Album specs

Short list

  • you must design your albums in separate software, we recommend SmartAlbums, AlbumStomp or Fundy

  • album opens with double page spread

  • bleed is 3mm / .118inches

  • safe zone of 10mm (PLUS the 3mm bleed) all the way around spread

  • upload .jpg spread files into Roes ordering software

  • can use any software to design your layout

  • design cannot be done in our Roes ordering software

Close-up of a photo album open to pages with two blurry photographs of children, resting on a beige textured surface.

Folds

We recommend never designing albums with dark images running over the fold in the page. This is a weak point in all books and albums and effects the print quality on all books to some degree. These issues are detailed on the individual product pages.

Software

We do not offer our own software but many of our clients use Photoshop, InDesign, SmartAlbums, Fundy, ProSelect and so on. Anything that can make jpg files is fine. You can find our specs in SmartAlbums so far and we are adding them to others.

Sharpening

We recommend all sharpening preferences in whatever album design software you use, are turned off. If you go into your preferences in SmartAlbums under Image Quality, you will find their sharpening preferences. Please switch this to off. We find the sharpening in these softwares to be far too heavy.

Important things

File types

We require jpg files with a resolution of 250 - 300dpi. 

Covers

Our covers are hand made and can be made with a range of materials, leather etc. or with a photographic cover. The files you need to make a cover design will need to be sent to you once you have selected the size and also the exact number of pages.

Paper options

We offer silver halide photographic paper, matte art paper or fine art paper. We also offer torn edges - please design your layouts with no images running off the edge for these.

Safe zones

When you're designing your album please make sure your images are AT LEAST 10mm away from the edge of the page, PLUS 3mm bleed after that. 13mm total if you open the finished file. Unless you want them to bleed all the way off the edge of the page.

That means you need to have a file that has 3mm bleed, then another 10mm white, then your image. If you have very fine white borders around your pages they may look uneven when the book it trimmed. It's impossible to have the album put together exactly to the fraction of a mm. We will always have a bit of shift in the pages and when you have a very fine white line on the edge of the page it's a problem.

If ordering a parent album with your master album, your safe zones need to compensate for the scaling down of your spreads. We recommend a 16mm minimum plus 3mm bleed.

Bleed

Bleed is the amount of page that is trimmed off to neaten up a book at the end of production. Bleed for us is 3mm or .118 inches all around. In order to make your image run off the page, it must fill the bleed area as well, and it will then be cut off. This is hard for photographers as we are used to having our images be printed exactly to size and nothing trimmed off. 

Important; we take the bleed from the sizes listed below. So if it's an 8 x 8 album, the bleed is 3 mm or .118 inch all around the edges of the print and that comes off the 8 inch. So size your double page spread size WITH bleed is 8 x 16 inches, after the bleed has been cut off is 7.764 tall by 15.764 wide. 

Close-up of white cardboard box with partially visible photograph inside, seen from above, in black and white.

Translucent pages

We offer lovely translucent pages placed over any page of an album. Most people put them on the first page (right hand spread) as a kind of introductory page with the details of the wedding etc on it. 

We recommend a white border on the page you want to translucent page to go over. If you want it on your opening page we recommend you have a blank left hand page and then an image with a white border on the right. See the images.

The sheet of translucent page is adhered to the album at the spine with a very small line of tape. If this tape is stuck on to a printed image area then it will show the image through the translucent page. Click to enlarge images below.

Portrait albums

We used to offer a wide rang of portrait proportion albums. Sadly the printer that was making these died after 25 years of labour. Paul was devastated. We now only offer a small range of sizes in portrait proportions. See below

Master Fine Art

  • 14 x 11 and 16 x 12

Matte Art

  • 8 x 10.6, 6 x 8, 5 x 7

Traditional Photographic

  • 8 x 10.6, 6 x 8, 5 x 7