When building books with ProSelect's Book Builder (Working with Books), it is important to setup and select your final Book Design before you start creating your book because, as you add templates to the book, ProSelect will be automatically resizing and/or reshaping those templates to fit your selected Book Design page size and shape.

By default, ProSelect includes a default book design (called Default Book Design!) which is for a 12"x12" page size composite (or digital) double-sided book. So, unless you select another design, the first book you build will be this size!

Please refer the Books section in the ProSelect Reference Manual (under the Help Menu in ProSelect) for full details on how to setup your book designs.

Setting the Default Book Design

You can drag the position of any Book Design that you have setup in the list in the Edit Book Designs window. You should set the one that you use most often at the top of the list because this one will be the automatically used for any new books.

How Templates are Resized to fit the Book Design

Since the selected Book Design specifies the ultimate shape of each page, all templates that don’t match the same size and shape will be adjusted to fit.

For Composite Books:

Since these are being produced on one piece of paper, they are very flexible as to which type and shape of templates you can use.
The added template will either be:

1. Stretch the Mat & Holes - Stretched vertically or horizontally to fit the book page's shape, OR
2. Fit within and Stretch Mat  - Expanded to fit within the book page’s shape and then the mat size stretched to fill the rest of the page (this may change the size but NOT the shape of the openings).

The first option above is the default setting and is the preferred one to use if your templates contain any openings or graphics that reach the edges of the page. 

You control the "Fitting" behaviour in:

- ProSelect v2012r2 and newer, by using the buttons at the top right corner of the Books bar (Working with Books --> Thumbnail View).

- ProSelect v2012r1, V2011r2, V2011r1 & V4 and older  in the Preferences -> General Settings-> Templates, Layouts & Books -> Book Design Options -> Fit Composite Designs by.

For Traditional Matted Books:

The added template's design size needs to match or fit within the page size of the selected Book Design. If it is smaller than the page size, then the template will be centered on the page and mat size will be increased evenly all around to fill the rest of the page (this won't change the size or shape of the openings). This is providing you are not using Fixed Size Templates.

More can be found on the "Fitting Templates in Books" page in the ProSelect Reference Manual (quick access under the Help menu in ProSelect).

Changing the Book Design after the book has been created.

If a book design is already in use, ProSelect won't let you make any changes to the design. However, you can select another design for the currently select book by simply changing that design in the Thumbnail bar area. See the next section for important information on what can happen when you do this.

If you are making a small change to the current book design such as changing the Page Format from "Composite" to "Traditional Matted Layout" or visa versa, then create the new design by duplicating the current design (under Templates -> Edit Book Designs) and just change the Page Format in the new design. After assigning the new Book Design to the book, if you have already sent the book to Production you will need to

1. Remove Book from production-> Selected book (under Production menu)
2. Send Book to Production -> All pages (under Production menu)

What happens to the Layouts when you change a Book Design

The answer depends on what changes you are making:

• If the overall size of the page is to remain the same, then you can change the book from a "Composite" to a "Traditional Matted Layout" with little impact. Remember though, your original templates may have already been stretched to fit the composite page so you should check that the opening sizes are what you expect.
• If you are just changing the size of the pages in a Composite book, the pages will scale proportionally.
• If you are changing the size and shape of the pages in a Composite book then, depending on your "fitting" setting (see above), this may change all the opening shapes and cropping positions, so depending on the extend of the change, you may need to start the whole design again.
• Changing the size of a Traditionally Matted Book to a larger size and/or shape will center the existing page in the new page size and increase the mat size to fill the page.
• Changing the size of a Traditionally Matted Book to a smaller size will make mess of the layout and is not recommended.