Thread: Illustrations quality and resolution
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Old 10-01-2014, 04:12 PM   #6
j.p.s
Grand Sorcerer
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ATDrake View Post
Depending on how old the e-book file is, part of the quality issue (at least for Amazon-supplied titles) may be that up until fairly recently, the Mobi format had a strict limit for image filesize (eventually boosted from 64 to 128 kb as of KindleGen build 1.1 a couple of years ago) and would downgrade anything larger than that during the conversion.
Sure, but take for example the image: http://www.cherryh.com/WaveWithoutAS..._ivrel_map.png
at the blog http://www.cherryh.com/WaveWithoutAShore/?page_id=3273 mentioned by GeoffR above.

It is 2352 x 3162 and 100 kilobytes. I made a JPEG version that is 509 kilobytes and a 4bit (16 grays) PNG that is 72 kilobytes. That is a taller image than any current reader screen, yet the number of bytes almost meets the oldest file size restriction, while the JPEG is 5 times larger. So quite high quality line drawings can require few bytes as PNG.

Quote:
Originally Posted by ATDrake View Post
Nowadays, the Kindle Publishing Guidelines say you can have up to 5 mb for an individual image (the section on GIFs still mentions a 127 kb limit, so I don't know if they didn't update this portion, or the 5 mb allowance is for JPEG/PNG only), but anything from before then was likely supplied to Amazon using the older tools which automatically made low-res versions regardless of what the publisher originally put in.
Doesn't Amazon continue to restrict total file size for the lowest priced books because of data transfer costs and even deduct data transfer fees from royalties for higher priced books that have large file sizes? The five maps in 'The Heroes' take far more bytes than the entire rest of the book. Higher quality JPEG versions would need far less space.
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