BookSmart
Lossless image import into BookSmart?I have a series of decently intricate images that appear in my book, and I am concerned about introducing compression artifacts when importing into BookSmart, e.g., if the graphics get converted to JPGs. In particular, my graphics look unacceptably degraded in BookSmart (both edit and preview modes). When looking at the actual BookSmart files for my project, I see that there are copies of my graphics named xyz.original and xyz.screen, etc. Does Blurb start from the .original versions of the files when prodcuing the printed book? Before moving the grahics into BookSmart, they are saved from Photoshop as (lossless) PNG-24 images at 300dpi and with the recommended dimensions of the book format. If Blurb uses these "original" versions in producing the book, I should be good to go. But, if what I see on the screen in BookSmart is the quality of what will appear on the page, then I am stuck.
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I have the same problem, I am waiting for Blurb to allow us to send PDF files instead of sending through Booksmart. |
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While I also would want the choice of sending in a PDF, I think BookSmart is pretty handy if it produces the book using the lossless versions of my files. I hope someone from Blurb can comment on this, because I really need to know: does Blurb use the "original" quality images or lossy / derrivative versions from BookSmart when producing the printed book? |
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Can anyone please clarify this issue?! |
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To clarify we do use the original quality images when producing the printed book. The screen version is used only in the BookSmart presentation and is chosen b/c of performance concerns, a common method in desktop publishing software. In most instances, the differences between screen and originals are not noticeable. That said this interpolation for screen will be more pronounced on hard edges, such as are found in type and graphic illustration, which I imagine may be the case for you jayf. This has been improved in 1.9 release, but we recognize it can still use some improvement. Regarding PDF upload: We are looking into other formats though. For now, BookSmart does accept JPG, GIF, and PNG files. If you want some tips on how to import your custom designs into BookSmart, including some PDF workarounds FAQ: Can I import my own design into BookSmart? Blog Post: Importing PDFs: Export your layout from Adobe CS3 into BookSmart
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Many thanks, I’ve just looked at the preview of my book and could see artefacts. But that’s not what will be printed. Good. Thanks for clearing this up. |
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To know the origian file is used is great. Maybe this should be in the FAQs! :) But is does make be ask again about the size of the upload. The project directory for my 280 page book is 4.5GB. If there are no extra images, is this the size of my upload? John |
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Hey John, I was also worried about the size of my download as my directory had grown to 1GB. When I downloaded for a test print it took about 260MB to transfer it to Blurb. So you may get a similar reduction in size. Hope you have a fast link, mine took 3 hours to download, but it worked first time. |
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Scrappy, thanks for the clarification. I sent an incident report to General Support earlier today and got a reply that basically said that I should order a "trial" copy of my book just to make sure it looks okay because that the only way to know for sure that my images weren’t degraded by Booksmart. My book will cost close to $100 so that’s a pretty expensive "trial"! As has been mentioned by others, I have unacceptable jpeg artifacts appearing on my images but my originals are crisp and clean. As long as Blurb uses my originals, I’m comfortable remaining a Blurb customer. For what it’s worth, I have version 1.9 on my PC and 1.8 on my laptop. When I put them side by side, I can clearly see that the quality of the displayed images is horribly degraded in the new version. Thanks for your earlier response here. Donna |
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