Quote:
Originally Posted by BeccaPrice
My daughter is drawing the illustrations for Fairies and Fireflies. I'm going to have to get them scanned - I assume at 300 DPI so I can insert them in the file for the paper book. Do I then reduce them to 72 (or 96) dpi for kindle files? jpg or png format?
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"Dpi" has nothing to do with the resolution of the file; it has to do with printing and scanning sizes. A file
has no dpi. This might sound strange, but it's obvious if you think about it.
Take a file that is 1000 x 1000 pixels.
Now print it at a size of 10x10 inch. You just printed the file at 100 dpi.
Now print it at a size of 5x5 inch. You just printed the file at 200 dpi.
The other way around is also true.
"I have a file of 3000 x 3000 pixels. I want to print it at at least 300 dpi to get good quality." ==> You must print the file at 10 x 10 inch, or smaller.
See? Scanning a file, and then raising or lowering the DPI does not change its resolution: it changes the size the file will (can) be printed at.
Conclusion: Make the file larger than the largest resolution available on a Kindle today, keeping into account future developments for some years. What's the resolution of a current Fire? 1920x1200 or something? Then create a file of around 2688x1680. This 1.4x as large per side, giving you twice the complete screen area of the current KFire. You should be fine on devices with a lower resolution, and the image is still usable even if devices go beyond the 2688x1680 resolution.
Another nice thing when using bigger images is that you can use the Zoom-function of the Kindle to make the image larger, and it will stay sharp much longer. It will be sharp up until you hit 100% zoom, and then it will start to blur. I habitually replace my maps in fantasy books with versions as large as 3000 pixels on the long side, if I can find them.
If your illustration is going to take up part of the page only, you can just show it at a smaller size, instead of actually reducing the size in pixels. To make your ebook future-proof, you should set the image size in percentages instead of pixels.
Hope this helps.
PS: jpg and png are both fine. Just don't set the compression too low. Setting 100% quality is a bad idea, because the file will be huge. Setting 90% makes the files MUCH smaller, while keeping the quality loss to a minimum.
Don't be afraid of the size of the book; the Kindle can handle it. I've got some Delphi Classics on mine, some of which are larger than 100 MB.