Creator Indesign to Kindle Image Size

[bcarrancho]

Hi there,
I work in inDesign because i format book for print and ebook and i like to have one master file. Been using Kindle export plugin and i really like it except that i have zero control over the size of images. I've tried higher rez images in the indesign file, scaling them up but the image is always the same size when i export to kindle.
If there is someone out there that knows any solution to this i would be really grateful.

Thanks,

[Robalb]

Hi bcarrancho,

I have the same problem and I wonder if you found a solution.
Has anyone any ideas.

I have tried trying to edit via spun but whilst I can bring better control to the images I loose all the cross referencing which is more important. Ideally I would wish to maintain the control thru Indesign CS 6.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by bcarrancho

Hi there,
I work in inDesign because i format book for print and ebook and i like to have one master file. Been using Kindle export plugin and i really like it except that i have zero control over the size of images. I've tried higher rez images in the indesign file, scaling them up but the image is always the same size when i export to kindle.
If there is someone out there that knows any solution to this i would be really grateful.

Thanks,

When you say, the image is always the same SIZE, do you mean, in kb?

Hitch

[Robalb]

I do not know about bcarrancho but I set my images to be 500px wide (either gif or jpg) and then after they have been made into a mobi file with the INDESIGN PLUG IN when they appear IN THE Kindle Previewer they only are about a quarter of any screen wide. All the images conform to the maximum Kindle size kb.

After I have uploaded them to KPB and downloaded them in firstly mobi they all look small on the page (about 25% width) but in html they all look a reasonable size circa 90% width.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by Robalb

I do not know about bcarrancho but I set my images to be 500px wide (either gif or jpg) and then after they have been made into a mobi file with the INDESIGN PLUG IN when they appear IN THE Kindle Previewer they only are about a quarter of any screen wide. All the images conform to the maximum Kindle size kb.

After I have uploaded them to KPB and downloaded them in firstly mobi they all look small on the page (about 25% width) but in html they all look a reasonable size circa 90% width.

Robalb:

You didn't say which viewer you were using in K Previewer, but see this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...density#Amazon . When you set image sizes by pixels, they will display at the pixel density of the device upon which they are viewed. Let's say an image is 500px wide; on a Kindle Fire HD, it's going to look fairly wee, indeed, less than 1.5" wide.

You need to edit your ePUBs or MOBIs so that you are setting image sizes in percentages, not fixed pixel widths/heights. You will need fallback KF7 coding (media queries) for the millions of e-ink devices that are still out there, as they will automatically blow up any image to 100% of the constraining relevant dimension, either height or width, and that can have some very unfortunate results.

Hitch

[yudel]

I have the same problem. Exporting a book with images using the Amazon InDesign plugin.

After unpacking the .mobi files, I discovered that the exporter is taking my images -- some of which are 1200 pixels wide with 72dpi -- and reducing them to be about 312 pixels wide.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by yudel

I have the same problem. Exporting a book with images using the Amazon InDesign plugin.

After unpacking the .mobi files, I discovered that the exporter is taking my images -- some of which are 1200 pixels wide with 72dpi -- and reducing them to be about 312 pixels wide.

This is one of the reasons why, I think you'll find, that most experienced users/producers don't use the Kindle plugin. Export to ePUB, learn to make the tweaks needed, and then drop the resulting ePUB into KindleGen/KindlePreviewer. That will result in better books and far less frustration. There's a greater learning curve, to understand more about ePUB, and, of course, ePUBs as they have to be tweaked for MOBI, but trust me, the time spent doing that is worth it, compared with trying to use the plugin for Kindle from INDD.

(n.b.: the politically-correct thought Nazis on Wikipedia removed the incredibly useful pixel-density chart. Use something like Internet Archive or the Wayback machine to find the information for that former URL. Idiots.)

FWIW.
Hitch

[bphil00]

Hitch,
can you expand on this a little?
What are some important tweaks you make to the ePub prior to running thru KindleGen?
Can you point me towards resources/information on this?
Thanks!

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by bphil00

Hitch,
can you expand on this a little?
What are some important tweaks you make to the ePub prior to running thru KindleGen?
Can you point me towards resources/information on this?
Thanks!

Hi, Bphil00:

Well...not really. I could point you, generically, to some things: INDD won't set media queries, for example, for KF8 styles versus KF7. Obviously, that has to be done for all sorts of things; text boxes, images, etc. That's all hand work.

Anything that you're doing differently, for, say, Dropcaps or Initial Caps or Raised Initials--media queries. For tables, you are likely using hidden, coupled with media queries, so that you (maybe) have an image for the KF7's, but a real table for the KF8's.

All of this--all of it--has to be redone pre-KindleGen/KP/KDP. Atop that, you have general changes to CSS, overall, if you are not using identical CSS for ePUB and MOBI, due to mobi limitations. (Or vice-versa, when that happens). If you have SVG images, you may need to make tweaks.

You have to clean-up (we just regex it) all the styles output by INDD, pre-ePUB anyway, or, rather, pre-final-ePUB. All the char-style-overrides that you can, get rid of. Get rid of all the print-spacing commands that will simply screw up the eBooks. Kerning, etc. All that's gotta go.

I don't know of a single resource, a book, that has all of this type of thing in it. (If I were smart, I'd write it, but keeping up with it would be a full-time job in and of itself, and I'm a bit busy). We're one of the few conversion houses (Indy) that accept INDD files for intake these days, because most can't handle it. (Well, let's face it--most "conversion houses" are either offshore, or using Calibre, not really coding by hand, anyway, so they wouldn't know HOW to do this work.)

Almost everything I know, and my crews know, about this, has been learnt by trial and error. That's the only real resource I know. I'm not being deliberately unhelpful; it's just...as I've said before, like fingerprints, no two books are the same, and it's hard to come up with a one-size-fits-all scenario.

Hitch

[bphil00]

Hitch,
thanks for the info!

I'm quickly learning how nothing is clear and straightforward in the ebook world, especially when Amazon enters the picture.
For media queries, do you recommend using amazon's proprietary markup?
@media amzn-kf8 { }
@media amzn-mobi7 { } or @media amzn-mobi { }

Probably a dumb question, but KF7 = Mobi7, correct?


You mention having to clean up inDesign's output styles. I thoroughly clean my document of extra paragraphs/spaces/soft returns/etc, label all styles clearly, map export tags, and remove any stray local formatting on export. Is it still necessary to relabel indesign generated styles? Will iBooks/Kobo/etc not allow these indesign generated styles or are you just suggesting that the document be as clean as possible?


Thank you so much for your help!

[eschwartz]

Document should be as clean as possible. Style names don't make one hoot of difference (but for your own sake, they should probably have meaning. )

That Amazon proprietary markup? Those are the media queries kindlegen actually looks at, to determine what to do for MOBI (mobi7) vs. AZW3 (KF8).

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by bphil00

Hitch,
thanks for the info!

I'm quickly learning how nothing is clear and straightforward in the ebook world, especially when Amazon enters the picture.
For media queries, do you recommend using amazon's proprietary markup?
@media amzn-kf8 { }
@media amzn-mobi7 { } or @media amzn-mobi { }

Yes. There's some discussion that the "not" tag may/mayn't be affecting some justification and new hyphenation (!) issues on the KFire 6" device, ONLY. Not defined, not tracked down, not definitive. But POSSIBLE, and why use it when you needn't?

Probably a dumb question, but KF7 = Mobi7, correct?

Yuur. Technically, it's really "mobi6," if you believe the purists, but, yes. Pre-KF8, for all its glory.

You mention having to clean up inDesign's output styles. I thoroughly clean my document of extra paragraphs/spaces/soft returns/etc, label all styles clearly, map export tags, and remove any stray local formatting on export. Is it still necessary to relabel indesign generated styles? Will iBooks/Kobo/etc not allow these indesign generated styles or are you just suggesting that the document be as clean as possible?


Thank you so much for your help!

No, I simply mean, keep it clean. I don't think that the INDD-generated style NAMES are particularly an issue, anywhere; I mean, I've seen some real doozies from other software (like Jutoh, for example). It's just that INDD allows/provides for so much more styling POWER than you can do in eBooks (vheight, vertical align, yadda)...that's the stuff you need to nuke. We do a lot of white-label work--so we intake other folks' INDD files, and output them without our credit line going in the book. Many of those are wildly heavily-formatted. The more formatting, the more risks you're taking, that on Device X, it won't work correctly. The more fonts, the greater (MUCH) you're taking that it will barf at the KDP. Unless you're feeling spectacularly brave, and unless you're going to give your clients a lifetime warranty, ye olden "KISS" as in Keep It Simple Stupid is the rule to live by.

Don't get me wrong--I love a beautifully-formatted book. But with the plethora of e-readers out there that are different devices, cross-platform, on smartphones, that allow the reader to change EVERYTHING...man, it's hard to make a "formatted" book that will work flawlessly across all those oceans. Trust me, I know this. Plus, there are devices that will choke if there's a single error in a CSS sheet. So, the simpler you make it, the less onerous your troubleshooting will be. Don't repeat styles if you needn't, etc.

Hitch

[Notjohn]

Originally Posted by bphil00

I'm quickly learning how nothing is clear and straightforward in the ebook world, especially when Amazon enters the picture.

I've earned a lot of money through Amazon over the past seven-plus years, so I jump to its defense. Amazon created the e-book business, for all practical purposes (oh, there were outfits like Fatbrain that sold the odd copy, but nothing anyone could make a living on; and there was Sony, but independents couldn't publish to it). When an improved platform came along--years later--Amazon could have done an Apple and simply abandoned its installed base of e-readers and e-books, but it didn't. It made the new, epub-like format backwards compatible, so we have the privilege of uploading a book that--yes!--will actually work on the original gawky Kindle keyboard contraption introduced in the fall of 2007.

Sony took a different path. It went from proprietary format to epub and then went out of business. All hail, Jeff Bezos!

[bphil00]

Thanks for offering your help, guys! It's nice that this community exists to help each other out. It can be hard to find quality info from a google search (and it's hard to trust when you realize it was written in 2011 or 2010).


@Notjohn
No doubt, amazon has done a lot to bring eBooks to the masses. I don't hate them or anything, but I do really hope they move to ePub as their standard.
I doubt Sony would be doing that well with a proprietary ebook format today either.