Stretched out images in an ePub (textbook)

[MelBr]

Hi all,

I have an issue with all of the images in my textbook looking stretched. It just looks horrible and, frankly, it's unusable because it looks so bad. I've tried various viewers and images look stretched out in all of them. I've included the screenshot from Calibre.

I've gone through the source and images are included as:

<p class="calibre1"><a id="filepos5072701"></a><img alt="Image" src="images/01268.jpg" class="calibre1302"/></p>

and CSS for that looks like:

.calibre1 {
    display: block;
    margin-bottom: 0;
    margin-left: 0;
    margin-right: 0;
    margin-top: 1em;
    text-align: center;
    text-indent: 1.5em
    }

.calibre1302 {
    height: 1503px;
    width: 1706px
    }

The result is the pic that looks stretched out as the screenshot below.

Is there a way to tell viewers to size images proportionally so I can read what they're saying? Also, considering this book has 1000+ images, what's the easiest way of accomplishing that?

THANK YOU!

[Jellby]

Originally Posted by MelBr

Is there a way to tell viewers to size images proportionally so I can read what they're saying? Also, considering this book has 1000+ images, what's the easiest way of accomplishing that?

Don't specify any width or height and instead use "max-width:100%; max-height:100%;" (although I'm sure some readers will have problems with that, in that case use only one or the other). Make sure there's no "width:100%" or "height:100%" in any of the parent styles affecting the <img>.

[MelBr]

Jellby, that fixed it! Thank you so much!

[Tex2002ans]

What is the format of the original source document? A Microsoft Word document?

Where did you get these images from? Are a lot of these images charts/graphs inside of the book? Did you generate these yourself?

If you have 1000+ images, and if you have access to all the source images (you generate them yourself), then perhaps PNG might better suit you than JPG (and make your EPUB WAY smaller in filesize, while making the images much higher quality/crisper).

See one of my posts/samples of a JPG/PNG size/quality comparison of a high resolution graph:

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

The PNG is ~2/3rd the size, and the highly optimized PNG of the graph is ~1/3rd the size, and much higher quality than the JPG.

Is this EPUB being given away for free (on your site?) or will this be sold (your site? Amazon? B&N?)?

Ugh.. I am just thinking of the bloat/unmaintainable code that is in this EPUB... I see the Calibre CSS classes are numbering in the THOUSANDS range.

[MelBr]

Tex2002ans,

I have no idea what the source document is. I got it like this from publisher and they clearly converted it to ePub through Calibre. I don't have the source images but I have reduced the size of ePub by about 2.5x (it was originally around 280Mb) with a jpeg reduction tool so it's not so bad.

[Tex2002ans]

Originally Posted by MelBr

I have no idea what the source document is. I got it like this from publisher and they clearly converted it to ePub through Calibre. I don't have the source images but I have reduced the size of ePub by about 2.5x (it was originally around 280Mb) with a jpeg reduction tool so it's not so bad.

Oh ok... I thought that this was a textbook you are writing, not just an EPUB you purchased. I hate when you spend perfectly good money on a hideous Calibre conversion such as this.

Really disappointing that they didn't pay to have a proper ebook conversion done.

[MelBr]

Originally Posted by Tex2002ans

Oh ok... I thought that this was a textbook you are writing, not just an EPUB you purchased. I hate when you spend perfectly good money on a hideous Calibre conversion such as this.

Really disappointing that they didn't pay to have a proper ebook conversion done.

You know, the hardcover of this textbook is close to 9lbs in weight (8.7lbs = 4Kg). And I have 2-4 books like that per semester. My iPad weighs the same no matter how many books I load up. So I don't mind buying even crappy conversion as long as the text flows and I can enlarge letters and do search (i.e. it's not just a scan) .

This fix was pretty simple.

[Toxaris]

What publisher is that? Just to know which one to avoid...