The nextONE matted album is a hybrid album where both flush and matted prints are combined in a single album. Finao has specific requirements for this unique matted album, which can be found on their website. When creating your matted album design, be sure to leave enough space between your images and the edge of the page.
Design & Export
Set Background Color
Once your album settings have been determined, you'll need to alter some settings. Your settings menu is the gear icon in the top right. You will need to set your background color to this horrible pink color. Why? Finao chose the least used color in the world and told their mat machines, “hey, when you see this color, cover it with a mat.”
Remember that where you see the pink color, there's going to be a mat. The RGB color code is 255, 0, 255 as shown above for Mac. Press OK to save your changes.
Set Measurements
In the Settings menu again, make the Safe Zone setting 1". Although spreads that are designed as flush mounts will be their regular 3/8" (0.375) Safe zone. This is how much space they need at the edge of the page for a mat. Anything less than 1" may be trimmed or cause a delay when ordering your album.
The Cut Line setting should be 3/8" (0.375). Enter 1" for your Auto Design buffer setting. This setting is a design preference. It's the measurement between the Cut Line and the Safe Zone. When you drag and drop your images onto a spread, this is where it will automatically place your Drop Zone.
Finally, Image Spacing needs to be 1/16" (0.0625) minimum. This is the mat width between your images and can be as large as you want (you're in creative control), but 0.0625 is the minimum.
Click OK to save your changes.
Possibilities
You’ll see in the photos below that images going to the edge of the page look like a flush mount album. Images that do not (ones that are surrounded by pink) are matted images. Pretty cool, huh? You’ll see that embossing is an option around images. This preference is selected during the ordering process on Finao’s website.
Images ©Style & Story Creative
Having Some Fun
Now that the basics are out of the way, we’ll show how our Drop Zone™ specific background colors let you do some fun and creative things.
First, double-click on the edge of the Drop Zone so it collapses down to the edges of the images (e.g. there is no space between the edge of the images and the edge of the Drop Zone).
Use the Drop Zone background color to change the background of the Drop Zone then play with your horizontal and vertical buffer.
Since these images have a white background, the mat for this Drop Zone will be seen as one image and therefore be cut as one opening. You can get very creative with your nextONE matted album spreads using Drop Zones.