Has anyone here ever created a digital art book?

Num7

Num7

Administrator
🖥️ Staff
Hey, everyone!

I'm looking into creating a digital art book but feeling a bit overwhelmed. There are so many options and choices, I'm unsure where to look.

I guess I'd pick PDF as my favorite format... But what should be the page size? Is it supposed to be in a 16:9 ratio? 1080p or 4K? Or are we rather talking about A4 format and such?

Does anyone here have experience navigating the world of digital art book creation? I'm curious about the proper resolution for my artwork and content, choosing the right page size, and general formatting. Any insights, tips, or experiences would be great!

See ya!
 
I only know a little. It depends on what you're saving into the art book and how you want to display and distribute it. Right now your question is kinda vague. It's like saying you need a car, but you're not describing your driving habits (short, long, heavy hauling?)...

PDF sucks for photographic type images. It will be unnecessarily large and the mediocre image compressor will smash the details out of the images. If you're doing photographs, you could use a simple WEBP+web page for showing. JPEG is a very old format and only recommended for compatibility reasons. Same goes for lossless PNG's.

PDF does work reasonably well for vector graphics. You could also use a compressed SVG format. Modern web browsers should be able to display these files well enough. They're also long time standards.

The simplest form of image consolidation and grouping is just a directory with well named image files. This won't rely on any proprietary program and can easily be zip'd up for transmitting and archival. (Most of the "fancy" art book programs can easily import these images for display.) Use common codecs and you won't have to worry about compatibility for decades to come. This is what I do for my picture collections.
 

I agree that my question is kind of vague. So is my current understanding of digital books. I have a wide range of experience in IT and the web, but not in book creation, it's a cool new thing!

I think I'll create a copy here on Paranormalis, as articles-type threads. The web format is indeed always the most versatile (and often the cleanest), so it'll be a great spot for a beautiful web version I have total control over. That answers half my question already.

I've read a little about EPUB3, which is supposed to support images properly. Maybe this is a potential format if I want it as a file, that's other than PDF.
 

I think EPUB is a type of self contained HTML format. I've only seen a few, but I think they use continuous page instead of discrete pages (like a web page). Keep that in mind for what you want to do. It may or may not be appropriate depending on the project type.

As you mentioned the "cleanest"... What ever format(s) provide that is usually your best choice. If you want to do a custom display or presentation that is complex, do a special build of that from the "cleanest" source.
 
Num7 said:
Hey, everyone!

I'm looking into creating a digital art book but feeling a bit overwhelmed. There are so many options and choices, I'm unsure where to look.

I guess I'd pick PDF as my favorite format... But what should be the page size? Is it supposed to be in a 16:9 ratio? 1080p or 4K? Or are we rather talking about A4 format and such?

Does anyone here have experience navigating the world of digital art book creation? I'm curious about the proper resolution for my artwork and content, choosing the right page size, and general formatting. Any insights, tips, or experiences would be great!

See ya!
Click to expand...

A portfolio? I'll ask my daughter. She's an artist.
 

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