What size do most of you set your images at for ebooks?
I normally work based on the width of an image. If the image looks good at lower resolutions, I make it 600px wide at 72dpi.
Some images that I want to have blur less, I make 800px wide or even 1200px wide, depending on where it is used.
Due to many years of experience, I used to be confident in how my images would appear. Now, due to some recent reading and perhaps a change of devices out there, I am far less confident. The research I have done online, is VERY conflicting to say the least. Some stores and forums say that all images should be at least 1200px wide at 300dpi. I feel this is excessive, especially when there are many images in the book. Some of my books have over 400 images in them. I did a test for an image of 1200px x 900px at 300dpi. A jpeg would be about 250kb. If I had to use this as an average, a book with 400 images in them would be 400 x 250kb = 100mb for an ebook! Some would argue that a book of this nature should be fixed layout. The problem with fixed layout is that most stores do not accept them these days. It also means that text inside the book are rasterized and will pixelate when zooming in. The text will also not be scalable or interactive.
According to Amazon:
Kindle Create provides support for inserting, resizing, and deleting images. You can edit the size and alignment of your images with options based on professional book layouts. Kindle Create requires images in the JPG or PNG format and recommends at least 100 pixels on the longest side and 300 pixels per inch to ensure image clarity on Kindle HDX devices. Images inside a paragraph (inline images) can't be edited, but you can delete those images in the source and then insert them in Kindle Create.
I have compared to my books to some of my competitors. At least one best selling author is using the same approach. None of his images exceed 600px wide at 72 dpi. In fact, some of his images are even smaller. I am assuming he is catering for the typical ebook audience as well as to lower his delivery fees.
I always looked at my images on a couple of devices as well as test them in photoshop, kindle previewers, Calibre and Kindle for PC. I had a very "web-approach" as opposed to a "print-approach".
I guess it leads to the question if one should design ebooks for specific devices in mind. If readers are buying on Amazon, are they reading on kindle for PC, or on their phone? I am sure ebooks that has 1200px images inside them is less than ideal? And not everyone has a Kindle Fire HD. I am unsure how images of 600px wide will appear on HD devices. Will they scale (but blur) or will they appear too small on the screen?
I would appreciate your help!
Image px sizes and resolution for the general eBook audience?
What size do most of you set your images at for ebooks?
I normally work based on the width of an image. If the image looks good at lower resolutions, I make it 600px wide at 72dpi.
Some images that I want to have blur less, I make 800px wide or even 1200px wide, depending on where it is used.
Due to many years of experience, I used to be confident in how my images would appear. Now, due to some recent reading and perhaps a change of devices out there, I am far less confident. The research I have done online, is VERY conflicting to say the least. Some stores and forums say that all images should be at least 1200px wide at 300dpi. I feel this is excessive, especially when there are many images in the book. Some of my books have over 400 images in them. I did a test for an image of 1200px x 900px at 300dpi. A jpeg would be about 250kb. If I had to use this as an average, a book with 400 images in them would be 400 x 250kb = 100mb for an ebook! Some would argue that a book of this nature should be fixed layout. The problem with fixed layout is that most stores do not accept them these days. It also means that text inside the book are rasterized and will pixelate when zooming in. The text will also not be scalable or interactive.
According to Amazon:
Kindle Create provides support for inserting, resizing, and deleting images. You can edit the size and alignment of your images with options based on professional book layouts. Kindle Create requires images in the JPG or PNG format and recommends at least 100 pixels on the longest side and 300 pixels per inch to ensure image clarity on Kindle HDX devices. Images inside a paragraph (inline images) can't be edited, but you can delete those images in the source and then insert them in Kindle Create.
I have compared to my books to some of my competitors. At least one best selling author is using the same approach. None of his images exceed 600px wide at 72 dpi. In fact, some of his images are even smaller. I am assuming he is catering for the typical ebook audience as well as to lower his delivery fees.
I always looked at my images on a couple of devices as well as test them in photoshop, kindle previewers, Calibre and Kindle for PC. I had a very "web-approach" as opposed to a "print-approach".
I guess it leads to the question if one should design ebooks for specific devices in mind. If readers are buying on Amazon, are they reading on kindle for PC, or on their phone? I am sure ebooks that has 1200px images inside them is less than ideal? And not everyone has a Kindle Fire HD. I am unsure how images of 600px wide will appear on HD devices. Will they scale (but blur) or will they appear too small on the screen?
Bumping this. My epub file is already 20mb in size even though I am working at a much smaller px size as some sites suggest I use. My book is only about 40% complete! So far it has approximately 232 images. I hope ebook devices can cope with so many images in a book.
Stan123: We do lots of non-fiction w/many images. Yes...you are right the advice on this topic is either old or wrong. Realistically Amazon's recomendations are ridiculous for the reasons that a) If larger than 600px wide on a Kindle Fire or Paperwhite it will get downsized by their processing to those specs. Only if a viewer clicks on it will the full size appear.
b) too large or too high dpi images greatly swell your download size meaning a bigger 'download fee' out of your profits if you want to sell at the 70% royalty price points. Don't get me started on why Amazon still charges this B.S.-fee, it was supposed to be to just to support the 2G data access for how old school Kindle's could download books via cellular.
We use 600-700 wide max, at 96 dpi to keep our file sizes reasonable. Irfanview is our go-to tool to do batch conversions of higher resolution/larger images to Kindle specs. Also for finetuning individual images too, if you get an older copy (4.33 or earlier) that has the "Save for Web" feature which uses the RIOT optimizer Plug-In. It is the bomb for dialling down an image file size and giving you a before/after realtime view of the compression artifacting. This way you can judge by eye how far you can go without loss of quality.
Stan123: We do lots of non-fiction w/many images. Yes...you are right the advice on this topic is either old or wrong. Realistically Amazon's recomendations are ridiculous for the reasons that a) If larger than 600px wide on a Kindle Fire or Paperwhite it will get downsized by their processing to those specs. Only if a viewer clicks on it will the full size appear.
b) too large or too high dpi images greatly swell your download size meaning a bigger 'download fee' out of your profits if you want to sell at the 70% royalty price points. Don't get me started on why Amazon still charges this B.S.-fee, it was supposed to be to just to support the 2G data access for how old school Kindle's could download books via cellular.
Thank you Loosecannon and Omer for the referral to Irfanview I have checked out the link.
I do however not think the way I save my images (Adobe save for web + optimised settings) is a problem. My problem was rather choosing the ideal px size due to conflicting information out there. I really do not mind saving each image individually instead of doing it with let's say an action or batch editing. This is because I individually save images one by one as I often make decisions on each image. Some images I do not want to risk any resolution issues and do not mind a larger size. With those images, I go as high as 1200px. Kindle Create chapter start images need to be 2400px as far as I remember. With this book, I normally choose a 90% quality (10% compression) for a jpeg.
I am currently not publishing ebooks via Amazon. Do you have an opinion on pixel sizes for other distributors like Kobo or Apple?
We use 600-700 wide max, at 96 dpi to keep our file sizes reasonable. Irfanview is our go-to tool to do batch conversions of higher resolution/larger images to Kindle specs. Also for finetuning individual images too, if you get an older copy (4.33 or earlier) that has the "Save for Web" feature which uses the RIOT optimizer Plug-In. It is the bomb for dialling down an image file size and giving you a before/after realtime view of the compression artifacting. This way you can judge by eye how far you can go without loss of quality.
This was the kind of info I was looking for. You are confirming that my average size for my images are on the right track. Your image sizes are more in line as to what I use myself. The ridiculous requirements as mentioned on some websites, just did not add up. I do however lean more toward 72dpi with less optimization or a larger image size. My images currently range as low as 400px to 2400px, with my standard choice being 600px. Important images, especially ones that include captions and should be viewed full page, I choose higher resolutions, 800px or even 1200px. I choose smaller px sizes for images intended to be viewed smaller.
I hope I am on the right track. Either way, the book is already over 20mb and it's only halfway. Do you know how well devices in general cope with large epub's?
My reflowable ebook is almost complete and in the process of being read by my "editor". It currently contains between 450-500 images with a file size between 60-70mb. This is not an image only book. It has lots of text, but also has a lot of images. It reads fine on Calibre and Adobe Digital Editions as well as most previewers. There is however a delay before it opens up.
- Can anyone please tell me if this will be a problem for loading and reading on devices such as kobo readers, nook or even Kindles? I am not publishing with Amazon at this point in time, but I am getting mixed answers regarding file sizes for ebooks, especially for distributors such as Barnes & Noble.
- what is the largest reflowable ebook you have written?
Most ebook apps and devices load up entire HTML files at once, including resources like images. In most cases that means an entire chapter at a time is loaded into memory before anything is displayed. A very image-heavy chapter will tend to lag. How much will vary quite a bit by device. A very old e-ink device may chug quite a bit or even fail entirely. A very new tablet may not seem to lag at all.
What is your opinion on how a 60mb ebub would load in general? Is this size waaayyy out of the ordinary? Also, the book loads at different speeds on previewers on my pc. Kindle previewer 2 (that shows the book in old readers such as e-ink, kindle fire or ipad) loads fine, but I do not know whether it is running based on the speed of my ram. I have also purchased the book on Kobo and it loads fine on their server.
I guess I just have to accept the book the way it is and hope that most customers these days are happy with the loading speed. The book can have a slow loading time, I just hope the book won't crash on some devices. That would be a disaster.
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