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Heading Background Style

You can use a Heading Background to add a backdrop behind the first page of an element in your print edition.

Configuring a Heading Background

Any Style can be configured to use a Heading Background. With the Style selected, click the Configure button:

Button used to configure a Style

In the list of Style features, select Heading Background:

Heading Background Feature selected

Heading Background Presets

Vellum comes with built-in Heading Background presets that you can easily incorporate into your book:

Carousel showing preset options for heading background

The Heading Background you select will be automatically applied to every Chapter of your print edition.

Custom Heading Background

If you have your own artwork you’d like to use for a Heading Background, use the Create Custom button below the carousel. You can then provide and configure the image to use as a background:

Overview of custom heading background interface, shown with an image configured

To clear your custom background and return to presets, click the ⓧ shown in the upper left.

Layout Controls

Before adding your image, use these controls to configure how you want your background to appear:

Controls for page span and image extent

Page Span specifies whether the image takes up a single page or spans an entire two-page spread.

When configured as a spread, the image will span both pages whenever the opposite page is empty (e.g. for Chapter 1).

Size Recommendations

As you adjust layout controls, Vellum will display the Ideal Size for your image. An image at this Ideal Size will match the layout you’ve configured and meet resolution requirements for printing.

Advice of using an image at an ideal size of 3675 by 2775 pixels

If you are working with full bleed, the image you add should match these dimensions exactly.

Creating an Image Template

If you need help getting an image to the exact size recommended by Vellum, click the Plus surrounded by dashed lines, used to create a template button to create a template:

Prompt to create an image template for a full bleed image

This feature was added in Vellum 3.8.4. Make sure you are up-to-date.

You can use this template as a guide in image editing software, or send it to a designer. If you need a template before you begin formatting, you can also make use of pre-made Full Bleed Image Templates.

Adding an Image

To add your background image, click the image widget to choose an image from your files, or drag an image here from the Finder:

Widget where you can add the image to use as a background

After you add your image, Vellum will check that it meets guidelines for high resolution printing:

Image selected and feedback that image is high resolution

You’ll see a green check if your image meets these guidelines. Otherwise, you’ll see a warning like the following:

Feedback that image is low resolution

To handle this warning, replace the image with one that matches the provided Ideal Size.

Appearance Controls

Use these controls to adjust the appearance of your image and the text that appears over it:

Controls for Image Presence and Use White Text

Image Presence adjusts how dark the image appears. Decreasing this value can improve the legibility of text that appears over the background.

Use White Text will make the text over the background white (along with any ornaments). You can use this option if your background image is very dark.

Note: If you haven’t provided an image, Use White Text will change the background to black.

Full Bleed Scale

When you add an image that doesn’t exactly match the available size, Vellum will display a control for Full Bleed Scale:

Heading Background image and Full Bleed Scale control

In this example, the provided image is wider than the spread. You can guide how Vellum should compensate by choosing from these options:

Background image fitting the page with whitespace at the bottom Fit Entire image fits into available space, with whitespace filling the remainder
Background image filling the page but cropped on the sides Fill Image fills all available space, with extra content cropped

Vellum defaults to Fill for a new image.

For more precise control, you can use an image editing program to resize and crop your image exactly to the size recommended by Vellum.

This feature was added in Vellum 3.8. Make sure you are up-to-date.

Individual Elements

In some cases, you may want a heading background to appear on a specific element and not on all elements of a particular type. To do this, use the Apply To popup:

The Apply To popup menu showing `Individual Elements` which causes the `Using Name` text field to be displayed

Selecting Individual Elements will reveal the Using Name text field, which allows you to name the background. Enter a descriptive name so that it is easy to find in an element’s Heading Background menu.

An element will show this menu when:

  • You have a heading background that applies to Individual Elements
  • You don’t have a heading background that applies to the selected element’s type

When it’s available, this menu will appear in the gear menu to the right of an element’s title:

The Heading Background menu allows you to choose from available backgrounds

You’ll also find the Heading Background menu in the main menu, under Chapter. You can use this version of the command to set the heading background for multiple elements at once, if necessary.

Using Multiple Backgrounds

In some cases, you may want to use unique heading backgrounds across multiple elements.

To add an additional background, press the Use Multiple Backgrounds button:

The Use Multiple Button at the bottom of the custom controls for Heading Backgrounds

For more details, see our guide to Using Multiple Heading Backgrounds.

Full Bleed

Using a Full Bleed background will increase the dimensions of your generated PDF to account for a bleed region. For instance, a 6 × 9 inch book might result in a PDF with a size of 6.125 × 9.25 inches.

By default, Vellum will use a bleed region that’s appropriate for KDP or IngramSpark. If you are using a different service, you can customize the bleed region in Vellum’s Print Settings.