My First iBook
Tuesday, January 24, 2012 at 8:06AM Last summer I put together a book using Apple's Aperture professional photo software to show off the result of spending five days shooting the 2011 Indianapolis 500 practices and qualifying. I ordered a hardcover medium sized book to be able to show friends, family, and prospective clients. It cost $75 plus shipping and tax. I'm very proud of the book, yet there are several photos I wish I would have presented a little differently.
Jump forward to last Thursday and Apple's iBooks Author software release. The process of creating a book in Author isn't that much different from doing the same in iPhoto or Aperture. The templates aren't quite as handy for creating a photography book, as Author is trying to make it easy to create text books for schools initially. It doesn't take too much work to modify them and work around some of the shortcomings, which I'm sure will be addressed in future updates. Some of those include not being able to change the page color (you have to add a shape, send it to the background, and lock it), shapes and graphics cannot be used as links, there's no way to add author information unless publishing to the iBookstore, and the formatting of the including widgets are limited.
I set out to transform the printed book I created into an iBook. Staying up late a couple of nights was all the time it took me to create a pretty much 1-to-1 copy of the printed book. After downloading and looking through a couple sample textbooks from the iBookstore, I realized I could do a lot better. Electronic books have much more potential than sitting statically on the page. A couple more late nights provided all the time that was needed to make the majority of the photos tappable, which opens them full screen. That's how a photograph book should be. I filled out a glossary for the drivers that have their name in the book (there's no way to link a glossary "term" to a photo in the book unfortunately) with an unique photo I had taken. I added a short video shot with my iPhone trackside showing the cars zipping by at 225 miles per hour - getting to the speed and movement first hand and hear them is something a traditional book cannot offer. I also used one of the included widgets to create a multiple choice quiz that challenges readers to name the owner of the helmet shown. This was incredibly easy to build and should pull readers into the book even more. There's also a page of links to the internet for Indianapolis 500 based links - buy your tickets, see the track map, and read the latest news, as well as links to their Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube pages.
My time the past half week spent using iBooks Author was one of much more fun than frustration. This is a tool most anyone should be able to learn and use fairly quickly. The possibilities are endless - think of interactive manuals, company handbooks, text books for schools, photogrpahy books, and behind-the-scenes movie books.
Download my 2011 Indianapolis 500 photo book, take a look, and let me know what you think, either in the comments here or via email. I'd love to hear your feedback, not only on the photography, the book experience as well.
The link will download a zip file. Unzip it (it should automatically if you're on a Mac) and drag the .ibooks file to iTunes. Make sure you have the newest version of iBooks on your iPad - you can get it here if you haven't already. The drag the book from the Books section of your iTunes library to your iPad (the books only work on iPads, not iPhones, for now).
If you don't have an iPad, I exported a PDF version from iBooks Author for you. I'm not crazy about it, for several reasons. I'll make a PDF version of my original printed photo book available here soon.
Rob |
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