How do I make an interactive ebook out of the 320 high resolution images I have.
January 23, 2012 12:58 PM Subscribe
I have several large sets of high resolution PNG images that I would like to be able to easily view on a computer as an ebook. I would like to be able to flick through the pages with ease, zoom in/out and jump to a page number. It needs to work cross platform (OSX, Windows) and ideally just link to the png files rather than embedding them into a big file. It needs to be easy to use and hard to break! I am sure that there must be something out there that can help, but I have drawn a blank. Oh - and free/cheap is a bonus.
Alternatively, you could convert the PNGs to single-page PDFs with bmeps, and then join them together using pdftk. Again, absurdly portable.
posted by scruss at 1:47 PM on January 23, 2012
posted by scruss at 1:47 PM on January 23, 2012
and ideally just link to the png files rather than embedding them into a big file.
Then you DON'T want an ebook? Or do you mean you want something more than a file you flip flip flip through - like say, an e-contact sheet or a table of contents with thumbnails? Because if you put them all in the ebook then, yes, it will be one big file.
Though you can certainly create an ebook that links to an external source, though that means you'll have to host those pictures somewhere that will be persistent.
If you want cross platform and free I assume you have access to a mac? Have you tried the new iBooks Author tool? It's free and the speculation is that the document it creates can simply be renamed and used as an ePub (if you don't use any of the special extensions).
If you want a detailed discussion of tools you can't do better than the forums at MobileRead.
posted by phearlez at 2:11 PM on January 23, 2012
Then you DON'T want an ebook? Or do you mean you want something more than a file you flip flip flip through - like say, an e-contact sheet or a table of contents with thumbnails? Because if you put them all in the ebook then, yes, it will be one big file.
Though you can certainly create an ebook that links to an external source, though that means you'll have to host those pictures somewhere that will be persistent.
If you want cross platform and free I assume you have access to a mac? Have you tried the new iBooks Author tool? It's free and the speculation is that the document it creates can simply be renamed and used as an ePub (if you don't use any of the special extensions).
If you want a detailed discussion of tools you can't do better than the forums at MobileRead.
posted by phearlez at 2:11 PM on January 23, 2012
Best answer: I'm not sure if there's a cross-platform option, but CDisplayEx will do this with a simple archive (rar, zip, etc--it uses the 7zip plugins) of your image files with no modification. It's intended to be used for reading scanned, archived comic books, so there's lots of ebook-like functionality adapted for use on fairly large images. It's also stable and unfussy to set up and use. I love it, but there may not be a OSX version/equivalent.
posted by pullayup at 2:14 PM on January 23, 2012
posted by pullayup at 2:14 PM on January 23, 2012
Best answer: What you are describing sounds a lot like a CBR or CBZ (rar-compressed or zip-compressed comic book format). To make one, you just rename each file to have the format booktitle01.png, booktitle02.png, etc, to assign page numbers, then zip or rar them, then change the dot extension to cbz or cbr.
There are a bunch of reader apps for all platforms out there, and in the worst case, you can rename the archive to .zip or .rar and extract it.
posted by adamrice at 2:30 PM on January 23, 2012 [3 favorites]
There are a bunch of reader apps for all platforms out there, and in the worst case, you can rename the archive to .zip or .rar and extract it.
posted by adamrice at 2:30 PM on January 23, 2012 [3 favorites]
Any gallery tool will accomplish some or all of this (for example).
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 3:16 PM on January 23, 2012
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 3:16 PM on January 23, 2012
Best answer: Agree that this sounds like a job for comic book reader formats. Original flavor CDisplay is still my fave, but any comic/sequential image viewer and many ebook readers will be able to handle the images from ZIP, RAR, CBZ, and CBR file formats.
Note for page formatting:
1) if using a Mac, make sure the .DS_Store file and thumbnail folder are removed from your zipped file
2) Ensure your image names match both sequentially and in length: 1.jpg, 22.jpg, 333.jpg may have a different display order than 001.jpg, 022.jpg, 333.jpg, and renaming hundreds of images later is annoying.
posted by nicebookrack at 6:52 PM on January 23, 2012
Note for page formatting:
1) if using a Mac, make sure the .DS_Store file and thumbnail folder are removed from your zipped file
2) Ensure your image names match both sequentially and in length: 1.jpg, 22.jpg, 333.jpg may have a different display order than 001.jpg, 022.jpg, 333.jpg, and renaming hundreds of images later is annoying.
posted by nicebookrack at 6:52 PM on January 23, 2012
Response by poster: The comic book format is exactly what I needed, even allowing quick replacement of pictures within it. Thanks!
posted by Morsey at 2:22 AM on January 24, 2012
posted by Morsey at 2:22 AM on January 24, 2012
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by scruss at 1:41 PM on January 23, 2012