Dealing with no transparency

[Jake Stoddard]

Originally Posted by AlanHK

If your target is Kindle, PNGs aren't preserved when converted to a Kindle format. At least, not MOBI/KF7 or AZW/KF8. Don't know about KFX.

I unpacked the kindle formats made by Kindlegen and all PNGs had been converted to either GIF or JPG.
And no transparency, even in the GIF format which does support it.

Thanks for the tip. As a test, I converted my PNG to GIF (preserving the transparency) saved my .epub and sideloaded it with SendToKindle. In my Kindle app, the transparent area was filled with bright blue!

Oh well.

[Quoth]

White background makes sense as that is actually not printed with most printing technologies.

Transparency makes no sense for ebooks anyway.

[Turtle91]

I use transparency all the time. Section dividers, fleurons, any svg (from math equations for example) look really bad if the user changes to dark mode or the background color or theme to anything but white. Having a white rectangle surrounding an image is sooo bleh!

[Karellen]

I also use transparency png files for a lot of diagram type images.
Never had a problem with them and they display nicely.
Though my reading mediums are limited to libra 2 and calibre. No idea what happens in other ereaders.

[nabsltd]

Originally Posted by Turtle91

Section dividers, fleurons

Both of these can be handled by using embedded fonts that contain the correct glyph. Using embedded, subsetted fonts solves a lot more problems than it creates...only if you want to support MOBI is it a real problem. And, I'm pretty sure that wanting to support MOBI is a bigger problem.

Even if you are distributing commercially, embedded fonts are not a problem...an Adobe font subscription is $60 per year (get the "InCopy plan" and just ignore everything but the fonts), and you only need the subscription active at the time you perform the embed. All the fonts in the subscription are licensed for embedding.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by nabsltd

an Adobe font subscription is $60 per year (get the "InCopy plan" and just ignore everything but the fonts), and you only need the subscription active at the time you perform the embed. All the fonts in the subscription are licensed for embedding.

Many adobe fonts are for paper and can't easily be licenced for ebooks. Waste of money. People won't even see them if they don't select publisher option, or use certain apps. They don't work on mobi at all.

[Turtle91]

While embedded fonts work great on my reader of choice, it doesn't always work well on all devices. Also, fleurons/images are not always simplified down to a font-producible-style. Can you imagine the attached jpg with a big white rectangle around it...especially after all the work that went into making a gorgeous book???

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Turtle91

I use transparency all the time. Section dividers, fleurons, any svg (from math equations for example) look really bad if the user changes to dark mode or the background color or theme to anything but white. Having a white rectangle surrounding an image is sooo bleh!

I use a 20% wide 2px line via <hr/> for a section break. No need for transparency.

[Turtle91]

Same response Jon.

[nabsltd]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Many adobe fonts are for paper and can't easily be licenced for ebooks.

Every font that is available via Adobe's Creative Cloud allows embedding in eBooks:
https://helpx.adobe.com/fonts/using/...g.html#act-pdf

You do need to enable font obfuscation in the EPUB, but that's easy.

[nabsltd]

Originally Posted by Turtle91

Also, fleurons/images are not always simplified down to a font-producible-style.

There are fonts full of fleurons like that.

Also, if you have a high-resolution image, you can also convert it to a TrueType/OpenType font glyph pretty easily, and create a custom font with all your special images.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by nabsltd

Every font that is available via Adobe's Creative Cloud allows embedding in eBooks:
https://helpx.adobe.com/fonts/using/...g.html#act-pdf

You do need to enable font obfuscation in the EPUB, but that's easy.

Then Amazon, which has over 90% of English language ebook sales will not accept it.

Font obfuscation is an abomination.
There is no point to buying Adobe font licences for ebooks. Paper maybe.

[Turtle91]

Originally Posted by nabsltd

There are fonts full of fleurons like that.

Also, if you have a high-resolution image, you can also convert it to a TrueType/OpenType font glyph pretty easily, and create a custom font with all your special images.

Interesting. I'll have to look into that technique. That might help with Amazon/Kindle but doesn't the user have to enable embedded fonts to see them? Is it more work to make a custom glyph in a custom font than to make the background transparent in an image??

I think with an image at least the users will see it... if Amazon can't figure out how to honor transparencies then they will get the complaints about ugly images.

[Quoth]

Yes, user has to enable Publisher (embedded) mode. Strangely some Android epub apps don't support embedded fonts at all.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by nabsltd

There are fonts full of fleurons like that.

Also, if you have a high-resolution image, you can also convert it to a TrueType/OpenType font glyph pretty easily, and create a custom font with all your special images.

What site(s) allow you to convert your images to fonts?