These are Blurb's recommendations for images used in BookSmart.
File type = JPG or PNG
Use only JPG (or JPEG) or PNG image files.
- JPG is fine for most images.
- Use PNG if your image contains text or line art, like scans or photographs of printed matter or architectural plans.
- If you use use PNGs they should be 8-bit and non-interlaced.
- No TIFF, EPS, PDF, PICT, BMP, RAW or GIF files.
Color space = RGB
If you have no idea what color space is, no need to worry about it. For those who care about color space:
- Images should be in RGB or Grayscale (sRGB is recommended, and is the default color space for most digital images).
- Do not use CMYK images.
- If an image turns black when you drag it into BookSmart, it's probably a CMYK image and needs to be changed to sRGB.
Image resolution between 150 dpi and 300 dpi
If you see a low resolution warning, you need to make the image smaller on the page or use a different image altogether. There are no other ways around this.
- The resolution of images loaded into BookSmart should be 150 dpi minimum; 300 dpi maximum.
- JPGs straight from a camera are generally fine as they are and don't need to be made smaller. The only time you may need to resize an image is when placing a very large image into a much smaller container, or placing many large images on a single page.
- Artificially increasing the DPI/PPI of a low-res image (from 150ppi to 300ppi, for example) in a photo editing program is not recommended. Doing so does not actually improve the printed results. It may fool BookSmart into thinking the image is OK, but the printed result probably won't look very good.
Image size < 30MB
- Individual images should be smaller than 30MB in size.
- The width of vertically oriented images should be less than 4000 pixels. The height should also be less than 4000 pixels.
- Adding images that exceed these size limits may slow BookSmart's performance and cause upload problems.