Photobook Editing with Gimp
Once you have all your texts and all your images prepared, you need to edit your book.Here you can find instruction on how to do that, if you choose to use the free software GIMP.
Why using GIMP
There are many options out there for editing photo books. GIMP is my favourite solution for the following reasons:
- It is open source
- Free of cost (no limited use, future subscription or announcements)
- Is at a professional level (you can do everything other professional software does)
- Has a mobile version
Download
For PC:
For mobile/tablet:
Step by step instruction
Tutorial on using GIMP for photo books.
Template
You can download the templates I created here:
- Double page template 16.75 x 8.5 inches
- Single page template 8.5 x 8.5 inches
Binding the pages together
Now, you will probably want to edit your book in several pages. Let's have a look on how to do this.
There are several options.
Option 1: Create individual PDF-files and merge into a single document
This option is the easiest one for inexpert computer users or if you are working from a mobile.
In Gimp you can simply create each page individually and then export them into individual PDF-files.
Step 1: Create your pages one by one as an individual image file (recommended .png or .tiff).
Step 3: Merge all exported PDF-files into one single document with an online merger:
Option 2: Create a single image file and export as a multi-page PDF-document
This second option is a more professional way to do it. It is also more efficient in the long run, but it requires some more steps, which might be new to you.
Step 1: Create your pages one by one as a layer in a single Gimp file (.xcf).
Step 2: Export the whole file as an MNG-file. Find instructions here.
2.1. For this purpose go to: File > Export As… > and select .mng as output format.If you don’t see it on the list just write it manually at the end of your filename. mng is the png animation format (similar to what gif is, but with a much better quality).2.2. Once you press “save”, this will show you a dialog where you will be able to select the properties of the mng to export.Try to guide yourself through the image options and press export.2.3. This will create a MNG-file created ready to be converted into a multi-pages pdf.
Step 3: Convert the MNG-file into a multi-page PDF.
You can do this in two ways.
a.) Convert via command line: Open a terminal, locate the folder where your png-document is and execute: $ convert document_name.mng document_document.pdf
(This option did not work for me in Windows 11 for some reason. As soon as I find out why, I can give further advice on this.)
b.) Convert with free online tool.
There are several tools for this task. I recommend:
Option 3: Slicing an extra-large image into pages
A third option is to create one single image file and split it into several pages. This is especially interesting when your mane background image is based on a map or a single image which you want to show from different angles.
Find further instructions here.
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