Thanks Thanks:  0
Likes Likes:  0
Needs Pictures Needs Pictures:  0
Picture(s) thanks Picture(s) thanks:  0
Page 1 of 2 12 LastLast
Results 1 to 15 of 21
  1. #1
    Join Date
    Jan 2006
    Location
    Paradise on the Murray
    Age
    57
    Posts
    646

    Default Putting together a book

    Hi All,

    I am putting together a book on the 25 year of our rugby club in microsoft word.
    The file is becoming very large hence it takes ages to load and scroll through because of all the text and pictures.

    Word Help is telling me to reduce the resolution of the pictures but I dont know how far I can reduce them and maintain enough quality?

    I expect to finish up with about 300 pages and 150 to 200 photographs, any tips on handling a document this size would be appreciated.
    Cheers,

    Howdya

    Proudly supporting research into the therapeutic benefits of the Friday Thread

  2. # ADS
    Google Adsense Advertisement
    Join Date
    Always
    Location
    Advertising world
    Age
    2010
    Posts
    Many





     
  3. #2
    Join Date
    Feb 2003
    Location
    Garvoc VIC AUSTRALIA
    Posts
    11,464

    Default

    break the chapters up into separate documents
    Regards, Bob Thomas

    www.wombatsawmill.com

  4. #3
    Join Date
    Oct 2005
    Location
    Adelaide
    Posts
    1,024

    Default

    Bob is right.

    The last thing you want to do is to start trashing the resolution of the photos.

    Word bogs down on big docs, programs like Pagemaker and Quark Express would be the go, but they cost a lot.

    woodbe.

  5. #4
    Join Date
    Aug 2003
    Location
    Wodonga
    Age
    59
    Posts
    707

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by Howdya do that View Post

    Word Help is telling me to reduce the resolution of the pictures but I dont know how far I can reduce them and maintain enough quality?

    I expect to finish up with about 300 pages and 150 to 200 photographs, any tips on handling a document this size would be appreciated.
    From a printing point of view it would be best if you went and spoke to the printers you will be using before too much longer. I manage a prepress department for a reasonable size printer, and one of the biggest problems we have is clients turning up with a document that has taken them mega hours to produce, only to find that it is next to useless.

    I would expect that your book would be case bound, and printed on a good quality stock, a similar example which we are producing 1500 copies of with around 400 pages will end up costing around $30,000 ($20 each) to manufacture.

    DO NOT reduce resolution of pics. They should be 300dpi at 100%. Enlarging pics in word has the same effect as reducing resolution, so a 300dpi pic placed at 200% has an effective resolution of 150dpi.

    Your printer may also require the file to be supplied as a PDF, this can create some problems, but can also eliminate a lot of problems.

    By having a chat to them as early as you can, you will find that you could possibly save yourself a lot of heart ache and time, and possibly a few $$$ as well.

    IF you want to PM me I will try to answer as many of your questions as I can, but NOTHING beats talking to the printers who will be doing your job.

    Good Luck with it, I know how much effort is involved in this type of project.

  6. #5
    Join Date
    Nov 2006
    Location
    Bendigo Victoria
    Age
    80
    Posts
    16,560

    Default

    From an editing point of view, echnidna has the right idea. Break it up into chapters, much easier to handle that way.

  7. #6
    Join Date
    Oct 2002
    Location
    NSW
    Posts
    1,610

    Default

    Use styles!

    I did quite a few theses for students in my early IT days, and found that getting my head around Styles was the biggest time, effort and sanity saver!

    Big documents can be handled by "master documents" and "subdocuments".

    I'll butt out about the pictures, as you're already getting better and more specific help than I could give.

    But, I'll jump up and down about Styles being A Good Thing.

    And, two reference books that I highly recommend are:

    "The PC is not a Typewriter"
    and
    the NSW Govt Style Guide.

    Cheers,
    Andrew

  8. #7
    Join Date
    Feb 2003
    Location
    Garvoc VIC AUSTRALIA
    Posts
    11,464

    Default

    If your printer wants your document in PDF,
    download a copy of Open Office, its FREE,
    and you can save in PDF as well as Word Doc Format.
    It will open woprd docs too so you won't have to duplicate the work you have done.
    Regards, Bob Thomas

    www.wombatsawmill.com

  9. #8
    Join Date
    Oct 2003
    Location
    Kentucky NSW near Tamworth, Australia
    Age
    85
    Posts
    3,737

    Default

    If you want to create PDF documents without Adobe go here. http://www.cutepdf.com/

  10. #9
    Join Date
    May 2005
    Location
    Magill, Adelaide
    Age
    59
    Posts
    1,537

    Default

    Indesign is worth a look. It is part of the Adobe Creative Suite but I've heard has for several years now been the software of choice over Quark for putting books together.

    Studley
    Aussie Hardwood Number One

  11. #10
    Join Date
    Jan 2006
    Location
    Paradise on the Murray
    Age
    57
    Posts
    646

    Default

    Thanks All,

    I have spoken to a printer and got it sorted.
    It will need to be in pdf format - I have acrobat writer
    He said to make the pictures low res in the document and provide copies on disk.

    Thanks again
    Cheers,

    Howdya

    Proudly supporting research into the therapeutic benefits of the Friday Thread

  12. #11
    Join Date
    Dec 2005
    Location
    Canberra
    Posts
    3,260

    Default

    With the pictures, it is imperative that you have sufficient resolution - otherwise your pics will get printed and look all "blocky".

    In Windows, the way to tell the maximum printed size of a pic is to wait for the little information box to appear when you mouse-over it.

    This box will show the dimensions (in pixels) of the image. Divide these numbers by 300, to get the maximum size in inches that the pic can be printed in.

    In the example below, the dimensions are 3,456 x 2,304 pixels - this means the maximum size it can be printed in is 11.5 x 7.6 inches, or just a bit smaller than A4 size.

    My quick rule of thumb is that any jpg that's smaller than about 500k in file size won't be any good for commercial print (unless its going to be passport pic sized).

  13. #12
    Join Date
    Apr 2000
    Location
    Geelong South
    Age
    74
    Posts
    507

    Default

    first thing I'd do is get it out of Word and into a Desk Top Publishing program like Microsoft Publisher (dead easy to use), Page Maker or any thing other than Word which isn't a DTP, it will make it a hell of a lit easier to manage as you can see exactly what a page will look like and manipulate it with ease.

    Do yourself a favor and try it. You may have to save the pages a .rtf or .txt to get them out of Word and into Publisher or whatever you decide to use but I can guarantee you won't regret the change.

    You can also have all your graphics loaded at full hi res rather than lo res and it won't slow down the running of the program in the slightest. you can manipulate the whole thing in seconds and do a lot more than you ever thought possible in Word.

    Cheers - Neil

    PS Publisher is the most user friendly DTP program and will make your pdf's without a problem. Just click on print and change the printer to Adobe PDF the rest is automatic.

  14. #13
    Join Date
    Aug 2003
    Location
    Wodonga
    Age
    59
    Posts
    707

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by Neil View Post
    first thing I'd do is get it out of Word and into a Desk Top Publishing program like Microsoft Publisher (dead easy to use), Page Maker or any thing other than Word which isn't a DTP, it will make it a hell of a lit easier to manage as you can see exactly what a page will look like and manipulate it with ease.

    Do yourself a favor and try it. You may have to save the pages a .rtf or .txt to get them out of Word and into Publisher or whatever you decide to use but I can guarantee you won't regret the change.

    You can also have all your graphics loaded at full hi res rather than lo res and it won't slow down the running of the program in the slightest. you can manipulate the whole thing in seconds and do a lot more than you ever thought possible in Word.

    Cheers - Neil

    PS Publisher is the most user friendly DTP program and will make your pdf's without a problem. Just click on print and change the printer to Adobe PDF the rest is automatic.
    Hate to disagree, Neil, but as someone who has to deal with publisher files professionally, this program is THE VERY WORST PROGRAM from a printers point of view.

    I have yet to come across 1 printer that has a good word for it. It does not handle graphics or text very well from a pre press point of view, and is probably the most basic DTP program going around.

    Most printers have to spend almost as long making the file usable, as it took to create, and generally can't recover the cost.

    Quite a few also put a premium charge on files that are created by publisher to cover the extra labor.

    There are also a few who just let it run as it is, and you end up with a job that is sub standard.

    Unfortunately those clients that are very cost sensitive, are usually the most demanding when it comes to quality, and believe they are being ripped off when told there will be an extra charge to "fix" their file.

    There is an old saying that you can't make strawberry jam out of pig poo, no matter how much sugar you put in, and there is not enough sugar to make Publisher anything other than the pig poo that it is.

    Pagemaker has not been upgraded for about 5 years now, and is not much better than Publisher. It has been replaced with Indesign, which along with Quark are the 2 programs of choice for the design/publishing/printing industries...but they come at a price...InDesign @ $1099 and Quark @ $1330, which I know is unfortunately out of a lot of peoples price range.

    But they are like comparing a $5 no name square or a magnificent 8" Colen Clenton square for $190 (which I just happened to pick up at the Melb WWW Show.)

    If you are going to use the software for more than just doing your own business cards that you print out on your home computer, then it is at least worth considering. For a 400 page case bound book, that will run to around $30,000 for 1500 copies, it is not much of an extra cost.:

  15. #14
    Join Date
    Dec 2004
    Location
    Hell with fluro lighting
    Age
    55
    Posts
    2,156

    Default

    Slightly off topic, but are there any good open source DTP programs?
    I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.

    My Other Toys

  16. #15
    Join Date
    Oct 2001
    Location
    Warwick, QLD
    Age
    45
    Posts
    3,462

    Default

    Open Office is fairly good. It has most of the functionality of Microsloth Office.

    Howdya, for your predicament I would use a Master document and sub documents like Arose mentioned. Basically your create each of the chapters in a separate file and then create a master document to collate all of the chapters. With the master document you cxan choose whether or not to display the sub-documents, increasing viewing speeds.

    I will have a dig through my teaching notes and see if I can find the bits relating to sub-documents tonight if you like.
    Have a nice day - Cheers

Page 1 of 2 12 LastLast

Similar Threads

  1. Router book review
    By Grunt in forum ROUTING FORUM
    Replies: 4
    Last Post: 27th July 2017, 07:25 PM
  2. Recommendation for In-depth Woodworking book for a Galoot
    By thumbsucker in forum WOODWORK - GENERAL
    Replies: 9
    Last Post: 13th May 2007, 01:15 AM
  3. The Ultimate Band Saw Box Book
    By donpbk in forum ANNOUNCEMENTS
    Replies: 3
    Last Post: 28th July 2006, 06:01 PM
  4. Book review - Collins woodworker's manual
    By Grue in forum ANNOUNCEMENTS
    Replies: 2
    Last Post: 14th August 2003, 10:36 PM
  5. Rare Trades - Book review
    By Grue in forum ANNOUNCEMENTS
    Replies: 2
    Last Post: 12th August 2003, 12:40 PM

Tags for this Thread

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •