Issues involved in using grayscale pics in inner content of Print-On-Demand books; Some interesting tips
Last updated on 18th May 2019
The first paperback (printed) book I self-published was with Print-On-Demand method of self-publication, and so is this second book (part autobio). The first book had no pics in the inner content of the book. This second book has grayscale pics (color pics converted to grayscale) in inner content of book.
Note that we are talking of the case of 70-80 GSM normal paper being used for printing inner content of book. Bond paper is more expensive.
I had thought, rather naively it seems now, that what I see in the PDF file that I submit to the self-publishing platform company (Pothi.com in my case), will be what I get or close to what I get in the printed book. [WYSIWIG, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WYSIWYG, was a well known acronym in my software industry days when I was dealing with software design and development on Graphical User Interface (GUI) software systems.]
With the first autobio paperback book delivery, I have got exposed to some tough issues when it comes to including images in inner content of books that are printed using Print-On-Demand method. It is clear that some images are printed decently looking quite similar to how they appear in the PDF file, but there are some images that are printed with dark shadows that make them look unpleasant and are very different from how they appear in the PDF.
As examples of both decent printing of images and bad printing of images, I have included some pics below of the printed images and of how they appear in PDF delivered to Pothi.com to be used for printing the book.
[To open pic in larger resolution, right-click on pic followed by open link (NOT image) in new tab/window. In new tab/window you may have to click on pic to zoom in.]
And here's how it looks in Pothi.com Store PDF preview:
The PDF screenshot has a clearer/cleaner pic. But the dark shades in the printed page in paperback copy are not so visible and so the printed image looks quite pleasant to the reader.
Given below is a pic I have taken of pages 104-105 from the paperback copy:
Let us compare it with screenshots I took from the preview pages of the paperback book on Pothi.com (currently it is private and so I can view it but others outside Pothi.com cannot view it):
Shown below: Zoomed Out pic of Pages 104 & 105 in Pothi.com Store PDF preview
Shown below: Zoomed In pic of Page 104 in Pothi.com Store PDF preview
Shown below: Zoomed In pic of Page 105 in Pothi.com Store PDF preview
From the comparison, it is clear that dark shades in the images printed in the paperback copy are NOT present in the PDF file preview screenshots. Note that this is the same PDF file that is used as input to print the paperback book.
There are other cases of dark shades being introduced in the printed images in the book. Such printed pages are not so pleasant to look at.
When I discussed the matter with a laser printer/xerox shop guy in Puttaparthi, he told me that camera pics of documents get printed that way (badly with dark shadows). Note that most, if not all, of the pics that are printed badly in the paperback book are of documents whose pics I had taken with my low-cost LYF smartphone. But pics of some documents, e.g. some passport pages, taken with the same LYF low-cost smartphone have come out decently in the printed paperback book!
The Puttaparthi laser printer shop guy told me that I should instead scan the documents. He has a scanner too in his shop. I plan to explore this option and try to compare printout quality using his laser printer itself. Laser printer output will be lesser quality, I think, than digital (book) printer output used by Pothi.com's printer-partner, but I think I may get some idea of any improvement in printed pic quality from laser printer output itself.
On browsing the net for this problem, I came across this interesting article: 24 Practical Tips for Using Photos in your Print on Demand Books, https://www.thebookdesigner.com/2011/02/24-practical-tips-for-using-photos-in-your-print-on-demand-books/, dated Feb. 2011.
In point 1 of the article, it says that in the past photos (pics) used to be printed on special paper in the center sections of books. But now (article is dated Feb. 2011), technology has enabled us to print pics on any page! [Ravi: I think this fits in with my experience of reading books over the past four to five decades.]
In point 3, it says that pic reproduction in a Print-On-Demand (POD) book is unpredictable! Some pics will get printed well but some, even after tweaking, will look mediocre at best. It then provides what seems to be valuable advice for a guy like me: "Settle for “good enough,” and delete the really bad ones. Although it’s best to eliminate or replace sub-par photos if you can, the less-than-optimum (i.e., crappy but necessary) photographs will look less crappy if you keep them as small as possible."
Hmm. So that's what I have got to do! Try some tweaking and if the images don't print out well enough, be prepared to drop them completely or have a small pic of it, if it is really necessary to retain in the book.
Point 5 says that pic quality for laser-printed POD books will not be as good as offset printed books on better quality paper. Hmm. That's an interesting point. In the same point, it says that there will be variations in pic print quality from (print) run to run! So it advises the self-publisher author to buy a copy of one's book every few months from the self-publisher/printer and complain if the quality is bad!
Point 15 recommends using TIF format for grayscale pics instead of JPG.
Point 16 advises to check that scanners are set to scan at 300 DPI if one is using scanned images. It also advises using TIF instead of JPG format for scanned images.
Point 23 states that most LCD monitors cannot display full range of colours (perhaps includes grayscale colours) that a printer can print. So something that looks perfect on LCD monitor may print badly on a printer (as the printer sees the colours that the LCD monitor did not). Hmm. Is this why I don't see the dark shadows on images in the PDF file on my LCD monitor but those dark shadows are printed in the book? Apparently CRT monitors may be better that LCD monitors for showing such colours (including grayscale colours).
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This is another interesting link with some discussion on this matter: http://connect.lulu.com/en/discussion/347154/pictures-inside-books.
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18th May 2019 update:
I got a mail response from Pothi.com that I could replace all images in my book with 300 DPI images. I responded that I was given this instruction by Pothi.com earlier and I have followed it. All the images in the PDF submitted to Pothi.com book submit page are 300 DPI (and converted to Grayscale). There does not seem to be an easy way to check the DPI once the picture is inserted in the Word document or in the generated PDF file. But I am sure that it is 300 DPI images as I had taken a lot of effort and care in this regard, and it took a lot of time to prepare the images and then replace the colour images in the original Word document for ebook with these 300 DPI Grayscale images in the paperback Word document.
I also sent them the 300 DPI images for pages 104 and 105 (which is the problem example case I had shared with them).
I suggested to them to take these two 300 DPI images and insert into a Word document (of 2 pages), produce a PDF output from it (2 pages) and then print the PDF. Then we can see whether the same dark shadows that appear in the printed paperback copy, appear in the print output of these images. If so, then we will know that these 300 DPI images do ***NOT*** solve the problem, and we need to explore other ways of solving the problem (using scanned images for those 300 DPI images that have got printed with dark shadows) OR if we don't get a solution then I can drop these pics that do not print well, from the paperback book.
When I discussed the matter with a laser printer/xerox shop guy in Puttaparthi, he told me that camera pics of documents get printed that way (badly with dark shadows). Note that most, if not all, of the pics that are printed badly in the paperback book are of documents whose pics I had taken with my low-cost LYF smartphone. But pics of some documents, e.g. some passport pages, taken with the same LYF low-cost smartphone have come out decently in the printed paperback book!
The Puttaparthi laser printer shop guy told me that I should instead scan the documents. He has a scanner too in his shop. I plan to explore this option and try to compare printout quality using his laser printer itself. Laser printer output will be lesser quality, I think, than digital (book) printer output used by Pothi.com's printer-partner, but I think I may get some idea of any improvement in printed pic quality from laser printer output itself.
On browsing the net for this problem, I came across this interesting article: 24 Practical Tips for Using Photos in your Print on Demand Books, https://www.thebookdesigner.com/2011/02/24-practical-tips-for-using-photos-in-your-print-on-demand-books/, dated Feb. 2011.
In point 1 of the article, it says that in the past photos (pics) used to be printed on special paper in the center sections of books. But now (article is dated Feb. 2011), technology has enabled us to print pics on any page! [Ravi: I think this fits in with my experience of reading books over the past four to five decades.]
In point 3, it says that pic reproduction in a Print-On-Demand (POD) book is unpredictable! Some pics will get printed well but some, even after tweaking, will look mediocre at best. It then provides what seems to be valuable advice for a guy like me: "Settle for “good enough,” and delete the really bad ones. Although it’s best to eliminate or replace sub-par photos if you can, the less-than-optimum (i.e., crappy but necessary) photographs will look less crappy if you keep them as small as possible."
Hmm. So that's what I have got to do! Try some tweaking and if the images don't print out well enough, be prepared to drop them completely or have a small pic of it, if it is really necessary to retain in the book.
Point 5 says that pic quality for laser-printed POD books will not be as good as offset printed books on better quality paper. Hmm. That's an interesting point. In the same point, it says that there will be variations in pic print quality from (print) run to run! So it advises the self-publisher author to buy a copy of one's book every few months from the self-publisher/printer and complain if the quality is bad!
Point 15 recommends using TIF format for grayscale pics instead of JPG.
Point 16 advises to check that scanners are set to scan at 300 DPI if one is using scanned images. It also advises using TIF instead of JPG format for scanned images.
Point 23 states that most LCD monitors cannot display full range of colours (perhaps includes grayscale colours) that a printer can print. So something that looks perfect on LCD monitor may print badly on a printer (as the printer sees the colours that the LCD monitor did not). Hmm. Is this why I don't see the dark shadows on images in the PDF file on my LCD monitor but those dark shadows are printed in the book? Apparently CRT monitors may be better that LCD monitors for showing such colours (including grayscale colours).
-----
This is another interesting link with some discussion on this matter: http://connect.lulu.com/en/discussion/347154/pictures-inside-books.
=================================================
18th May 2019 update:
I got a mail response from Pothi.com that I could replace all images in my book with 300 DPI images. I responded that I was given this instruction by Pothi.com earlier and I have followed it. All the images in the PDF submitted to Pothi.com book submit page are 300 DPI (and converted to Grayscale). There does not seem to be an easy way to check the DPI once the picture is inserted in the Word document or in the generated PDF file. But I am sure that it is 300 DPI images as I had taken a lot of effort and care in this regard, and it took a lot of time to prepare the images and then replace the colour images in the original Word document for ebook with these 300 DPI Grayscale images in the paperback Word document.
I also sent them the 300 DPI images for pages 104 and 105 (which is the problem example case I had shared with them).
I suggested to them to take these two 300 DPI images and insert into a Word document (of 2 pages), produce a PDF output from it (2 pages) and then print the PDF. Then we can see whether the same dark shadows that appear in the printed paperback copy, appear in the print output of these images. If so, then we will know that these 300 DPI images do ***NOT*** solve the problem, and we need to explore other ways of solving the problem (using scanned images for those 300 DPI images that have got printed with dark shadows) OR if we don't get a solution then I can drop these pics that do not print well, from the paperback book.
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