What Desktop Publisher?

[BML]

I want to learn about desk top Publishing and have been told Serif is good enough for an amateur writer who want to publish a book. However, I have also been told that the general standard in the publishing industry involves either QuarkXPress or InDesign, and in very long documents Framemaker with Pagemaker commonly accepted as well. What are the generally accepted views on those?

[Michael Rowley]

BML:

Most of the people that know about these things now swear by InDesign, which is very good indeed, but the latest version of Serif's PagePlus, v. 11, is not only a lot cheaper, it is very capable and comes with a printed manual, from which you could learn a lot. Many printers make their plates by means of a PDF file rather than working with the DTP program, and PagePlus 11 can produce a PDF to professional standards.

FrameMaker is very good, but very expensive (as is Quark XPress); its main virtues are that it capable of processing very long documents with extensive cross-referencing and frequent revision.

PageMaker is believed to have 'DNR' on its bedcard, but is said to be still useful.

[ktinkel]

I want to learn about desk top Publishing and have been told Serif is good enough for an amateur writer who want to publish a book. However, I have also been told that the general standard in the publishing industry involves either QuarkXPress or InDesign, and in very long documents Framemaker with Pagemaker commonly accepted as well. What are the generally accepted views on those?I think you may be looking at this through the wrong end of the lens.

In terms of writing your book, use whatever you are comfortable with.

In terms of producing the printable pages for the book, you need first to consult with a publisher or a printer: What do they require?

It is hard to advise you without knowing how far along you are, how much of your book is text and how much illustration, whether you have the illustrations already or need to procure/create them.

Can you tell us a bit more?

[BML]

I live in Steventon, a Village near Oxford in England. In 2003 I drove round the coast of Britain and wrote a book called, Sea View Camping and Caravan Sites in Britain". It was a collection of close to 400 such sites each with a view of the sea. I wrote it using Word creating the page structure by adjusting the top, bottom and sides and using different fonts until it looked right and our village printer printed it with no problem.

Then I decided to write a sequel based on the best of those sites but with colour photographs so I drove round the coast of Britain again. I built a page structure the same way but with the top half of the page in text and dragging the JPEGs which were 1.5 to 2.0 MBs to the bottom half of the page and sizing it by dragging in the sides to fit.

When I took it to my printer it would not run in that it printed all of the text but only a few of the photographs. Various people have suggested that was because the photographs were not embedded, others because the photographs were too large and needed re-sizing and others said that Word is not good at that sort of thing. It was then that I decided that it was time to learn to use a publishing package.

[PeterArnel]

Hi
Rewriting is a real task I have printed a few books in word with lots of pics in - using pdf as the output device. I am joint MD of White Horse Press in Newbury 01 635 527800 I may not be able to help but I might be able to point you in the right direction as you are just down the road

Peter Arnel

[terrie]

>>bml: I built a page structure the same way but with the top half of the page in text and dragging the JPEGs which were 1.5 to 2.0 MBs

Ewww...'-}}

Jpegs are not what you should be putting in your text...do you have any sort of graphics software such as Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, Corel Photo Paint, Paint Shop Pro? If so, what you would want to do is to open those jpgs, size them as appropriate and save them as .tif files.

While I don't use Word, I'm pretty sure you want to "place" them rather than dragging them...hopefully a Word person will pop in here with suggestions...

Terrie

[Michael Rowley]

Terrie:

I'm pretty sure you want to "place" them rather than dragging them

I don't think it matters how they get there, and you can adjust the position exactly once they're approximately 'there'.

[Ian Petersen]

There's nothing wrong with JPEGs as long as they are of a high enough 'quality' and suitable resolution. The JPEGs are the least of his problems if he's trying to use Word as a DTP app ...

[Michael Rowley]

Ian:

the least of his problems if he's trying to use Word as a DTP app[lication]

I know you people are sniffy about using Word for DTP, but in fact it's quite all right for straightforward work where there is continuous flow of text and illustrations. It can't do a lot of things, but many of those are things that shouldn't be done anyway. If Word documents are converted to PDF documents by Acrobat and checked before going to the printer's, often the only way of telling is by looking carefully at 'Properties' in Acrobat, or possibly in Acrobat Reader.

[PeterArnel]

Michael - you are right as usual - we dont print many case bound books but I have produced a number of fine art ones - produced in word using jpegs - I used the pdfwriter which some say is a nono - it worked fine. I voluntered to do a WI recipe book last year and sugested i put the picture of each of the members ( with clothes on) next to the recipe. I used the text box in the drawing add on and just copied the pic in - it worked well

[Ian Petersen]

Yes, if you tread carefully and are fully aware of its limitations, you can make perfectly acceptable PDFs from Word. You may even manage to get them professionally printed. I can also hammer nails with the heel of my shoe, but that doesn't make it the right tool for the job ...

[Michael Rowley]

Ian:

I can also hammer nails with the heel of my shoe, but that doesn't make it the right tool for the job ...

Very picturesque . . . and highly exaggerated. You also don't need a sledgehammer to crack a nut.

[PeterArnel]

Its not quite that bad - the trick is to get the rgb black text to convert to solid black -and it takes me ages to remember how to do that.
Peter
Its not really my market - I just take pity sometimes and see it as a challenge for a change. Mark u I think that a lot that know Quark and all that use ID - use the old heel of the shoe trick :-)

[Ian Petersen]

I admit I usually wear Dr Martens which make a very poor hammer. Those Air-Wair soles have a tendency to puncture.

But the fact remains that MS-Word is a reasonably capable word-processor. No more, no less. Trying to use it as a publishing app will, depending on one's capability and ambition, inevitably cause grief and consternation. If not for the person attempting the feat, then for the poor sod who has to print it!

I'm not saying Word cannot be used to publish a simple book. I know it can and has been done. But there are simply better tools for the job. And I certainly wouldn't say using a professional publishing tool like InDesign or Quark for the purpose they are designed is 'using a sledgehammer to crack a nut'.

Of course, using a professional DTP tool doesn't guarantee a professional result. You still need a good undertanding of, amongst other things, typography, layout, picture composition and printing technology. But not using a professional tool pretty much rules out a professional result from the outset.

[Michael Rowley]

Ian:

I certainly wouldn't say using a professional publishing tool like InDesign or Quark for the purpose they are designed is 'using a sledgehammer to crack a nut'

No, not always, but it can be. But the origin of this thread was a request for information about DTP programs from someone that has found Word to be possibly inadequate. Peter the Printer has replied, saying that he finds Word quite adequate for the sort of book described, though by means of PDF. I have suggested PagePlus as giving the original inquirer sufficient information, being adequate for the job, and costing only £100. I think Quark XPress or InDesign would in fact be the proverbial sledgehanger: what you and I think of Word v. InDesign is irrelevant.

[Ian Petersen]

The book in discussion sounds to me like a typical 'coffee table' book, where the production values and 'style' make the difference between selling 25 copies to your friends and family or 25,000 copies as this year's must-have christmas gift. That sort of thing can not be produced in Word.

[Michael Rowley]

Ian:

The book in discussion sounds to me like a typical 'coffee table' book

BML will probably be insulted! It's more of an illustrated guide, which he has succeeded in having printed with the photos all in black and white. It is the sequel, with colour photos that the printer has had difficulty with. I agree that Word is not the thing for any necessary adjustments of colour, but the layout doesn't seem to have been the difficulty, and I wouldn't expect it to.

Working just with Word is likely to be more fiddly than with a layout program, if the book is at all complicated, but if Word is at hand, and an expert with InDesign isn't . . .

[Ian Petersen]

but if Word is at hand, and an expert with InDesign isn't . . .Then you toddles down to your local purveyor of fine tools and buys a proper hammer ...

[terrie]

>>michael: I don't think it matters how they get there, and you can adjust the position exactly once they're approximately 'there'.

I thought Word worked similarly to something like PageMaker in that placing an image essentially set up a link to the image vs. physically having the image in the file?

Terrie

[terrie]

>>ian: There's nothing wrong with JPEGs as long as they are of a high enough 'quality' and suitable resolution.

Never having used a jpg in any kind of document, I was just thinking about jpg degradation every time the document was opened at saved--not sure if that happens...

>>The JPEGs are the least of his problems if he's trying to use Word as a DTP app ...

LOL!! Well...there *is* that...'-}

Terrie

[Ian Petersen]

Well, PDFs use JPEG compression and we print from them all the time ...

[ktinkel]

Well, PDFs use JPEG compression and we print from them all the time ...True, but the PDF is an output format; it does not alter the artwork.

Printing a JPEG of appropriate size and resolution makes a lot of sense. Passing JPEGs around (or, as it usually happens to me, accepting them from clients) when you have no clue as to how many times they have been JPEGged is quite another.

[Steve Rindsberg]

>>michael: I don't think it matters how they get there, and you can adjust the position exactly once they're approximately 'there'.

I thought Word worked similarly to similarly to something like PageMaker in that placing an image essentially set up a link to the image vs. physically having the image in the file?

Terrie
It works similarly to PageMaker in that you can set it to do either, though the choice is a bit more straightforward in Word (you can choose to do whichever you want on an image by image basis, at the time you insert the image).

On the other hand, any sort of precise picture positioning in Word causes near-instant loss of hair. It simply does NOT want to do any of the things I want it to do.

[Steve Rindsberg]

>>ian: There's nothing wrong with JPEGs as long as they are of a high enough 'quality' and suitable resolution.

Never having used a jpg in any kind of document, I was just thinking about jpg degradation every time the document was opened at saved--not sure if that happens...

>>The JPEGs are the least of his problems if he's trying to use Word as a DTP app ...

LOL!! Well...there *is* that...'-}

Terrie
JPG degradation results from repeatedly opening and saving a JPG with compression from e.g. an image editing program. Once it's in a word processing or DTP or other app, the contained JPG data's left as is no matter how many times you save the containing document. The JPG doesn't get recompressed with each save of the document.

[Michael Rowley]

Steve:

any sort of precise picture positioning in Word causes near-instant loss of hair

You can, I think, put the picture in a frame in Word, and frames can be accurately placed on a page. The problem is then, which page . . . Word frames sometimes wander—no wonder, they've been a feature of Word since DOS days—but if you make a PDF quickly, before anything gets altered, they're all right.

[Ian Petersen]

True, but the PDF is an output format; it does not alter the artwork.Well, in the context of this discussion, so is a Word file. And Word won't alter the JPEGs either. But of course degradation will happen if you open and repeatedly resave as JPEG in an image editor.

[Michael Rowley]

Ian:

if you open and repeatedly resave as JPEG in an image editor

Naive question: doesn't an image editor allow you to control the compression? I'd have thought 'no compression' was one of the alternatives. (And yes, I am familiar with the Howard's aspirin adcertisement.)

[Ian Petersen]

Yes, an image editor does allow you to control the compression. And saving a JPEG repeatedly at the highest quality/lowest compression will cause very little damage. But JPEGs don't, as far as I know, have a no-compression option, so some degradation will occur even though minimal.

[Michael Rowley]

Ian:

But JPEGs don't, as far as I know, have a no-compression option

Thanks: question answered. Which brings me to another naive question: why not? But I don't expect anyone to answer that.

[Ian Petersen]

But I don't expect anyone to answer thatOK. I won't then. <g>

But if you're interested, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JPEG

[Steve Rindsberg]

Frames help *tremendously* it's true, but it's also true that they wander and it's insanely overcomplicated to find the right set of options to make them do what you want (positioning, relative to what and all that).

And trying to get it to behave with full-page photos will cause the hair to fall out of even your wig. ;-)

I could live with it for a few pages with a few photos but not if I had to do a longer document.

[Steve Rindsberg]

I had thought that the highest quality setting possible in JPG would allow lossless compression, but apparently not, else there'd be no need for the newer JPEG2000 standard, which *does* support lossless compression.

[PeterArnel]

Steve I am with you about Jpeg - I was running jpeg workflow in 1996 - if its for printing then its hard to tell even if u give it to the best printer the difference
Peter
I was going to have a snipe at the quality of the US printer here - but bless them they mean well :-)

[terrie]

ian: Well, PDFs use JPEG compression and we print from them all the time . ..

Ok...but my question is if you have jpgs in a Word file with jpgs would the jpgs degrade every time the Word file is saved? On one level, I don't really care as I don't use Word (oh gag!) but I'm curious...'-}}

Terrie

[terrie]

steve: It works similarly to PageMaker in that you can set it to do either,

Ok...so my question is, if the jpg is embedded in the Word doc, does it degrade each time the document is saved?


>>On the other hand, any sort of precise picture positioning in Word causes near-instant loss of hair. It simply does NOT want to do any of the things I want it to do.

ROFL!!! I *loathe* Word and I find that WordPerfect is "better" at that sort of thing than my experience in Word--part of that is, of course, the availability of the reveal codes in WP.

That said, a dtp program certainly is better for image placement...

Terrie

[PeterArnel]

Terrie
Lets be honest if you are using word - I doubt whether the qaulity of pics lets say are of a certain quality- degredation may improve them :-)
Peter

[Steve Rindsberg]

>>Ok...so my question is, if the jpg is embedded in the Word doc, does it degrade each time the document is saved?

No. It's saved as is; the jpeg data isn't meddled with.

>>On the other hand, any sort of precise picture positioning in Word causes near-instant loss of hair. It simply does NOT want to do any of the things I want it to do.

>>ROFL!!! I *loathe* Word and I find that WordPerfect is "better" at that sort of thing

WordPerfect in its various guises has made too many ridiculous messes on too many of my computers for me to allow an open box of the stuff in my office any more. Though maybe some day I'll install it into a virtual machine if only for the pleasure of deleting it if it screws up.

But whatever.

Word processors, like DTP apps, are good at what they're good at. That should be enough. <g>

[Steve Rindsberg]

Now now ... mustn't judge the journeyman's work by the price of his tools.

On the other hand, statistics, if collected, would no doubt back you up.

[Steve Rindsberg]

Given a good JPG, a printer should be able to do as well with it as with any other (probably) RGB image. And given a bad TIFF, the results are likely to be bad.

The file format itself isn't necessarily villainous; it's all in how it's used or abused. Just that JPGs leave themselves open to it in ways that other file formats don't.

[BML]

I have just come back from a foreign holiday, well Scarborough actually and found all these messages so many thanks for all your help.

Michael Rowley. Suggested using Serif's PagePlus, v. 11.

Great, I have just bought V10 so maybe I need to update.

Ktinkel. Helped me to understand the difference between writing the book and producing the printable pages and suggested “Consult with a publisher or a printer.”

I'm afraid that I assumed that if the way that I constructed the last book worked it would be the same this time but obviously it did not and the printer has offered no suggestions.

Peter Arnel. Suggested that as he lives near I should contact him.

This I will do.

Terrie. Said, “Jpegs are not what you should be putting in your text and asked if I have any sort of graphics software such as Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, Corel Photo Paint, Paint Shop Pro and that I should open those jpg, size them as appropriate and save them as .tif files.

I have Serif PhotoPlus10.

The question is, “size them to what?”


Michael Rowley. Said, “I don't think it matters how they get there, and you can adjust the position exactly once they're approximately 'there'.”

The question is, “Adjust to what?”

Terrie. Said, “I thought Word worked similarly to something like PageMaker in that placing an image essentially set up a link to the image vs. physically having the image in the file?”

I don’t think that Word does work like that. There is no problem in “inserting” a picture thereby creating a link but I’m beginning to think that the size of the image is the problem.

Michael Rowley. Said, “You can, I think, put the picture in a frame in Word, and frames can be accurately placed on a page. The problem is then, which page . . . Word frames sometimes wander but if you make a PDF quickly, before anything gets altered, they're all right.”

Yes, I found that they wander but fixed that by altering the size of the picture by dragging in up from the bottom. The PDF thing I know nothing about.

I have just looked at one of the picture and it is 152 MB so I opened it in PhotoPlus 10 opened Image Size and found it was a

Width of 3072
Height of 2048

I reduced this to

Width of 750
Height 600

Then I saved it so that I could measure it and found that it 558 KB

Firstly I wonder if this will reproduce effectively when printed and secondly by reducing all the pictures by this amount I wonder if it will run were I to take it to the printer?

[Michael Rowley]

BML:

The question is, “Adjust to what?”

To the top or bottom of the page, to the margins, etc.: all programs have facilities for doing that. You can also give the vertical & horizontal distances from some line (such as the top of the page or margin), which is generally an exact number of millimetres etc.: this you can achieve by dragging your picture until the position looks about right and then adjusting to the value you want.

Incidentally, a picture may be embedded in the Word or DTP file (which will generally make the file very big) or reference is given to another file, such as 'picture37.jpg', which then has to be delivered to the printer as well as the file with the text. There are advantages and disadvantages to either approach, which one of the experts here could advise on.

If you've acquired PagePlus 10 recently, the 'upgrade' to PagePlus 11 doesn't cost a lot (£50); PP 11 was only recently released.

[Richard Hunt]

I have just looked at one of the picture and it is 152 MB so I opened it in PhotoPlus 10 opened Image Size and found it was a

Width of 3072
Height of 2048

I reduced this to

Width of 750
Height 600

Then I saved it so that I could measure it and found that it 558 KB

Firstly I wonder if this will reproduce effectively when printed and secondly by reducing all the pictures by this amount I wonder if it will run were I to take it to the printer?

I can't find you having actually said what size the pages in your book are to be, or what the margins will be, and how much of the page will be taken up by the picture. Need to know this, before we can really help.

By default, PhotoPlus saves resized images at 96dpi, but for proper printing you'll need 300dpi. At 96 dpi it will look blocky and spoil the appearance.

Richard Hunt

[BML]

The book will be A5 size with a page 150MM X 210MM and margins of 10MM top, bottom and both sides. The page will be divided in two. Text in the top half and picture in the bottom.

[Richard Hunt]

The book will be A5 size with a page 150MM X 210MM and margins of 10MM top, bottom and both sides. The page will be divided in two. Text in the top half and picture in the bottom.

Right... take a look at the attached JPG file - is this the kind of layout you have in mind?

Richard

[BML]

Precisely.

[terrie]

peter: Lets be honest if you are using word - I doubt whether the qaulity of pics lets say are of a certain quality- degredation may improve them :-)

LOL!!!

Terrie

[terrie]

steve: No. It's saved as is; the jpeg data isn't meddled with.

Cool...I'll remember that...

>>WordPerfect in its various guises has made too many ridiculous messes on too many of my computers for me to allow an open box of the stuff in my office any more.

Well...I still miss version 6 and I'm currently using 8 and am considering updating to whatever is the current version but since the entire world seems to want to emulate Word, I'm not sure I will upgrade...'-}}

>>Word processors, like DTP apps, are good at what they're good at. That should be enough. <g>

Indeed...'-}}

Terrie

[terrie]

bml: I have Serif PhotoPlus10. The question is, “size them to what?”

Answer is: Depends...'-}}

If all the images in your book are the same size (width x height), then what I would do with your jpgs (assuming this can be done in Serif PhotoPlus), I would resize them to whatever are the appropriate image dimensions within your book and set the ppi/dpi (pixels per inch/dots per inch) to 300.

Sooo...for example, if your jpg is (as noted in your post) is 3072 x 2048 pixels:

With a setting of 300 ppi/dpi an image would be get 10.24 x 6.8 inches (3072/300 and 2048/300)...

That's a pretty big image for a book...but what it tells me is that you took the pic with a reasonably decent digital camera.

Let's say that you want your image to be 2.25 x 1.5 inches...

I'm not sure if Serif PhotoPlus will allow you to do this but let me tell you how Photoshop handles it and you can look for something similar in Serif PP.

1. In Photoshop, I'd open the image, and then choose Image > Image Size from the menu.

2. In the Image Size window, I have the option to "resample" the image. I choose this option

3. I would enter 2.25" in the width box (the height should automatically adjust to 1.5" to keep the proper image ratio) or I could enter 1.5" in the height (and the width would automatically be set to 2.25")

4. I would enter 300 in the ppi/dpi box

5. Click OK

If we were looking at the pixels, then the resulting image is 675 x 450 pixels.

In terms of file size, we went from approximately 18mb to 890kb

I'm not quite sure how you changed your pixels from 3072x2048 to 750x600 and didn't get a distorted image because if one maintains the image ratio, changing the width from 3072 to 750 should give you a height of 500 pixels, not 600.

At any rate, hope this helps...

Terrie

[BML]

Terrie
Many many thanks. I lack the ability to easily understand instructions in a manual but I suspect that is as much the manual writers fault as mine although writing such things is difficult. Yesterday I wrote some instructions on how to get to my web page via a link on an open forum dealing with Motor Caravans and then I tested it on my wife who is brighter than I am. It took me four changes before I got it idiot proof. I can understand your instructions perfectly and now I will give it a try so thanks Terrie
and every one else who helped.

[terrie]

bml: I can understand your instructions perfectly and now I will give it a try so thanks Terrie and every one else who helped.
You're most welcome...

I'm glad my instructions were clear--I know *exactly* what you mean about rewriting...'-}}

Do let me know if you have any additional questions...

Terrie