Shutterfly sizing question

[Aelwyd]

This is my first post here, so let me know if I've put this in the wrong spot!

I just received my first shutterfly book, and I'm not happy with it. I used their templates, so the sizing should have been fine. But the book cut off the bottom of my pages, and lots of the pictures and journaling was lost in the binding. It was just the bottom that was cut off, the images weren't evenly spaced on the pages. I let shutterfly know I wasn't happy, and they've credited me with a replacement book (amazing!).

I don't want to get this wrong again, so I'm wondering if I should just resize all my pages to 7.75, since according to them that's the size of the image that will show up. Or if I should resize to 7.75 and put a border around it to make the page 7.95?

When I upload the pages resized to 7.75 to shutterfly, it looks just fine. But I'm wondering if I should move everything over to the far edges and leave lots of space in the middle where the book will be bound? That looks weird when I look at shutterfly's preview. But my original book looked just fine in their preview, so I'm not sure I trust their preview anymore.

Help! This is a gift for my mom, and I want it to be really nice.

[dugarner]

I think they say 1/8 inch trim all around, but I always leave 1/4 inch without important details. The uneven spacing on the pages sounds like a printing problem. As for the gutter (the space in the binding), 1/4" will be lost. I've never printed a book thicker than 60 pages, so I don't know if more is lost with thicker books or not. But I always leave the right 1/4" on my left pages and the left 1/4" on my right pages without any detail that I don't mind losing. I do two-page layouts and always add guidelines at 11 3/4 and 12 1/2 inches so I know where I am when I'm creating a page.

If it looked right in preview, it probably was a problem with that batch when they printed. But the preview does not show you what's "lost" in the gutter, so you have to keep that in mind when you're looking at the preview.

I'm glad they gave you credit---they have amazing customer service. I don't know what cause the unevenness, though. I hope you get it figured it out!

[anxela]

sorry, didn's see your reply before I posted. Hence the deletion of my message

[dugarner]

Originally Posted by anxela

sorry, didn's see your reply before I posted. Hence the deletion of my message

You didn't need to delete it---we may have been simul-typing. And I don't know if what I'm saying is always the right thing. I don't want to be a "I do it this way, so it's the right way" person. Do you have any other tips or tricks that you use?

[Aelwyd]

Thank you! That's exactly what I needed to know. I'm just nervous because my first try turned out so badly. I can see now after looking at it more carefully that's it's a printing error. I'm relieved they credited my account for a new one.

Thanks for the help.