Aura HD Cover In Library View Smaller Than Others

[Guymarble]

Hi, I've bought a book from Kobo and for some reason the cover shows up small in the library when the cover view is chosen. I can't seem to find the cover in the kobo images file as it is made up of loads of different folders with random numbers

Does anyone know how to fix this as things like this really annoy me

Thanks

[GeoffR]

Book covers come from the publisher in all different shapes and sizes, when Kobo displays them it changes the size, but leaves the shape (aspect ratio) the same. This means that covers which were originally wider than others will appear shorter.

I think the only alternatives would be either to change the aspect ratio which distorts the cover image, or to crop the cover which if done automatically will often cut something important out of the cover.

If you want to go to the bother you can stretch or crop the cover yourself to make it a similar aspect ratio to the others, and then replace the covers on the device. Calibre together with the KoboUtilities plugin is probably the easiest way to do this.

If you have a copy of the book in Calibre (or a dummy book with the same title and author metadata) then just change the cover in Calibre to your taste, using an image editing program (I use gimp). Then use the KoboUtilitues plugin to send the covers for the book to your device. After safely ejecting the device you might need to turn it off and back on again for the new covers to show up straight away.

Edit: You can also use this method to make changes in other metadata such as title, author, synopsis, publication date, etc. It is amazing how many mistakes there are in a book's metadata, I even had one where the publisher misspelled their own name (HapperCollins).

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by GeoffR

Edit: You can also use this method to make changes in other metadata such as title, author, synopsis, publication date, etc. It is amazing how many mistakes there are in a book's metadata, I even had one where the publisher misspelled their own name (HapperCollins).

Hmmm... I had one Baen eARC where the name was misspelled as Bean Publishing -- directly under the Baen logo which made it more humourous.

Proofreading is definitely a dying art.

Regards,
David

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by GeoffR

If you want to go to the bother you can stretch or crop the cover yourself to make it a similar aspect ratio to the others, and then replace the covers on the device. Calibre together with the KoboUtilities plugin is probably the easiest way to do this.

If you have a copy of the book in Calibre (or a dummy book with the same title and author metadata) then just change the cover in Calibre to your taste, using an image editing program (I use gimp). Then use the KoboUtilitues plugin to send the covers for the book to your device. After safely ejecting the device you might need to turn it off and back on again for the new covers to show up straight away.

Edit: You can also use this method to make changes in other metadata such as title, author, synopsis, publication date, etc. It is amazing how many mistakes there are in a book's metadata, I even had one where the publisher misspelled their own name (HapperCollins).

And the cover uploading for both the driver and plugin can either maintain the aspect ratio or resize the image to 3:4 ratio to fill the space. In this case, I don't think the resize will look to bad. Or there might be a better version of the cover out on the web. The calibre cover download is a good way to look.

[Guymarble]

Thanks for all the replies, I uploaded a cover using the kobo utilities plug-in and now the cover displays full screen in sleep mode as opposed to having the black lines down the side which is fine, however, the image in the library view remains the same

I can't seem to find the cover for the Kepub anywhere, there are plenty in the images folder but they seem to be covers of books that I don't even have. Could these be stored images of recommended books?

[GeoffR]

Originally Posted by Guymarble

Thanks for all the replies, I uploaded a cover using the kobo utilities plug-in and now the cover displays full screen in sleep mode as opposed to having the black lines down the side which is fine, however, the image in the library view remains the same

Check the KoboTouch plugin settings and make sure you have the "keep cover aspect ratio" box ticked, otherwise the covers will be stretched to 3:4 ratio which will make them shorter and wider than most other books. Most books have an aspect ratio more like 2:3.

I can't seem to find the cover for the Kepub anywhere, there are plenty in the images folder but they seem to be covers of books that I don't even have. Could these be stored images of recommended books?

Yes they are probably recommendations, related books, previews, etc. If you have just downloaded the book, or just updated the covers, then you can easily find the cover images by sorting the diretories in order of last access time. E.g. look in the .kobo-images directory and look for the most recently accessed subdirectory, then look in that subdirectory for the most recently accessed subdirectory, etc.

Edit: What is the size of the cover image in Calibre?