2) Flat Planning with Auto-Publish
With Auto-Publish set up in MagManager you can now start working on your Flatplan and the artwork on it.
2.1) Managing Artwork on your flatplan
To start managing your artwork on the flat plan, go to any of your pages and click on the page number, a pop-up window will display named ‘Layout’.
In this example you need to click on the number 5.
NOTE: that the layout option will not appear if the page doesn’t have any artwork on it.
For the next section of the help guide it is worth noting the number of items in the grid that is displayed on the page. In the example above there are 16 items in the grid (4x4).
THIS IS IMPORTANT. You can find more details about choosing layouts in section 5.
2.2) Pop up Layout Screen
This popup is a bit daunting at first, but it’s actually much simpler than it appears.
Across the top:
Download - downloads a pdf of the page to your device.
Preview with trim - displays the page onscreen with the green trimbox to identify where the page will be trimmed.
Preview - displays the page onscreen without the green trimbox.
Edit - allows you to edit the position of the adverts on the page - useful if you are using a page background and for the AutoPublish index page if you also have adverts on there. Click on the advert, then drag and drop it into position and click save.
Layout Drop-Down
This relates to the IMPORTANT note mentioned in 2.1. The Layout is set to a 16 Grid. This means that this particular page of your magazine will work with ANY mix of adverts that fit into the 16 grid. The 16 grid is by far the most common grid in use, but if your page is using a different grid, just select it from the drop down. Your magazine will have a default grid, but you can set a different grid for every page if you want to.
Override Advert/Content Artwork
Toggle this switch to green to switch it on. If you wish to upload a full page of finished artwork to override the existing artwork for each client. Eg you’re running a Christmas Feature with the adverts incorporated into the design of the page rather than using the individual adverts.
Upload Artwork Button – This Will Appear When The Override Advert/Content Artwork is Switched On
Let’s say you’ve sold a half page advert with a half page editorial. Your flatplan will show half a page of content and half a page advert. It is not uncommon for designers to design both the editorial and the advert. They then supply a page of finished artwork. So rather than having to split up the designer’s creation into 2 half pages, you can just upload finished artwork for that page of your publication. If you do this, padlocks will appear on the flatplan preventing you moving it.
Margins – Top/Bottom Inside/Outside
You can set both the inside and outside margins of the page. Reminder – inside is the margin closest to the spine and outside is the margin closest to the edge that you will use to thumb through the publication.
Top and bottom margins are distances from the top or bottom of the page respectively.
Horizontal & Vertical Spacing
These settings alter the white space that auto-publish will automatically put between your artwork. Publications look better when the spacing is consistent across all pages and if both horizontal and vertical spacing is the same. Computers are much better than humans at getting this consistently correct and is the biggest reason that auto-published magazines look tidier
Auto-Bleed
If you’ve been supplied artwork that is the right shape to cover a full page in your publication, but it has no bleed on it, auto-publish can automatically resize the artwork to bleed off the page. See Section 2.4 for how to use auto-bleed.
Aspect Ratio Tolerance
MagManager will automatically allow a 10% tolerance to re-size adverts to fit the space – anything over this and a warning will appear advising of the difference. You can choose to increase the tolerance by entering a higher number in the box. However, this will likely result in the advert being stretched or compacted.
Left / Right Master Page
If you have master pages set up they will be available for selection from the drop down box. An example of a master page is a template with a coloured border to indicate a section in your magazine – this could be green on all the pages relevant to the home & garden section and blue on all the pages relevant to local trades.
Show Footer
By default, the footer will contain the folio (page number) and your footer text but you can change that on a per page basis if you want to in this section.
YOUR DEFAULT PAGE LAYOUT IS APPLIED TO ALL PAGES. SEE 5.1 and 5.2 FOR DETAILS ON HOW TO CHANGE YOUR DEFAULT FOOTER
Changing the footer section on an individual page will override your default settings. Clicking the ‘show footer’ checkbox will either add or remove the footer from this page of the publication and show/hide the additional options.
The additional options include the font, the font size, the position of where the footer will appear, the margin settings here relate to the position of the footer text from the edge of the page, the left and right text settings allow you to modify the footer text appearing on the left facing page and right facing page and the colour allows you to change the colour of the footer text.
Layout Complete
Toggle this switch to green to switch it on and mark the page as complete. All pages marked as complete on your flatplan will have an orange border around it. Marking the page as complete starts the process of MagManager creating a digital edition of your publication, which you can link on your website or share with clients and potential clients.
2.3) Buttons at the bottom of the layout page
Reset: Pressing this button will reset the settings back to the defaults defined by the page layout selected.
Save: Saves any changes you have made to the layout for this page.
Download: Creates a print ready PDF of this page and downloads it to your computer. You will find it saved in your Downloads folder.
Preview with trim: Creates a PDF with crop marks and a visible trim box (in green). This allows you to quickly see the edge of the printed page and where your printers will trim up to. If artwork falls outside of the trim area, then you should consider modifying the artwork.
TIP: The Preview with trim is the MOST useful function on this page as it allows you to check what your page is going to look like BEFORE you print it.
An example of a page set to preview with trim is shown below:
Preview: The same as ‘Preview with trim’ but the trim box is not displayed. See below:
2.4) When to switch on Auto Bleed
You should only use ‘Auto Bleed’ for full page or double page adverts.
In the 2 examples below we have auto bleed switched on and off. To make a decision on whether to use Auto Bleed, switch it on for your advert and then click on ‘Preview with Trim’ this will enable you to see if it will work for this particular artwork.
NOTE: if you do use auto-bleed make sure you switch off the footer as you probably won’t want to see the footer over an advert with bleed.
The advert on the left is with auto-bleed switched OFF, the one on the right has it switched ON.
When switching auto-bleed ON, be careful to ensure that any artwork elements do not get too close to the trim box (green box above). Printers will generally respect your trim box, but artwork that gets too close may be trimmed.
2.5) Double Page Settings
Auto-publish can handle artwork that is uploaded as a complete double page spread. You will note that 2 additional check boxes appear when you upload a piece of artwork that is set as double page (see below).
In most cases the artwork will be supplied as completed artwork so you should make sure that. ‘Crop Marks’ and ‘Has Bleed’ are selected. These now display as a toggle switch which you click to turn on and off, green indicates that it is switched on and grey indicates that it is switched off.
2.6) Resize artwork and remove crop marks
Auto-Publish can resize adverts for you.
When an advert is the wrong size but is the correct aspect ratio, for example a ½ page advert that is supplied too small or slightly too big, Auto-Publish will automatically resize this advert when you create your PDF. Use the ‘preview’ or ‘preview with trim’ feature from the layout menu (click the page number on the flatplan) to check that resizing does not have major detrimental effects on either resolution or artwork.
If you have an advert supplied with crop marks, Auto-Publish can remove these for you providing that the artwork supplied is a PDF file AND that it contains a trim box. The default settings for major software providers will create a trim box within the artwork. If the artwork does NOT have a trim box (you will know if auto-crop fails), you will have to manually remove the crop marks in a desktop publisher or other suitable software.
Example of artwork uploaded with crop marks:
Artwork after ‘Auto Crop’ has been applied:
Once you have applied auto-crop to artwork, use the ‘preview’ or ‘preview with trim’ feature from the layout menu (click on the page number in the flatplan) to check that the artwork appears as you expect it to appear.
2.7) In Index
The ‘In Index’ toggle switch is used to identify adverts that you want to appear in the Advertiser Index that MagManager automatically creates. The toggle switch has a default setting of on and will be green. If you click the toggle switch it will turn off and appear grey. The advert will NOT appear in the Advertiser Index.
2.8) Check Colour Space
In the image above you will see the ‘Check Colour Space’ button to the bottom left. Clicking this button will perform a preflight check of the artwork. If the Ninja detects any RGB colours a warning will display across the top and a warning triangle will appear in the check colour space button – see below:
This is an advisory message - it's a checking feature in MagManger. It simply flags up the issue so that you can make the necessary changes, should your printer NOT accept files with RGB colour in them. Our printer will convert any RGB colours but there are some who will not.
