Image sizes and masks

Question

Image sizes and masks

I am trying to find my way in iBooks author, attempting to create a book with my editorial cartoons. Thus, there will be some texts interspersed with a lot of images and naturally, I want to have captions, too, especially since the book will be written in English, but the cartoons will have an original text in Swedish which will be translated in the captions.

But I have problems with the images sizes and the masks. It seems like I cannot resize the images freely. There is a minimum size and I cannot go below that. Neither can I edit the mask or simply remove it where it hides the images, cutting them off to the sides or the top. It doesn't seem to be very flexible that way. It would be good if I could edit the image size freely and individually and also the masks.

Any ideas what to do?

iMac, macOS High Sierra (10.13.2), Final Cut Pro X, Canon HV30

Posted on Dec 9, 2017 5:39 AM

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Answer 1

Dec 9, 2017 8:15 AM in response to RCAustin

Yes, without seeing it, ut might be hard to explain. And I started this project quite a while ago and thought I'd continue on it, so I don't remember exactly how I did things then, but to be able to have a caption with an image, it seems that there is a template for it and it also seems that you cannot go below a certain size. Why that is, is beyond me.
I have tried to add an image without a caption and mask and that is OK, but then I need to add a text form manually, in which to add a caption, it seems.

Perhaps a couple of screenshots may help to expain.

At first one with the mask editor activated. What I tried to do was to minimize the image so it would fit inside the mask, but that was impossible. Neither was there any option to turn off the mask or edit it so it wouldn't cut off the image on the sides.
The result is as you see in the last screenshot. This image wasn't so bad at some others, part of the drawing is cut off by the mask.

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Answer 2

RCAustin

Level 4

1,151 points

Dec 11, 2017 8:20 PM in response to Wilfred Hildonen

Check this link, it will get you started. Basically you can change the color of the arrows for the gallery because the color is tied to the paragraph style color.

In iBook Author: How to control the font of gallery numbering

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Answer 3

RCAustin

Level 4

1,151 points

Dec 9, 2017 8:01 AM in response to Wilfred Hildonen

You can resize images to any size you in iBooks Author. If you mean freely, like changing the height or width independently, go the Inspector, the Metrics inspector, the one that looks like a ruler and unlock the aspect ratio to let you change the width or height without changing both at the same time.

I’m not sure what masks you mean. iBooks Author has a masking tool, or are you masking the images in an image editor before adding to iBooks Author?

Hard to tell more without seeing what you mean.

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Answer 4

RCAustin

Level 4

1,151 points

Dec 9, 2017 3:23 PM in response to Wilfred Hildonen

Is this an ePub or multitouch template? It looks like you’ve added the image as a gallery which suggests you are using epub template, because the multitouch templates allow you to enable captions on individual images in the widget inspector.

It is limited for captions on epub templates.

If using epub templates, you can also use paragraph styles and set a style to follow the paragraph style your photo is anchored to, and set ruling lines above, below or around etc, if you are trying to add a caption to a single image rather than gallery.

You can also hide the arrows too, if a single image.

I posted instruction a while back on how to do this.

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Answer 5

Dec 9, 2017 3:29 PM in response to RCAustin

Yes, it‘s ePub. I chose that since I have understood it‘s more compatible with other platforms - but I can’t remember that I went for a gallery, but I guess it must be that since there are arrows. What I want is just single images with captions, but that’s not possible, you say.

I will look for your instructions tomorrow - if you don’t have a link to them, that is:)

But this is helping me forward, at least. Thanks a lot!

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