images in your graphics prog; these then get pasted on one at a time to the complete cover file you will have downloaded from Lulu, onto their relevant sections, using the grab-handles or onscreen resizers / shifters to fine tune and paste and save correctly. As it's a Lulu generated file, you can be confident that all 3 sections are correct, although do ensure your own book file is the correct dimensions, matching the book size you want, and take on board if you revise and this results in an altered page count or different book size,, then all sizings are then out and you would have to start over on the cover file. Hope this helps. Best of luck.

Just Kevin · May 2018

The PDF view does not contain any guideline for where the spin will end up on the finished book. ASnd I'm using the One Piece Cover Designer because I want professional covers, and the other Lulu design options for covers don't offer that, imo.

You can create 'professional' covers in whatever Cover Wizard you use. It's not the tool that creates them, it's the designer. The only real advantage to using the one-piece wizard is if you want a logo on the spine (if there is room) or a dustjacket. I use the 'New' Cover Designer by pasting a full image for the front and a full one for the back and matching the spine colour. I don't have to worry about where the spine's edges fall exactly because I stay away from them.

john_m_haines_books · May 2018

That aspect is created by the member after creating a basic cover which can show the sections if you use plain colours, differentiating between the covers, and the spine. I've often done this, and where,.say, the red coloured back cover meets the yellow coloured spine, you know that that is the border between the back cover and the spine, and then where the yellow meets the red again, or whatever you've used for the front cover, that's the border between the spine and the front cover. It is as reliable as it can be, but of course, and I certainly don't want to go down this route again, there is the allowable shift, but, after many years on Lulu, I have only come unstuck once when the spine was a few points out yet I had to accept it as it was within the industry's accepted tolerance.

Just Kevin · May 2018

As I say, it's best to stay away from any edges with images etc., then any differential in what you are expecting and the actual print does not matter much. Just have the spine the same colour as the 'borders' of your images. As per so >> https://www.lulu.com/shop/search.ep?keyWords=kevin+lomas&categoryId=200647

Obverse_Books · May 2018

Paul_Lulu said:

@Em_Press offers the best work-around currently.
For our part, we're developing a "book-view" tool that does let you review the book in your browser with trim/bleed marks.
If you want to have a look at it, we're using it on our Lulu xPress site at the moment. Just create a project and add a cover or use one of our templates, and the final step before finishing your book will be the viewer (you don't have to buy anything to view this).
Sometime in the not-to-distant future this should become a standard feature of the Lulu wizard.

Excellent news! I'm pretty surprised it's not standard already!

Spine Placement

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