Morning, Noon & Night
* * * MORE VIOVIO STUFF, OCT. 2nd * * *
As far as I can figure, there’s no way to use the VioVio bookmaker without it resizing your jpgs. That is hard to believe but to the best of my knowledge true. Now remember, I’m working on the 7 x 9 inch book. During the bookmaking process, if you select “Without Titles” then a file with an 7 inch width (landscape) goes to about 8 inches. It’s based on the aspect ratio of the file and the margins. If you were doing a larger book, say 8.5 x 11, it will stretch more if there’s no Title selected.
If the Title checkbox is selected, then you get a more reasonable rendition, but still not the exact same size as the file you uploaded.
And if you choose to add descriptions, then the image shrinks more.
It is possible to get the exact size, but you need to supply a PDF file to do this, in this case with the page at 9.25 x 7.25 (the .25 for the trim) - but frankly there’s a lot I don’t know about how their RIP will treat the file, and I can’t give instructions every time the book is ordered. For example, I took a PSD monochrome file and through Acrobat Distiller I created what seems to be a monochrome file, but I couldn’t for the life of me figure what the resolution was, or whether their RIP will treat it as a monochrome - or is it grayscale. It’s also a lot more work to convert each PSD to PDF.
Again - you can upload one entire PDF file - but every time you make a change, you’ll need to reload it.
Since I’m concerned about how the printer is going to deal with PDF files with grayscale images (will there be a color cast) - I should also say that you certainly can add single page PDF files. And this is what I’m going to do for the text portions. The grayscale image files should be fine. And hopefully the PDF with just typeface should be fine as well.
Some of my images were resized slightly in the first book I didn’t see any artifacts. At any rate, for this first book I’m going to do the images at about what I expect them to be rendered at, with titles, and leave it at that.
I also don’t see any method for numbering the pages.
Other discoveries: the DESCRIPTION field in their bookmaker accepts html and when the PDF preview is created, it renders fine. So the way to get a good text page up there is to create a small white grayscale image - say 1/4 x 1/4 of an inch. Upload that as your image, and then fill the description field with html code. You would need to upload a different white square file for each text page. So far it accepts tables, and most of the usual web fonts.
The TITLE field does not accept HTML.
Their is also a checkbox if you want all the left pages to be blank. But you do still pay for each of those white pages. What would be great would be if the description were automatically printed on the facing page. And of course if they wouldn’t resize your image unless it didn’t fit.
* * *
I don’t expect to be posting much here for a while. I’m already deep into producing the first book. Working title is now: MORNING, NOON & NIGHT, Images from New York.
It’s based on a phrase an old woman who used to live below me in the East Village yelled out the window whenever she heard the floorboards creak in my run-down apartment: “Morning, Noon and Night! You never stop, do you! All day and all night! Morning, Noon and Night!”
She was known in the neighborhood as the Morning, Noon and Night lady. Never seen. Always on edge. A character from a Poe story (pretty much any Poe story). But seemed like a good “voice” for a new york book. I never saw her. She never left the apartment. But her crazy voice came back to me a few nights ago.
Comments
Comment from dave
Time: September 29, 2007, 8:51 pm
Nick - you’re absolutely right. I wasn’t thinking when I wrote that. What I was / am concerned about is whether a PDF file will be interperted as a grayscale or not at the VioVio end. There’s a lot I don’t know about inDesign and somewhere on VioVio they say that the PDF will be interperted as RGB or CMYK. So the question is: is there a way to export a PDF page to a PSD file or JPG at 300 dpi from inDesign? I suppose there is - but when I exported to jpg it came out at 72 dpi. Maybe there’s a setting somewhere I’m missing. — DB
Comment from Nick
Time: September 29, 2007, 9:44 pm
Hmmm, I use Enfocus Pitstop to ensure that objects are grayscale within a PDF file, but this is an expensive option if you are not doing it regularly. There is a option in Acrobat Professional under Tools>Print Production>Convert Colours that will allow you to ensure you have generated a grayscale PDF. Having received the Grayscale PDF VioVio’s RIP on the iGen should interpret the file and print correctly using black toner only. If it does not then this is VioVios problem not yours (they could screw up a bunch of Jpgs when printing just as easily as a PDF - if fact I suspect you are more likely to have problems with the JPGs than the PDF as you are relying on someone to put the JPGs correctly into a document for printing/imposition)
The RIP also has a global grayscale option when printing - providing you job does not have any colour they you could ask VioVio to use this (you could also be cheeky and ask for a discount as this will save them money)
Forget the rastering option - the total filesize will be smaller and less prone to error with a PDF.
Comment from dave
Time: September 29, 2007, 9:53 pm
<p>Thanks Nick - I’m going to ask them about this. Their support has been very helpful so far.</p>
<p>This was the line on their site that had me wondering:</p>
<p>”We support PDF’s in the RGB and CMYK color space for your interior text block, however your cover needs to be RGB and should be uploaded as a separate file.”</p>
<p>http://www.viovio.com/wiki/index.php?structure_id=418</p>
Also this:
The best way to make a black and white print is to be sure all of your prints are in the “Grayscale” color space. The reason this is so important is that a color printer will not use a drop of color ink if the image is in Grayscale. However, if just one pixel is colored, then it will assume the whole image is colored, and use a combination of colors.
One kludge way of doing it is to simply copy the text from inDesign into a text box in a Photoshop document. The “vector” text remains as is.
Comment from Nick
Time: September 29, 2007, 10:19 pm
Yeah, double checking would be the go. The website, from the look I have had, has some inconsistent advice around colour. I am hoping that they don’t require you to supply an RGB file for the cover if you are putting a grayscale photo on it - otherwise there is a good chance it will be printed in CMYK and you will end up with colour inconsistency under different lighting (commonly called metamerism but if you are a colour geek then this is not the correct usage of the term 
I suspect that they may not have had a lot of people doing grayscale photobooks - hence the website advise is geared around colour.
Looking forward to hearing how you get on. Sing out if you want any files checked (5 years printing on digital gear and 5 years of working for a manufacturer of digital presses as a technical services consultant around digital output and colour management)
Oh, love the photography by the way - have been reading your RSS feed for a while. Usually not much of a commenter, but this post piqued my interest.
Comment from matt
Time: September 30, 2007, 3:09 pm
Dave, maybe you should get some leather work gloves, so that you don’t chew off all your fingernails during what may be the final Met game of 2007…
Comment from Stephen Bray
Time: October 1, 2007, 8:18 am
Very useful information about publishing, I am watching the ‘progress’ diligently. Thank you.
But I note that the last time you announced a break in posting here, (because you claimed you had run out of things to say), you were, thankfully, back within a week.
We must wait and see
Comment from Nick
Time: September 29, 2007, 8:39 pm
I wold be interested to hear your reasoning behind rasterining your text pages. I would strongly recommend keeping the text as vector for the book printing - you will get far better results printing vector text rather than raster text (especially JPG’s with nasty compression artifacts).