Use Kindle images for ePub

[flyfisher33]

Thanks Hitch. I can't quite handle that png advice, likely because I'm generating my ePub with ID CS6 (using the IPad page dimensions and most of the photos at full page width) and fixing the OPF errors in Notepad++. ID doesn't give any options for png compression and obviously since the result with png compression was almost 8x as large, it's a non-starter. Also, ID writes the CSS with image width as 100% by default when the image spans the page.
I'm afraid I disagree that this makes for oversized images in K4PC or on the IPad. Doesn't do it on my devices. Unfortunately I don't have a Kindle of any variety and so must rely on Kindle Previewer. Yes, the images are quite small on the the 8.9" version but they can be enlarged to full page width easily. Clearly I'll have to find a way to test the final product on a Kindle.
Thanks for the advice re TIN. I'm Canadian and when I tried to set up an account this morning I didn't see any options for a test account. I'll try again.
BTW (smile), I did see Tex2002ans but that was so far from your original note that I decided that couldn't be right.
Thanks again and cheers,
Paul

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by flyfisher33

Thanks Hitch. I can't quite handle that png advice, likely because I'm generating my ePub with ID CS6 (using the IPad page dimensions and most of the photos at full page width) and fixing the OPF errors in Notepad++. ID doesn't give any options for png compression and obviously since the result with png compression was almost 8x as large, it's a non-starter. Also, ID writes the CSS with image width as 100% by default when the image spans the page.
I'm afraid I disagree that this makes for oversized images in K4PC or on the IPad. Doesn't do it on my devices. Unfortunately I don't have a Kindle of any variety and so must rely on Kindle Previewer. Yes, the images are quite small on the the 8.9" version but they can be enlarged to full page width easily. Clearly I'll have to find a way to test the final product on a Kindle.
Thanks for the advice re TIN. I'm Canadian and when I tried to set up an account this morning I didn't see any options for a test account. I'll try again.
BTW (smile), I did see Tex2002ans but that was so far from your original note that I decided that couldn't be right.
Thanks again and cheers,
Paul

I never said that 100% would overdrive on an iPad. Obviously, that has physical constraints, unlike K4PC/Mac. You're certainly entitled to your opinion.

Advice I provide assumes a couple of things; as this is the "Kindle Formats" sub-forum, my assumption is that folks are making eBooks, and that they're tweaking them from an eBook perspective, as in editing HTML/CSS. If you're not, that's up to you. We use INDD here, when needed, to make print versions of books and then make eBooks; however, we tweak the output ePUBs extensively, and if that means revamping images, that's what we do. However, we're a commercial production house.

Hitch

[flyfisher33]

Please do not assume I'm ungrateful for your help. You saved me many hours of hair-pulling re images and captions and I'm grateful for all your advice and observations. I agree that if I were to redo the job I should pay much more attention to the sizing and compression of the original images. I'm a print guy that has never built books of any kind except via ID, so, in the vernacular, I just went with the flow. Now, with 183 images and illustrations, I'm loathe to begin again.
I'm familiar enough with html and css to make modest adjustments, but in no way capable of making sophisticated changes.
Thanks again,
Paul

[Tex2002ans]

Originally Posted by flyfisher33

BTW, I couldn't find Texanns02 anywhere.

Hitch always gets my name wrong. If people have a hard time remembering it, I just say "Texans with 2002 in the middle".

I believe these topics were the ones Hitch was mentioning:

Here is an example I point to to show off the differences between JPG/PNG (in this specific case, showing off images of Text/Tables):

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...54&postcount=8

Here is an example of how I handle images of complex Math Formulas in EPUB. This is my Formulas to PNG Tutorial (you can see the tiny size of the PNGs, while the resolution is high):

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=223254

And this is the example I point to to show why PNG is superior to JPG when dealing with ARTIFICIAL images (charts, graphs, screenshots, ...) or images with very few colors (line art, clip art, business logos, ...):

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...5&postcount=26

I personally use this program called ScriptPNG, which is a very easy drag/drop way to compress PNGs. (There are also powerful commandline tools, although I would say those aren't very "noob" friendly).

Depending on the images, using PNG can get you to a filesize <50% the filesize of the equivalent JPG, while at the same time, achieving much higher quality (PNG = lossless, JPG = lossy).

Originally Posted by flyfisher33

Now, with 183 images and illustrations, I'm loathe to begin again.

It could be painful, but sometimes, it is best to do over, and start from scratch, making sure you do it PROPERLY, to save yourself many headaches down the road.

For example, I try to now tackle formulas in a way that I can easily generate whatever resolution I need in the future. Higher resolution device comes out (which they will). BAM, It takes me about one second to use the commandline and generate completely higher resolution formulas, since I laid all the proper groundwork.

If you handled it by painstakingly generating tiny thumbnails, all of a sudden, you have pushed yourself into a corner when you want to release a new edition. (See my Formulas Tutorial).

Similar thing I always stress when people insist on by saving the caption INSIDE of the image itself, instead of using CSS and letting the chips fall where they may. In the short-term, sure, the caption stays with the image, and it looks "ok", but in the long-term, the higher the resolution the devices become, the worse and worse that caption text will look, and it won't just be a simple CSS fix. You will have to redo all of the images!

[flyfisher33]

Thanks Tex2002ans, I checked out the links you provided. While I'm not going to reprocess the rgb image files (3/4 of the images), I will reprocess the original illustration files and have a look at the 4 table files which I ended up using as images (small tables originally created in Word for the print version) because that was the only way I could keep them from being destroyed during Kindle conversion. Yes, I tried the caption in image route for a couple of test images and quickly discarded it as a viable solution.
Thanks again, Paul.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by Tex2002ans

Hitch always gets my name wrong. If people have a hard time remembering it, I just say "Texans with 2002 in the middle".

Well, y'know, you COULD change it to something that old bats can remember!!! Crapadoodle, at least I think you're worth citing, even if I send people off in the wrong direction. (There IS A Texanns002 or something here on MR, y'know. I'm not utterly daft.)

Hitch

[Freeshadow]

@ flyfisher
Reasonable tools for PNG compression (or jpeg or svg cleanup or...) are never INSIDE the image processing software. Instead said software tends to stuff your images with metadata and other crap bloating them.

Google:
For jpegs: jpegoptim
For PNG: pnggauntlet and advpng (part of AdvanceCOMP)
For SVG: svgmin

[Notjohn]

Originally Posted by Hitch

And please, for the love of heaven, don't do what you see touted around, setting "width=100%," please, because LOTS of people read with things like K4PC/Mac, and end up with grossly overblown images.

Hitch

That's not at all what I see. I use the width="100%" instruction for almost all my images, and in K4PC they fill the height of the screen less the expected margin, and no more. On my 23 inch monitor, that's a hair under 8 inches tall.

[DaleDe]

Images with width set to 100% will maintain aspect ratio which is why you see this but low resolution images will appear blotchy on large screens. Most eBook reading devices are in portrait mode most of the time, not landscape as you have shown. I would never read on a screen that wide unless it had multiple columns.

Dale

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by DaleDe

Images with width set to 100% will maintain aspect ratio which is why you see this but low resolution images will appear blotchy on large screens. Most eBook reading devices are in portrait mode most of the time, not landscape as you have shown. I would never read on a screen that wide unless it had multiple columns.

Dale

Dale:

This is a long-running discussion or disagreement between NJ and I. He insists on telling newbs to always set ALL their images to width="100%" for mobi. I've repeatedly said that this is a bad idea, because the images can overdrive, if the reader uses a very large reading pane. {shrug}.

I'm not going to keep arguing with him. If I wanted to do that, I'd go post over at the KDP, where the lunatics really have taken over the asylum. (Not meaning you, nj--it's just simply vile in there these days.) He'll persist in doing what he's doing until he has a reason to do otherwise.

This is an image set to a simple % of the window--with a SINGLE-page view, in K4PC. You can see the single-column width of the reader overdriving the image into fuzz, although at "regular" or even remotely regular size, it's fine. This isn't even a good example--I simply had it to hand. If I put my mind to it, I could find a lot of really awful ones.

Hitch

[Notjohn]

The image is the identical size in single-pane view; it merely shifts to the left.

I used the wider pane to show that it doesn't expand to fill the width of the screen (or pane), which is what I understood you to be saying. ("end up with grossly overblown images.")

The image is an old one, 537x713 pixels, 25.9KB. It's true my eyes are old (as compared, say, to my knees, which are newish) but I just don't see anything unsatisfactory in how it appears on my computer monitor. I suppose I must now shell out for a PaperWhite II or Voyage, sigh.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by Notjohn

The image is the identical size in single-pane view; it merely shifts to the left.

I used the wider pane to show that it doesn't expand to fill the width of the screen (or pane), which is what I understood you to be saying. ("end up with grossly overblown images.")

The image is an old one, 537x713 pixels, 25.9KB. It's true my eyes are old (as compared, say, to my knees, which are newish) but I just don't see anything unsatisfactory in how it appears on my computer monitor. I suppose I must now shell out for a PaperWhite II or Voyage, sigh.

The PPW works fairly well, but the Voyage has real issues with images. Not that you'd notice--I mean, not being snarky, but if you have images at 100% anyway, it won't faze you, but if you try to make something >50% but less than 100%, it's a bugger.

In fact, Amazon emailed me today and said that they are still working on it. I'd sigh, but at least they emailed!

Hitch

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Hitch

Dale:

This is a long-running discussion or disagreement between NJ and I. He insists on telling newbs to always set ALL their images to width="100%" for mobi. I've repeatedly said that this is a bad idea, because the images can overdrive, if the reader uses a very large reading pane. {shrug}.

I'm not going to keep arguing with him. If I wanted to do that, I'd go post over at the KDP, where the lunatics really have taken over the asylum. (Not meaning you, nj--it's just simply vile in there these days.) He'll persist in doing what he's doing until he has a reason to do otherwise.

This is an image set to a simple % of the window--with a SINGLE-page view, in K4PC. You can see the single-column width of the reader overdriving the image into fuzz, although at "regular" or even remotely regular size, it's fine. This isn't even a good example--I simply had it to hand. If I put my mind to it, I could find a lot of really awful ones.

Hitch

That image looks like a jpeg that's over-compressed. What's needed is a new version of that image that's not been over-compressed.

[Notjohn]

Originally Posted by Hitch

The PPW works fairly well, but the Voyage has real issues with images. Not that you'd notice--I mean, not being snarky, but if you have images at 100% anyway, it won't faze you, but if you try to make something >50% but less than 100%, it's a bugger.

In fact, Amazon emailed me today and said that they are still working on it. I'd sigh, but at least they emailed!

Hitch

Images smaller than 100% are always a problem, because they are enlarged regardless on the older Kindles and on the iPad (though I've not noticed that on my iPhone).

I'm beginning to suspect that the Amazon marketers have decided that we now have so many KDP publishers that the company can prosper simply by retooling Kindles and Fires on a regular basis, and the publishers alone will keep the division afloat. Even better if they don't play the same game of ball.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by Notjohn

Images smaller than 100% are always a problem, because they are enlarged regardless on the older Kindles and on the iPad (though I've not noticed that on my iPhone).

No. I mean, if someone using Word as an upload mechanism does that (<100% but >50%), sure. But professional bookmakers all have workarounds to address that using media-queries. I know we do. The issue right now solely affects the Voyage, and Amazon admits it's a bug.

I'm beginning to suspect that the Amazon marketers have decided that we now have so many KDP publishers that the company can prosper simply by retooling Kindles and Fires on a regular basis, and the publishers alone will keep the division afloat. Even better if they don't play the same game of ball.

I'm not sure I'm following that segue.

Hitch