CS6 Epub Output and Duplicating Images
Situation: A book with a single image that is used repeatedly--once on every chapter opener. Call it, say, "ChapterOpenerImage.jpg". On epub output, each instance of the image seems to get its own file created and placed in the epub images folder: ChapterOpenerImage_fmt1.jpg, ChapterOpenerImage_fmt2.jpg, etc; and obviously each gets its own href on the chapter opener.
May I ask why this is necessary, and if it can be overridden? I'd like to be able to drop a different version of "ChapterOpenerImage.jpg" into the epub images folder and have it update everywhere, without having to either duplicate it and rename it as many times as necessary, or without having to go into the code and use reg-ex searches to make all the hrefs uniform.
Thanks for any help!
This was actually an issue (bug?) that was introduced in CS6. If you unchecked "Preserve Appearance from Layout" on the Image tab of the Epub export dialog box in CS5.5 you would get one image that was linked multiple times. Now in CS6, unchecking that box doesn't seem to make a difference.
I use Find & Replace in Dreamweaver or Text Wrangler's (free) Multi-File Search to find the grep expression ChapterOpenerImage_fmt\d*.jpg and replace it with ChapterOpenerImage.jpg.
You will also need to clean up the content.opf file but they will all be together so it's easy to do that.
Hope they fix it. I think they will since it was correct in CS5.5.
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CS6 Epub Output and XHTML File Names
Is there any way to customize or otherwise assign specific names to the XHTML files InDesign CS6 assigns to the various sections it creates when it splits files for an epub? I mean, if my InDesign file is named ""InDesign_File Name.indd", the autosplit XHTML files in the epub will be namedinstead of "InDesign_File Name-1.xhtml", "InDesign_File Name-2.xhtml", "InDesign_File Name-3.xhtml" etc. What I would love is if InDesign would use the NCX nav-panel entry text fields to name the XHTML files, although I see why that would be hard to program, since NCX entries don't necessarily require separate XHTML files to link to and can link to more than one anchor in a single file. But still, it could be like a text variable first-or-last-on-page option.
What I am saying is that HTML files named "Dedication.xhtml" "Prologue.xhtml", "Chapter_1.xhtml", etc., would be easier to work with if there was an easy way to generate them short of breaking the single book-length file into pieces and recompiling it as an InDesign book. Is there any way to make that happen?As far as I know, you'd have to manually rename the HTML files, then fix the names in the Manifest of the "content.opf" file.
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Big Problem: Missing Images and Duplicated Images
I had thought that this was some kind of web gallery problem, but now it's clear that this affects all of Aperture (on my system).
If I select a few images (in this case from a smart album), and then create a new:
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Further, the images actually become DUPLICATED in the smart album that was the source.
Here is the strange bit: If I select a large number of images from that smart album, some of the images DO appear in the NEW album or gallery or whatever. But many DON'T. And all images are duplicated in the source album.
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Anyone have any idea what's going on? Do You have this problem?
rickI have seen a similar problem when creating a smart album. I have also had a similar problem with images disappearing. See this thread:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=301318&tstart=30
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I have a work-flow question about object styles, text-wrap, and preparing a long document with lots of images for dual print/EPUB output in InDesign CC 2014.
I am sort of experienced with InDesign but new to EPUB export. I have hundreds of pages and hundreds of images so I'd like to make my EPUB learning curve, in particular, less painful.
Let me talk you through what I'm planning and you tell me if it's stupid.
It's kind of a storybook-look I'm going for. Single column of text (6" by 9" page) with lots of small-to-medium images on the page (one or two images per page), and the text flowing around, sometimes right, sometimes left. Sometimes around the bounding box, sometimes following the edges of the images. So in each case I'm looking to tweak image size and placement and wrap settings so that the image is as close to the relevant text as possible and the layout isn't all wonky. Lovely print page the goal. Lots of fussy trade-offs and deciding what looks best. Inevitably, this will entail local overrides of paragraph styles. So what I want to do, I guess, is get the images as closely placed as possible, before I do any of that overriding. Then I divide my production line.
1) I set aside the uniformly-styled doc for later EPUB export. (This is wise, right? Start for EPUB export with a doc with pristine styles?)
2) With the EPUB-bound version set aside, I finish preparing the print side, making all my little tweaks. So many pages, so many images. So many little nudges. If I go back and nudge something at the beginning everything shifts a little. It's broken up into lots of separate stories, but still ... there is no way to make this non-tedious. But what is best practice? I'm basically just doing it by hand, eyeballing it and dropping an inline anchor to some close bit of text in case of some storm, i.e. if there's a major text change my image will still be almost where it belongs. Try to get the early bits right so that I don't have to go back and change them and then mess up stuff later. Object styles don't really help me with that. Do they? I haven't found a good use for them at this stage (Obviously if I had to draw a pink line around each image, or whatever, I'd use object styles for that.)
Now let me shift back to EPUB. Clearly I need object styles to prepare for export. I'm planning to make a left float style and a right float style and a couple of others for other cases. And I'm basically going to go through the whole doc selecting each image and styling it in whatever way seems likeliest. At this point I will change the inline anchors to above line or custom, since I'm told EPUB doesn't like the inline ones.
I guess maybe it comes down to this. I realize I have to use object styles for images for EPUB, but for print, manual placement - to make it look just right - and an inline anchor seems best? I sort of feel like if I'm going to bother to use object styles for EPUB I should also use them for print, but maybe that's just not necessary? It feels inefficient to make so many inline anchors and then trade them for a custom thing just for EPUB. But two different outputs means two different workflows. Sometimes you just have to do it twice.
Does this make sense? What am I missing, before I waste dozens of hours doing it wrong?I've moved your question to the InDesign EPUB forum for best results.
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Why does CS6 InDesign Book epub output generate and apply new graf and character style names in CSS?
I created an InDesign book composed of documents that had had no paragraph or character styles in the palettes until text was copied over from a single overall document. I worked absolutely as clean as I could.
I synchronized the book to that single overall document several times, including immediately before exporting the book to epub. My export settings disallowed any local formatting. Character styles were restricted to one named "Italic" for which the only format applied was Italic in the Font Style field, and one named "Small Caps" for which NO formatting was included in the character style.
There was, as far as I can see, no reason for any character or paragraph styles to export to anything but identically-named CSS entries. That is to say, any text with the character style "Italic" applied in the InDesign doc should have output with the same text with a span class entry of "Italic" around it.
I still ended up with p and span CSS entries with extra numbers appended to them:
span.Italic {
font-style:italic;
font-weight:normal;}
span.Small-Caps-1 {
font-variant:normal;}
span.Italic-1 {
font-style:italic;
font-weight:normal;}
span.Small-Caps-2 {
font-variant:normal;}
span.Italic-2 {font-style:italic;
font-weight:normal;}
span.Small-Caps-3 {
font-variant:normal;}
span.Italic-3 {
font-style:italic;
font-weight:normal;}
and
p.x-SECTION-BREAK, p.x-SECTION-BREAK-1, p.x-SECTION-BREAK-2, p.x-SECTION-BREAK-3 and so on.
Why would the InDesign epub output engine choose to generate and apply new spans and paragraph-level styles, which multiply the complexity of editing the CSS directly? How can I prevent InDesign from doing this?Perhaps I wasn't clear. When I wrote "an InDesign book composed of documents that had had no paragraph or character styles in the palettes until text was copied over from a single overall document" I meant to emphasize the part where I CLEARLY said "UNTIL text was copied over." The text I copied over had plenty of paragraph styles. I was trying to point out that each individual document had no PREVIOUSLY EXISTING character or paragraph styles that might have added complexity to the epub output. .
So, every paragraph in each document had a paragraph style attached, a total of maybe 20 different paragraph styles throughout the book. The only CHARACTER LEVEL styles I cared about exporting were Italic, for text that was set in italic, and Small Caps, for CAPITALIZED text that I wanted to be able to make smaller in the CSS, since I am not allowed to embed fonts and therefore have no other way of creating small caps in the xhtml files inside the epub.
So, given that I had two character styles applied to various bits of text throughout my InDesign book ("Italic" and "Small Caps"), I would like to know why there are multiple CSS entries generated: Italic, Italic-1, Italic-2, Small Caps, Small Caps-1, Small Caps-2, and so on.
Ditto paragraph styles. I had a paragraph style called "SECTION BREAK" in each document. Not only did paragraph style "SECTION BREAK" contain identical specs in each document--I know they did because I copied each from one single doc where they were being used identically--but I also synchronized the book repeatedly. So why would the xhtml docs and the CSS output need p.x-SECTION-BREAK-1, p.x-SECTION-BREAK-2, and p.x-SECTION-BREAK-3? -
I am new to EPUB fomat and I am facing a lot of difficulties in exporting my work from InDesign CS6
Hi..I am new to EPUB fomat and I am facing a lot of difficulties in exporting my work from InDesign CS6. The problem is that I have got a financial report of about 100pages to export as EPUB, with lots of graphs etc..and when I export it, to EPUB 2.0, the following happens:
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2. The graphs do not appear where they should be! All the imags in fact appear after the long paragraphs of text..meaning everything appear quite messy and in an unordered manner.
I have read that images should be anchored, and doing so, the result is quite better, but still, some images appear at the end of the text!!d
That is, the end result, in terms of pagination and graphics, is no way like it should have been, compared to the indesign file (page 5 is displayed after page 10, image on page 4 appears on page 9 etc..)
PLEASE HELP..
P.S :
I am using Adobe digital edition to view my EPUB..I have also tried CALIBRE and SIGIL!! But I am not too sharp in eiting CSS codes etc...Hi Akshay,
If you want your images to appear standalone with no other page item on the page, then you can insert Page break on an image.
This is how you can specify a page break:
1. Select the image
2. Goto Object->Object Export Options
3. Select EPUB and HTML tab
4. Select Custom Layout check box and then check Insert Page break. You can select from the option in the dropdown-Before Image, After Image, Before and After Image as per your requirement.
Regarding your question about images:
You export your graphs as JPEG but are those JPEGs of good resolution? If they are, then InDesign is doing something wrong during export but if the JPEGs are not of good quality then it is not an export issue. Please provide some more details here.
Regards,
Pooja -
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Hi Maryan,
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Bridge CS6 overwrites EXIF data and changes image orientation.
Hi,
I seem to be having issue with Bridge CS6 overwriting or corrupting my image EXIF data.
The situation is this, while in Bridge CS6, I open a folder with some images in it. There I select one image. Right-click on it and select File Info. In the XMP dialogue box I fill in the fields I need and save this file as a template. Then, I select the rest of the images, go to Tools and choose Replace Metadata. In the fly-out, select and click the template I've just created and this is where I have the issue. All the updated images now have the the same date and time. I NEVER had this happen in Bridge CS5. In Bridge CS5, while all the IPTC data was overwritten, the EXIF data was left alone. This does not seem to be the case in Bridge CS6 where both the IPTC and EXIF data now seem to be overwritten. If this is the case, need to ask why?
Hope someone here can confirm and comment on this. Cheers.Then, I select the rest of the images, go to Tools and choose Replace Metadata.
You have to choose 'Append Metadata' this adds the template to the already existing data instead of overwriting the already existing data.
And without knowing your needs or workflow, why don't you create a template (or some extra if you have specific difference you often use) with the most common and always used info (copyright etc) and add this to al your files.
Then when in Bridge choose the metadata panel with IPTC core section in view.
Select the files you want to alter and in the Metadata click on a field with the pencil icon (means you can add info to it) and fill in the fields you need the info in. If keywords needed switch to the keyword panel to add the wanted keywords to the selected files.
Just another approach that might be more suitable and faster. -
Ease of rotating and cropping images in CS6
There is much I like about the new crop: Rotating the image instead of the box is SO much easier and the straighten option is a great time saver.
But in one instance, I'm finding cropping in CS6 to be harder: Cropping images that are not correctly oriented in the first place. Rotating an image 90-degrees was a snap in CS2: Alt-I/E/0. The shortcut keys are gone in CS6, so using the rotation command is no longer quick.
But I can do it in the crop box, right? True -- but not easily. The image is landscape, the crop box is portrait. With the crop tool selected, holding the shift key down to get fixed-increment rotations doesn't work: Pressing the SHIFT key changes the cursor from rotation to the crop cursor. To get the rotation, I have to start rotating the image and then press SHIFT to get 15-degree increments. A few moments later, I have rotated the image into portrait orientation -- and the crop box is now centered on the image, but it is set to crop the middle. I have to drag the handles out to get approximately what I want: The full image in the crop box. (What I want is what I would get if I rotate the image with the Rotate command, then control-zero to fill the screen, and then select the crop tool.)
We rotate a lot of images. It's easy to do in CS2 and the two approaches I've found for CS6 are both awkward. The new crop tool has replaced the dual arrows in older versions (to swap the horizontal and vertical sizes) with a rotation arrow. I think you should restore the arrows (and their function) -- then use the rotate button to rotate the image, not the crop box. (Isn't that the design center for the new crop box? We're moving the image, not the crop box.)Howard, thanks for the tip about the X key; didn't realize it worked that way when the crop tool is active. But in this case I had set the crop box dimenions, so the crop box starts out with the correct orientation. Having played with this for a day, I conclude that the best approach for this task is to restore the old keyboard conventions for image rotation and rotate the image before launching the crop tool.
I stand by my observation that the rotate key should affect the image, not the crop box because that is consistent with the new cropping paradigm: We rotate the image, not the crop box. I realize making a change this late in the development cycle is awkward -- but if CS6 ships with this behavior, it will become even harder to change later -- and the user interface should be as consistent as possible.
Noel, you are correct: The images are coming from scanned film. All frames get scanned with the same orientation. I want to avoid the "Patient: Doctor, it hurts when I do this. Doctor: Then don't do that!" scenario. Granted: If images are "correctly" oriented, this issue doesn't arise. But not all images are oriented correctly and CS6 should be at least as graceful in handling the task as previous versions. -
Question on Blu ray image size output and reducing the size
Hi
I have been using encore for blu ray projects which is been proving very helpful. However recently i have had a issue with output size on files. Normally Encore gives me it's estimate that it will fill the disc nicely and provides a image/folder which is about 17-20GB (using 25GB disc) but now out of the blue it's files sizes it outputs has been 24.8GB which technically is less than 25GB but as anyone knows who burns to media, the disc doesn't actually have 25GB of space (something like 23,8 or something, i can't remember without checking). Anyway of course this is a issue because my output size is contantly now coming up to be about 600MB - 1GB over the disc actual size, i figured Encore normally compresses files to fit considering i have burned similar amounts/size media before and never had a issue.
Anyway my issue is the slightly larger file size, i figured the easiest way to reduce the blu ray output size was to of course play with the transcode settings, which usually are set to the default settings for Blu ray (the quality preset is called something like "1280x720p 50 High Quality MPEG-2") so of course i thought to lower the bitrate a little just for a test, so i did just that and cut the default bit rate from 25[Mbs] to 20, i didn't want to lower it too much as it was a test to see what i could save for file size. Anyway so i re-transcoded the file and built another image, sadly the image size oddly enough came out as 26.something GB... so it actually grew in size by reducing the file bitrate which put me at a loss. I was wondering what common ways i could use to lower this file size just by a few hundred MB or up to 1GB in this case without having to remove content from the disc (it would be a waste to not only seperate the content but to use a whole disc for a leftover 600mb-1gb project). I of course want to keep quality as high as possible but i understand when trying to reduce size quality has to normally be hit in these situations so i can deal with a slight loss of quality. I have been browsing the forums here and though some topics seem similar they have the issue of file sizes coming out as 40GB+.
Now im no genius with Encore, normally as said the file size is always between 17-20GB as i figure encore was using a "fit to disc" type feature but because the output size is technically below 25gb but not actually below enough to burn i was wondering 2 things:
1) is it possible to make encore it's self shrink these files a little more, lowering the target size down by 1GB would do wonders but only option i have seen is to have a 25GB disc or DL disc with no option to customize the output size (forcefully lowering it by 1GB).
2) because i imagine the above can't be done i was wondering how to go about reducing the size by around 1GB or so, i don't need like 10GB freeing up so it's only a small amount, as said this is a issue i have had with the last few projects i made and the size varies from needing 600MB - 1GB (it doesn't usually exceed needing 1GB free space... besides when i lowered the bit rate which increased size a lot). In the past i always just cut the bitrate of files down a little (never by lots but enough to free space up) but clearly that failed my test so im at a loss of how to reduce file size without a huge loss in quality.
For the record i have already produced the file as both a image file and a folder and both have the same issue.
Extra info on the project:
It contains 4 Menu's, 13 video files which vary in lengh from short ones at about 5mintues to longer ones which the largest is about 20minutes. I commonly burn this number of video files/space with fine quality and no issue so i would rather not take files from the project.
quality preset details are defaultly as said above set to "1280x720p 50 High quality MPEG-2" settings, i am not on my computer with encore at the moment so i can't post full specifics right now but if you have encore handy you should be able to check.
Tried reducing bit rate but that increased overall size, the actual plan was to hopefully lower the bit rate to around 21 [mbs] (from 25) and then do that for multiple (or all) files until it fitted but after it increased the size i lost hope there, it said the estimated file size (on the individual video) would drop by around 300-400mb but that didn't work.
I have tried both folder and iso which always come out the same size.
Basically my main question/problem is any suggestion to drop the file size by up to 1GB without taking items out the project or a real high loss in quality (i don't mind small loss though as i can apply whatever solution to all files which should help).
Any suggestions what i can try? as you probably gather im not a genius when it comes to this stuff but i tried including what i thought is relevent.Hi and thank you for the reply;
one problem i seem to be having when reducing the bitrate is the file size is oddly increasing from 24.8GB to 26.4GB, i can't really figure this one out as well it's having the oppisite effect. I checked the "streams" folder on output and decided to compare automatic transcoding to manual lowered bitrate and im not too sure where the increased file size is going, i found which video file it was causing the issue, all videos files range or average around 1.6GB each but one file was taking 4.5GB, after lowering that files bitrate it cut it down to 2GB which was of course saving me 2GB from the old file but the overall size had increased which was odd. Seems the other files are all the same so it hasn't tried improving them (so it seems) so i can't make ends of why the size is increasing.
I will try playing with the source file to see if i can do anything that way, if not i will try transcoding in premiere (i have had troubles with this before so i try to avoid it).
Oh and yes i was using Automatic.
Anyway i will see if editing the file outside might help first and see how that works. Thanks again for the reply. -
Why can't I get the advanced selection available in epub export options in illustrator cc? It's not there and neither is image selection. only epub reflowable and fixed layout but not just epub.. I don't know where it is to do some book exercises for my studies. Very frustrating.
This is the EPUB forum: InDesign EPUB
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Resizing and placing images CS6 Photoshop
Hi -
I am having trouble, just recently, placing and resizing image layers. The option to "place" an image from the file menu is no longer available and instead there are two - "Place Embedded" and "Place Linked". However, the images are not resizable after you size them initially. After that you can only access the sizing through the drop down menu at the top of the screen. Before I had the ability to select the layer and the corner points to resize use to come up. Have there been changes at all to CS6?
Also, I had my file window close down when trying to select new image files to place and has never done that before.
Running a new 15" MacBook Pro.
Thanks,
BryanFrom what I saw of the video it was not showing the whole story the broken link part of the story was missing. How it works and what can be done if you can not resolve the broken link.
Where some have a use for Place linked I prefer to have embedded objects. For I want collages that may use the same original images to be independent from each other. Fortunately while the old interface menu File>Place no longer exists. Old scriptlistener code for menu File>Place still places in images in Photoshop CC 14.2 and they seem to be embedded smart objects for opening the smart object with a double click winds up opening files copied by Photoshop in the user ID local temp space. So my old collage populating scripts still work. So I do not need to add code toe test if the users is using Photoshop CC 14.2 or newer and have two place versions menu File>Place and menu File Place Embedded.... -
How can i automate .pdf output and organize by color/bw?
how can i "automate" multi-page .pdf output to preflight/imposition software workflow, organized by color/bw?
basically what i'm trying to do is create a simple output function from InDesign that allows the user to just export a multi-page .pdf into a hot folder and on through preflight and imposition software. i want to be able to tell the hot folder which pages are color -so it can separate, rename and direct color pages to a color queue and b/w pages to a b/w queue.
i've researched indesign distiller presets and the Acrobat JDF but the JDF isn't really meant for this exact purpose and doesn't help reduce the number of steps currently necessary to manually output/rename/etc.
is there another way that i can embed information into a .pdf that could be read by a hot folder?You might check out this third-party plug-in for InDesign. It may or may not help you (I've never used it). I just saw it on the new Adobe Exchange (beta in Adobe Labs). Here's the description:
Output Factory automates printing and exporting from Adobe InDesign. Export as single pages with variable file names, output layer versions, update modified links on the fly, preflight InDesign files before output, output to several format at once and much more.
Just select the documents, adjust settings and Output Factory will do the rest for you. Keep working with other programs while Output Factory processes InDesign files in the background. Or leave it working overnight to output hundreds of documents, and the job will be done when you return in the morning.
Key features:
• Output multiple InDesign files automatically
• Output as single pages
• Automate printing and exporting to PDF, PostScript, EPS, Flash, IDML, EPUB and several image formats
• Output files to multiple formats at once
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• Variable output file names
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• Supports books and booklet printing
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System Requirements:
- Adobe InDesign CS3-CS6
- Mac OS X 10.5 and later, Intel-based Mac -
Pages to ePub observations and hints
I've been experimenting with exporting ePubs. Here are some things I have have found that may help others.
These observations are based on Pages v4.1 and iBooks v2.0.1
These truths might be invalidated when new versions of Pages and/or iBooks appear.
There may be subtle distinctions and/or situations where these observations don't work as described. Or maybe for some of them, I have gotten close to the truth but not fully realized it completely yet. Experiment with them at your will.
1. Pages does not and will not insert any "page breaks" (or css causing that effect) in an ePub file per se. When exporting to ePub, Pages ignores any and all page breaks or section breaks you insert into a Pages document. Instead, it splits what it considers to be chapters each into separate xhtml files within the created ePub container. It seems that iBooks is hardcoded to automatically display each xhtml file beginning on a new "page."
2. According to Apple's "ePub Best Practices" document, Pages considers chapters to be delimited by instances of text of the style "Chapter Name". I have found that changing the name of that style does not effect the resulting ePub. Therefore, it is not the style's name that informs pages to use it as the chapter delimiter. Instead, I have found that Pages will look at all the styles you have marked as to be included in the TOC (hereafter called "TOC-included-styles"). Whichever one of these happens to be used first in the document, will be the style that Pages will use to parse chapters, unless the first TOC-included-style used is named "Chapter Number". In this case, that instance of "Chapter Number" is skipped over when considering the style to use as chapter delimiter, and the next TOC-included-style found will be used.
3. Unlike "Chapter Name", the style named "Chapter Number" is required be to named "Chapter Number". This style further affects the splitting of the xhtml files, and therefore, iBook's rendering of "page breaks". An exported ePub will normally be split into xhtml files at the first character of all instances of "Chapter Name". A document that also includes any "Chapter Number" instances will be split at the first character of those instances. The rule, in plain english, would be: split into xhtml files at instances of 'Chapter Name', but if any particular 'Chapter Name' instance has a 'Chapter Number' instance before it, back up and make the split immediately before that 'Chapter Number'. If a "Chapter Name" instance has more than one instance of "Chapter Number" before it, the split will happen at the earliest instance of "Chapter Number" until a previous "Chapter Name" is found. If the last "Chapter Name" instance in a document has any "Chapter Number" instances after it, there will be no split at those "Chapter Number" instances. Any other styles in between any of these instances are preserved, so you could have a new page in iBooks with a chapter number, followed by some text, then the chapter's name. If you rename the "Chapter Number" style to something else, it is then considered like any other style and has no affect on resulting ePub structure.
4. If you insert a TOC into your Pages document, it is ignored for ePub export. The TOC created in an ePub will include whatever styles are checked in the Document->TOC inspector. The ePub TOCs as generated by Pages seem to have only two levels of indentation. The high level is the chapter level, as described above, whatever TOC-included-style appears first in the document will be the chapter delimiter and be the least indented level of the TOC. All other TOC-included-styles, no matter what they are named or how they are configured in Pages, will be placed at indent level two in the resulting ePub's TOC. So, a style does not need to be named "Heading" to be included in the ePub TOC, it just needs to be a TOC-included-style.
5. You can add however many images you want to a chapter, but if the combined file size of the images in that chapter add to more than 1Mb, then the resulting ePub will not display any of the images which cause the size of that chapter to surpass 1Mb.
6. There is talk that a "magic" resolution for images is 600x860 in order to have them occupy a full "page" in the resulting ePub. I have found that any image whose pixel resolution fills the iBooks page viewport will do that, if the image is also set to cause wrap-with-clear-space on the left and/or right. The iBooks viewport seems to be 368x569 pixels when the iPad is held in landscape orientation. So in other words, no matter how large your image is, when viewing on the iPad in landscape mode, it will be at the most 368x569 physical iPad pixels. Therefore it seems to me, if you only wanted to view a book in landscape mode, you could make all your images exactly 368x569, and not larger, making the resultant ePub file as small as possible. But you'd probably want to design the book for portrait mode as well. In portrait mode, the viewport seems to be 547x???. Where I have not taken the time to deduce the exact vertical viewport dimension, but I know it is close to 780px, either way, the image can be smaller than 600x860. iBooks will shrink any image larger than the viewport at hand (portrait or landscape) to fit the viewport. If the aspect ratio of the image differs greatly from the viewport, the image will appear "letterboxed" because the aspect ratio of the image is maintained as it is shrunk to fit the page's viewport.
7. The margins of your Pages document, whether they be document-wide margins, or margins within a section, don't seem to affect the resulting ePub. The document-wide-margins and the layout-margins (in a section) can be set to zero. The on-the-ruler margins can be at the edges of the "paper." Extranious tabs on the rulers can affect things. I find it is best to drag all tab stops off the rulers.
8. Tables are problematic. They are not good constructs to put in ePubs. Pages will dimension tables/columns width based on percentages. So if the overall width of your table drawn in Pages happens to be 50% the width of the "paper", then in iBooks on the iPad, the table will be 50% of the width of iPad's page viewport. An 8.5x11 "sheet" of paper shown in Pages is typically defined as 612 pixels wide* (change your Pages ruler units preferences to Points to verify, the Document inspector will show the page size in pixels). So if you draw your table half the width of that sheet, you get a table 306px wide in Pages. That's pretty good, you can fit a bit of text in a table that wide. But now you export to ePub, and since the iPad's (landscape) viewport is only 368 pixels wide, your resulting table is 50% of that, or 184px wide. Since the size of the text hasn't changed much, now everything is wrapping and going crazy. Column widths are also generated as percentages of the table's width, so a column that fits its content nicely in Pages is now too narrow in the ePub. Confusion ensues. Incidentally, the above assumes your document left and right margins are set to zero, if not, the percentage of width is calculated between the margins, not the edges of the page. What you can do is make the table 100% of the width of the page, in that case the resulting table in the ePub will always be 100% of the width of the page viewport on the iPad. For a bit of left and right margin, you can throw in an empty column to the left and an empty column to the right of your table's content, then shut off the border lines for those side columns so they aren't seen. This won't solve your problems, but might take some of the pain away. If a user cranks the font size up as high as it will go on the iPad, no table remains standing.
* if you do any measuring with on-screen rulers, make sure you set Page's zoom to 100% first, as it defaults to 125%!
9. If you want to get a clue as to how your book will flow on the iPad (in landscape mode for example), you can temporarily set your document's Page Size to be 368x569 pixels (will all margins set to zero). You set Page Size and Margins in pixels (in inspector) by first changing the ruler units to Points in Page's settings. Be careful though, it's an approximate result, not exact WYSIWYG, the words won't end up exactly where you see them.
10. If you have read thus far, you probably already know that the first (on-screen) page of a Pages document can be used to automatically create the ePub's cover image upon export. As mentioned elsewhere on the 'net, floating images can be used on this first page (if they are used elsewhere they are ignored). I have found that shapes, specifically floating shapes can be used on the first page as well. You can even use background shapes! This unlocks the door to creating some truly nice covers with a minimum of work. I have here attached an image of a cover I created in just a couple of minutes without using Photoshop or any other image editor, just Pages. I will describe below how it is done
All the objects on the first page (shown above) is set to floating or background, therefore, you need to move the inline text to the next page. You can do this by inserting a section break. You can see it in the upper left corner. That forces all the text to be shuttled off to next page, out of the way.
First I created the swirly pattern background. To do so, create a box shape on the page and immediately set its Placement properties to "in background". Keep "background objects selectable" and resize it to cover the entire page. Remove any border or shadow from it. Then set its Fill to any seamless pattern you like. Keep the pattern pixel dimensions small so as not to create a large ePub. This particular swirly pattern I created very quickly for free at patterncooler dot com. Set the fill properties to "Tile" so that your pattern is tiled throughout the whole box shape. Now you can uncheck "background objects selectable" so that you can work on top of it without disturbing it.
The size of the pattern repeat itself is important to consider. The book cover will be seen in two places: on iBook's bookshelf (small), and opposite the table of contents in the book itself if the iPad is held in landscape mode. If the size of the repeat is too small, then you cant really make out the pattern in the bookshelf icon because the whole cover has been shrunk down, if the repeat is too large, it might look nice on the bookshelf but funny opposite the TOC. You'll have to experiment, but the repeat used in this example is a good compromise.
Next the brown spine down the left hand side is another box shape. This one's placement is set to "floating". Stretch it to the edges of the page. I filled this one with a subtle gradient to give it a slightly 3 dimensional look. Remember that iBooks will overlay shade an indentation along the left edge to appear as a crease. So dont make it too dark. Remove any border from this box, but give it a shadow on the right, just enought to make it appear affixed on the book. I used shadow settings of Offset 1pt, Blur 6pt, Opacity 75% at an angle of 323. Too much offset or blur ruins the effect. You want it to appear as a very thin layer adhesed to the "book". As for colors, use the eyedropper on the color inspector to pick colors from the background pattern, this will make it "work together" if you are color challenged.
The stitching on the right edge of the spine shape is a simple line shape 2 pts wide. Properties are: dotted, with a very slight shadow (2,4,85%,315). You can use the "bring forward" or "send backward" commands if the stack order gets mixed up.
Next add the Title and Author boxes. They are simple floating box shapes with color fill, and simple black border of 3px. Page's pop-up alignment guides will help you center them in the page. There is no shadow for these boxes as they (here) are supposed to mimic a printed and not a physical adhesion. Instead of a line border, you can also apply Page's "picture frame borders. I went crazy with those, but ultimately came back to the simple line border.
If you want to make these "adhesions" there are lots of nice paper textures on the 'net you can use as fill.
Finally you see there is a slight highlight on the top edge of the book and slight shadow along the right and bottom edge. These make the cover seem to have rounded edges, they give it a 3D appearance. To create the right hand "round over" draw a line-shape the height of the page. Make it 5px wide, and give it shadow properties of 5,4,50%,142. Next you have to move it so that it is slightly off the paper and thus not seen, but close enough that it's shadow is still seen. To move it, you can use a combination of the mouse, the arrow buttons on the keyboard, and/or the position inspector pane. In my example, the page is 600px wide, and the line sits at the 601px location. Be careful about moving shapes off the page, as you can "lose" them. Oddly enough, there is no way to see and/or find shapes that are "off page" (that I know of anyway). If you lose a shape off the page, you have to draw selection boxes blindly, until you stumble upon the shape again. It seems a way to hide content if one so desired.
For the bottom edge of the book, do the same thing with a horizontal line. Shadow angle in my example is the same 142 degrees.
For the top edge, do the same except make the shadow color white. (5,5,50%,270). This shape is hard to select once you have it offscreen. If you want to select it, you might have to move the background and right edge shadow out of the way first. Then draw a small box at the top right corner of the page until you hit it.
And one last detail, you might notice my page size is 600x860px (8.333in x 11.944in). This is because I think this aspect ratio is shaped more like a novel than than 8.5x11in (612x792px). The latter is squarer, and more the shape of a text book.
I hope this stuff has been useful to you.
DaveThank you for sharing such an informative post! I'd like to offer one small correction.
My company publishes children's picture storybooks in print. These are edge to edge full color pages for those who may not be familiar with this format. Our early ePub's were always disappointing in that we could not duplicate the print format without showing considerable white margins on an e-reader. We have since solved that problem in order to achieve the maximum image size. There will always be some amount of white margin in ePub format, but our image output now nearly fills the screen of any e-reader.
The 600X860 resolution is correct in order to achieve a wall to wall ePub image. The image must be created at that resolution for insertion into the document, and the page setup must also be set at the same dimension, which in inches is 8.333X11.944. You cannot, for example, use a smaller size image and drag it with constrained proportions to fill the viewport at the 600X860 resolution. The exported ePub file recognizes the portion of the image that is beyond the margins of the viewport and it will show up in an e-reader with a large white bottom margin.
Dragging a smaller image than the 600X860 resolution to fill the viewport with unconstrained proportions will work, but of course distorts the image. So, create your images at 600X860, insert them into your doc, export to ePub and you will be happy, happy, happy! -
Pages to ePub: TOC and Title Page
Hello everyone... please help! I'm pulling my hair out.
When exporting from Pages to ePub, I'm having two issues:
1- The Title Page (which is page 1 and has been selected as the cover of the book) does not appear or appears blank. What do I have to do to make it appear?
2- I hear in all forums the need to build a TOC in addition to the one ePub already creates and that appears on the left hand side when the file is opened using an ebook reader. Can anyone please tell me why I have to do this and most importantly HOW to do it?
Thank you very much!!Thank you for sharing such an informative post! I'd like to offer one small correction.
My company publishes children's picture storybooks in print. These are edge to edge full color pages for those who may not be familiar with this format. Our early ePub's were always disappointing in that we could not duplicate the print format without showing considerable white margins on an e-reader. We have since solved that problem in order to achieve the maximum image size. There will always be some amount of white margin in ePub format, but our image output now nearly fills the screen of any e-reader.
The 600X860 resolution is correct in order to achieve a wall to wall ePub image. The image must be created at that resolution for insertion into the document, and the page setup must also be set at the same dimension, which in inches is 8.333X11.944. You cannot, for example, use a smaller size image and drag it with constrained proportions to fill the viewport at the 600X860 resolution. The exported ePub file recognizes the portion of the image that is beyond the margins of the viewport and it will show up in an e-reader with a large white bottom margin.
Dragging a smaller image than the 600X860 resolution to fill the viewport with unconstrained proportions will work, but of course distorts the image. So, create your images at 600X860, insert them into your doc, export to ePub and you will be happy, happy, happy!
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