THE PORTRAIT SESSION STYLE GUIDE

INSTRUCTION MANUAL 1.0

INTRODUCTION

Congratulations!

You’re the owner of your very own Portrait Session Style Guide! We’re so excited for you to start sending
your new guide to your clients and start seeing immediate results! We’ve created this instruction manual to
make your process as easy as possible, so make sure to take the time to read through it before you get
started.

Included in your purchase is a text-only document of the exact wording in our Portrait Session Style Guide.
The reason we’ve included a text-only document is we want you to be able to get immediate results! Don’t
wait until you’ve finished your magazine layout to reap the benefits. Start emailing the text to your clients to
prepare them for their portrait session right now. That’s what we did. All of the photos you see in our guide
were the direct result of us emailing our clients these words without any magazine layouts or example
photographs. Every client you see in our magazine didn’t get to see anything but the text in an email before
their session, and we couldn’t be happier with the results. So what we’re saying is the actual magazine layout
is a great long-term goal and also a total bonus!
 3 STEPS TO
GETTING THE MOST
OUT OF YOUR GUIDE

1. Email

Don’t wait another minute! Copy and paste our text (editing the parts specific to
your business, like location, travel fees, etc.) into an email that you can send tonight
to your clients. You will start noticing an improvement right away!

2. Shoot

Now that your clients are arriving to sessions bringing their style A-game, shoot
your new portrait sessions while keeping your future magazine layout version in
mind. Start to create a collection of images you can use in your magazine. Think
about shooting both vertical and horizontal images with negative space for layout
purposes, and close-up detail shots as well.

If you don’t have a real portrait session scheduled for a while, set up a styled
portrait shoot, and send your models the text of this guide. You could even set up
two or three portrait stylized sessions back-to-back with different friends to get a
variety of looks in a short period of time.

3. Build

Now that you have a collection of images you’ve taken for the magazine, start
customizing your guide. The layout only works in Adobe InDesign, which is a paid
software program, so make sure you download that before you get started.
Currently, Adobe allows a free trial of their software, so that would be a great no-
cost option for you! Just make sure your images are already selected and ready to
go to make this process quicker.

If you aren’t familiar with how InDesign works, we’ve included links to online
tutorials in this manual, as well as lots of notes and tips written in the margins of the
InDesign file. This third step will take the most time, but will be so worth it when it’s
finished! The rest of this instruction manual is dedicated to helping you customize
your magazine layout.
 FONTS
By law, we are not allowed to distribute the fonts in your package. As much as we wish we could,
it’s illegal! So before you open the InDesign file for the first time, you’ll need to download the free
fonts we used on your own and install them onto your computer. If you don’t do this, InDesign will
give you error messages, warn you fonts are missing and replacing them with other fonts could
make it look like, at first glance, that there is no text in your document. To avoid all of this,
download these three fonts before you ever open your InDesign file. You can download these
fonts for free by typing the name of the font into Google, or by using the links we provided below.

Fonts to Download

1. Open Sans

* You will need “Open Sans Light” and “Open Sans Italic.” Both are included with this link.

Link: http://www.1001fonts.com/open-sans-font.html

2. Minion Pro Regular

* You will need both “Minion Pro Regular” and “Minion Pro Italic.”

Link: http://fontsgeek.com/fonts/Minion-Pro-Regular
http://fontsgeek.com/fonts/Minion-Pro-Italic

3. Bickham Script Pro

Link: http://fontsgeek.com/fonts/Bickham-Script-Pro-Regular

Remember, once you download the fonts, you still need to install them. On a Mac, double-click the
font file and then click the “install font” button on the bottom right. If you’re using Windows, use the
instructions found here: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-vista/install-or-uninstall-
fonts.
 INDESIGN BASICS
Here are a few quick links to help guide you through InDesign:

Adobe’s InDesign Tutorials

Tutorial Video: 10 Things Beginners Want to Know - How to Get Started with Adobe InDesign

SWAPPING PHOTOS

Higher Quality

You will notice when first opening your Portrait Session Style Guide that the images look very pixelated. That
is a default setting used by InDesign to keep the program running quickly. To view the images in a better
quality, just click: View> Display Performance> High Quality Display.

Placeholders

Remember, the images in this guide are just here for you as placeholders. They are low resolution and will
not print properly. Our images are protected under copyright law and are not meant for printing, posting or
distributing. Stealing makes us sad. Plus, your clients are going to want to see YOUR work, not ours! Before
printing your style guide, make sure you replace our images with images of your own.

Links & Folders

InDesign considers each image a “link.” The images themselves are not actually placed within the style
guide. Instead, InDesign links to the location they are stored on your computer. It is critical before you start
designing your style guide to create a folder that will contain all of the images and graphics you will use in
your style guide. Once that folder of your images has been created, it should not be moved for the life of
your document.

Our system for organizing our InDesign documents has served us well. Maybe you will find it helpful! We
have created a main folder within our document folder that contains separate folders for each InDesign
document we have created. Within each of those folders are all of the elements needed for a particular
document, including fonts, graphics and images.

Frames

In InDesign, images are always placed within a frame, which is noted by a thin blue line. When swapping out
our images for your own images, make sure to use high-resolution images. Simply find a blue frame on a
spread. Make sure you are using the ‘select tool’ by clicking on the arrow at the very top of the toolbar on
the left-hand side of the InDesign interface. With the select tool, double-click within a blue frame and you will
see orange-colored lines appear. Those orange lines indicate the borders of the image you clicked on. Once
you see those orange lines, simply click the Command+D. Then navigate to the image you would like to use
and click open. It will automatically change the image for you. When our photo is selected, you can also
drag and drop your photo on top of ours, and it will replace it.

If you need to move the image within a frame, double click the image using the select tool as before, and a
hand will appear in place of the cursor. Click and drag the image to where you would like it within the blue
frame. If you need to re-size an image within the blue frame, double-click the image, using the select tool.
You will notice anchors (little white boxes) in each of the corners of the orange lines around your image.
When you hover over one of those boxes, your cursor turns into a double-sided arrow. Holding down the
shift key, click and drag the corner of the orange box to resize your image without any distortion.
 GUIDELINES

Red Lines
These are bleed lines. Anything you want to go to the very end of a page on your document must be up to
or outside this red line.

Black Lines
This is the cut line. It is actually where the printer will cut your style guide.

Pink & Purple Lines

These are safe guide lines. Keep all critical content within these lines.

Blue Lines
These indicate either text frames or frames to place an image.

View Mode:
The preview mode shows you exactly what your style guide will look like when printed. The short cut to
switch between normal and preview modes is to hit the ‘W’ key while your select tool is active. The select
tool is the arrow at the very top of the vertical toolbar.

DESIGN TIPS AND NOTES

We’ve built some design tips and notes directly into your InDesign document that are off to the side of the
document in the margins (far outside the printing zone). If you don’t see them immediately when you open
the document, just make sure you’re in “Normal View” to see them. To get to “Normal View” go to View <
Screen mode < Normal. Once you have done this, all of the tips, tricks, and helpful hints will appear along
the sides of the style guide. Don’t worry about deleting them before you print your style guide as they are
outside of the print lines and will not be printed.
 PRINTING

We print our style guides using MagCloud. The layout we provided is the exact one we upload to
MagCloud for printing, but you can absolutely print your magazine however you’d like. Just make sure to
follow your printing company’s printing instructions.

We recommend printing one magazine before ordering an entire batch, so you can look over a printed
copy, proofread and make any changes before ordering a large set. We order their standard product with
perfect binding. Again, feel free to print elsewhere! We’ve just loved the quality of our magazines through
MagCloud!

Wherever you choose to print, just make sure to carefully follow their instructions for optimal printing
results! And then you’re ready to order!

We can’t wait for you to get your guide in your clients’ hands! We’re cheering for you!