OK Asuka experts. I've been signed up to Asuka for awhile now, but am just getting around to ordering my own album.

I did the album in in design, so I have a pdf. From the looks of it I have to dowload the file checker, and somehow get my pdf's onto their page presets. How to I handle this???

Also I have 25 spreads is this album (50 sides) It seems that what's listed on the asuka site in in increments like 20, 40, 60 sides. Are they telling me I have to wither delete ten sides, or make ten more??

Lastly what book type do you think is best. ie. book bound, stitch bound, book bound ex laminate???

Thanks all

Hey Gavin,

Yeah, you have to either add ten or take ten out. I'd add as it seems that less on each page is better than getting things too crammed full of pics. I think the best thing is to save your InDesign pages as .jpgs if you can. Then open the Asuka page, copy and paste your InDesign .jpg into it and make sure it fits properly on the Asuak page. I use Fotofusion which lets me determine my page size as well as the resolution, which I set to 271 ppi to match the Asuka pages. After you've got all your .jpgs placed onto the Asuka pages, all you have to to is drag that folder of images onto the filechecker icon and it will automatically turn it into a .pdf and check to make sure you have the proper number of pages.

The things I've mentioned are pretty general, but Asuka's website has more detailed instructions.

Let us know how it goes!

EDIT: Forgot to mention, I like the book bound EX best.

I can't believe how inefficient asuka makes this
Thers got to be a way to make the have some sort of speedy workflow?


Swan your an in design guy. Is there a shortcut?

ex laminate is the way to go.

what I did was make my album in photoshop, but to a flush mount standard, then open up a asuka template page, go to file - place, and save. On occassion I had to increase the image size by 1% all around. Pretty easy to batch the job. Not the fastest thing in the world, but it works.

Thanks Cor. I guess I may just have to hassle with it. I just can't for the life of me figure why they make it such a hassle. I would think they'd know that we're a work flow oriented world.

Oh welll

Up until recently they haven't had any competitors for this market and price.

You can't export hi-res jpgs from InDesign - and they won't take an InDesign pdf. From what others have said, you have to save individual pages as EPS, place them in Photoshop, and save as jpgs. An absurd workflow, but it apparently works. Fotofusion is probably a better choice right now - but you'll need to spring for the multi-page version which is overpriced. Photojunction should work too since you can export Photoshop files directly.

And I have a sample of the ex Laminate. They are very nice if you don't mind pages that look and feel like plastic (like paper weight mylar or something). The gloss is super glossy and the matte is extremely matte. I actually prefer regular varnished pages - though the laminates are probably indestructible. Digi-Labs and Illuma do varnished ones, but their covers don't seem to be as nice (particularly on the inside).

indesign cs3 will allow you to export high rez jpegs, so keep that i mind when planning for the future