Hi Kovid: A request about "Polish Books"

[LordP]

I would like to have one function added to this plugin, if possible: Improve Books.

Can "Improve Contrast" be added to the plugin?

I am told that Kovid is the author, so I'm going to go all out and make a second request: For an action like: "Remove Books", could be changed to a drop-down menu? I'm old (74) and that little "down triangle" is an awfully small target.

It would be much easier if clicking "Remove Books" produced another menu where the choice can be selected. Or maybe a larger...whatever it is called where you get more choices?

I'm willing to donate $100 if either of these two can be achieved. Hopefully both. Primarily the "Improve Contrast" - I was trying to clean up a book that had 80 pictures and it became a chore.

Thanks.

[BetterRed]

If you right click a toolbar icon it will pop the same menu that clicking the down-arrow-glyph pops.

If you're 'old' I guess that makes me 'ancient'.

BR

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by LordP

I would like to have one function added to this plugin, if possible: Improve Books.

Can "Improve Contrast" be added to the plugin?

I am told that Kovid is the author, so I'm going to go all out and make a second request: For an action like: "Remove Books", could be changed to a drop-down menu? I'm old (74) and that little "down triangle" is an awfully small target.

It would be much easier if clicking "Remove Books" produced another menu where the choice can be selected. Or maybe a larger...whatever it is called where you get more choices?

I'm willing to donate $100 if either of these two can be achieved. Hopefully both. Primarily the "Improve Contrast" - I was trying to clean up a book that had 80 pictures and it became a chore.

Thanks.

How would you improve the contrast of an eBook?

[kovidgoyal]

I'm afraid while "improve contrast" sounds like a simple thing, actually implementing it is both difficult to get fully right and a large amount of work, so not something I am interested in doing, sorry.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

How would you improve the contrast of an eBook?

Not easily. It's the images the poster is concerned with. I'd make a copy of the ebook and unzip to a fresh location, then use a histogram tool with a preview to set black, white, gamma or even edit curve.

It can't be done at any quality automatically. If the image is palette based I convert to either full greyscale or RGB depending on if the image is mono or colour, before editing. I might resample, edit, sharpen or whatever too.

Long ago I used Aldus Photostyler, then Paint Shop Pro from 3 to 7, then The GIMP (originally on Windows). I did use Adobe Photoshop for a while. Not worth it for this sort of thing.

I'd only convert colour to monochrome (and maybe a 16 shade equal level palette) if the image is ONLY EVER going to be on eink.

Always only edit full RGB or full greyscale and if touching up, first rescale to x2 to x5 (x3 is good) and then downsample a copy when finished.

[LordP]

Thanks for the replies.

I thought since "Improve Contrast" was part of "Edit book", in the filters section, it might be easily ported.

@BetterRed - Such a simple thing. but it never occurred to me. Thanks. I guess it's more my eyes are going bad than age: Macular Degeneration, detached vitreous, floaters and mild (so far) cataracts.

[kovidgoyal]

Ah you mean improving contrast for only images, this is a destructive operation, Polish books only has operations that do not change the books visual appearance, as such this is not suitable for Polish books.

But the simplest way to do this for you would be to use the unpack book tool and then use any batch image processing tool on all the image files in the book made available via the unpack book tool

[Comfy.n]

You can also add 'Remove Books' to the menubar, through Preferences -> toolbars -> The menubar.
It took me some time to get used to right-clicking the buttons, once I learned this was possible, lol.

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by LordP

Thanks for the replies.

@BetterRed - Such a simple thing. but it never occurred to me. Thanks. I guess it's more my eyes are going bad than age: Macular Degeneration, detached vitreous, floaters and mild (so far) cataracts.

Just about everything is right-clickable in calibre. FX: you can edit an individual image, using your favourite image editor(s), by right clicking an image file in the Book editor's File browser, viz.



BR