Atticus and Book Brush Integration

Welcome back to the Atticus training zone where you learn how to best use this professional software as efficiently as possible to format your books for publication. 

In this tutorial, we’re going to introduce you to the integration with Book Brush that can make adding personal, customized design touches to your book, easier than ever. 

Adding Images in Atticus

Within Atticus, there are a variety of ways you can incorporate images and design elements into your book. For example, you can:

• Create a custom chapter header design, either as a background image or an image element
• Use unique, individual images throughout the chapter headers of your book
• Add personalized ornamental breaks to separate the scenes within your chapters
• Design full page images, with bleed, to add to the beginning or ending of your chapters, or within your front and back matter
• Add images within the content of your book

Atticus has integrated with Book Brush to make creating custom images easier than ever. 

How to Use Book Brush with Atticus

In various locations, wherever it’s applicable, you’ll find this brightly colored Book Brush icon. If you click on this button, or any like it within Atticus, you’ll get a pop-up that says:

Book Brush and Atticus have teamed up to make creating custom images for formatting that much easier.

Click below to create a free Book Brush account (15 image downloads included) and create custom ornamental breaks or chapter theme images using Atticus specific settings.

There’s one more button to press that will take you to the Book Brush site. 

Your Book Brush Account

If you’re brand new to Book Brush, you can fill in the form to register for a free account. You’ll be gifted with 15 free downloads that you can use to create custom images for your book. 

If you’ve used Book Brush before, you can login here. 

Book Brush is a design software that is built specifically for authors, and there are many extremely exciting features that we encourage you to explore, but for the purposes of this tutorial, we’re going to focus on how Book Brush has made it easy for you to generate perfectly sized images for your Atticus formatted book. 

Create Custom Images

Now that you’re inside, click on the Custom Creator button in the tool selection menu. 

In the left navigation panel you’ll find access to a variety of pre-sized templates for all your social media and book creation needs. One of the icons should be very familiar to you by now – that’s right, here’s Atticus’s happy little doggo face!

If you click on the Atticus icon, you’ll see that Book Brush has pre-sized various canvas elements, depending on your needs within Atticus. 

You can select a single page image that matches the trim size of your book here, and use this either as a Full Page image or a background image for the first page of your chapter in a Print book. 

If you’re creating a 2 page spread, you can again choose the trim size of your book here, and Book Brush will set up the board to the perfect size for you. You can design a cohesive two page spread that, when you’re ready to download, Book Brush will efficiently split into two images for you to import into Atticus separately that will match up perfectly!

Unless you have a specific aesthetic reason for wanting margins surrounding your images, you’ll usually want to select “with Bleed” option to ensure your images extend to the very edges of your printed books. 

You can also create an Image element for your chapter headers, or an ornamental break in two sizes to add personalized design to your scenes.

Add your Own Images

If you have images that have already been designed for your book but aren’t quite the right size, you can upload them into Book Brush and click to insert them onto the pre-sized layout. You can then adjust the image how you like it and download it knowing it will import at the right size for formatting within Atticus. 

Using Community Templates

If you’re starting from scratch and this blank canvas is intimidating you, Book Brush has a gallery of images that you can use. Simply click Community Templates from the top of the left navigation panel, open the drop down menu to select the platform, and scroll to the bottom where you’ll find Atticus, the newest addition!

Immediately you’ll see their fantastic designers have created a collection of images that you can use for page backgrounds, image elements, or ornamental breaks. Click the one you like best and choose the size you need it to be. 

You can resize the image, rotate it, and double click to discover even more options. 

Create Images within Book Brush

If none of the community template designs are right for your book, you can find even more graphic elements to create your own design within the app. 

Click Images and Search for a design element of your choosing, such as “swirl” or even “tiger,” if that’s what your book needs!

From Book Brush to Atticus

Once you’re happy with your image, always remember to Save As Project. This way, you’ll always have it waiting for you if you need to make any changes, or match your design for other elements in the future. 

Once that’s done, you can Download. If you’re on the free plan as a new member from Atticus, you’ll get 15 downloads total, which can provide you with many different images for your book. You can choose PNG or JPG, but PDF will not import into Atticus, so make sure you download the correct file type. 

Once downloaded, save it to a safe place with your manuscript and return to your book in Atticus. If you’ve made an ornamental break, you can upload it as a Custom Image.

If you’re using the image for a custom theme, you can upload it as you create your theme. If you need more direction on designing a custom theme, make sure you check out our complete Design Tutorial series. 

If you’d like to use the image as a full page image, you can click the three dots on the Add a Chapter button and follow the prompts this way. 

Get Creative!

Now that you’ve seen how Book Brush integrates with Atticus, all that is left for you to do is great creative! I hope you’ve enjoyed this tutorial and are brimming with ideas for adding even more enticing design elements to the formatting of your book. 

We have more exciting tutorials coming soon, so make sure you Subscribe to our YouTube channel and ring the bell so you’ll always get notifications when new videos are uploaded. 

Happy formatting!