With the Bob Assistant, you can create your photobook with relatively little effort.
You can turn off the Assistant at any time by clicking on "Create without the assistant".
To use the Assistant:
On the left-hand side of the Bob Assistant, you will find a button with which you can select photo directories. A directory tree will open.
You can filter your images by using the 'View' tool or arranging them by date/time or file name (alphabetically).
If you would like to select all the photos in the selected directory, drag the directory from the file tree into the workspace.
Any sub-directories will not be transferred automatically; these have to be dragged separately into the workspace.
You can remove individual photos from your selection at a later stage.
Or you can highlight the desired directory (the photos are displayed on the left as thumbnails) and close the file selection.
Then drag the required photos individually into the Assistant workspace. They will be pasted into and displayed in this section.
You can select several photos and/or directories and paste them at the same time, or drag them at the same time.
If you choose to sort your photos by time, they will be merged in groups according to chronological periods and distributed across the photo book pages.
Sorting by file name is suitable for photos that are well pre-sorted on the hard drive or for pictures that have not been taken with a digital camera (scanned in, from an image CD etc., i.e. basically analogue photos that have been digitalised somehow).
The grouping and sorting takes place alphabetically based firstly on the directory name and secondly on the file name.
Sorting by file name enables you to influence and specify the order and distribution of the photos on the pages in advance by means of number prefixes in the names of the folders and photos.
You can create subfolders in every folder. In doing so, the numbering can restart from the beginning.
Tip: Imagine you have a directory called "France" containing the photos "img1004", "img1005" and "img1006" If you would like to sort the directories (and thus the photo groups) in a different order, because you were in France before you were in Asia, then rename the directories by using a number prefix, e.g. "1France" and "2Asia". Photos from higher level folders will come before photos from subfolders.
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The workspace with the selected photos contains zoom buttons to enlarge / reduce the preview images.
You can use the "little stars" to limit the selection of photos based on their rating.
Click on the "Create Now" button and the Bob Assistant is activated and automatically adds the photos, page layouts and backgrounds to the photo book.
You can then adjust your photobook according to your wishes. You will learn how to do this in the chapter entitled "The photobook".
The Bob Assistant is an application that helps you create a photo book quickly and automatically. As a result, you will have limited control over the way the photo book looks and the distribution of the photos, and it is possible the result is not how you expected or how you would like. Therefore, the photo book often needs to be checked manually. Everything can be manually altered later: the order of the pages, the page layout of the pages, the backgrounds, the photos. Consider the pages created by the Bob Assistant as a suggestion and outline, and identify what you can work with.
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