Every day this week I’ve worked on cleaning up images and getting the document ready for print format. Unfortunately I’ve had technical difficulties.
First I had to learn how to change the dpi (dots per inch) of each image. Fortunately it was fairly simple once I had the right program.
Second I had to take the new images and clean it up. Because my images are drawings that have been scanned there was a lot of gray surrounding the lines. For a digital image that has to be cleaned up as well which I did but when you increase the dpi then more imperfections appear. In print , the gray surrounding the lines makes the image blurry or fuzzy. With 45 images for the entire manuscript it is time consuming to pull each one up in Paint and use the eraser to go along each line. However, every spare moment I’ve had this week I’ve been working on them.
Unfortunately, I’ve had additional technical problems. I sat in my office chair early in the week and one of the wheels broke off. Now if it had just fallen off, duct tape would have fixed it but it actually broke. This meant I didn’t have my comfortable chair. At first I was using a dining room chair which is okay for short periods of time. When I spent any amount of time in it though, my back and legs hurt worse than normal. Ken brought up an old office chair from the basement last night and it is okay but still not as comfortable as my chair.
This mean after I worked on fourteen pictures last night I couldn’t stand to be in the chair any longer and had to give it up for the recliner. With the precision work I have to do, I need a desk and solid surface for my mouse to be on. I’m down to eight pictures with each one taking about an hour or so depending on how complex the picture is.
Since I had to redo all the images, I made a point of double checking that they were working. I uploaded a partially finished manuscript to CreateSpace to see if their system liked the new photos. This gave me a double check that all was well and I just needed to finish the images. I was thrilled to find that the document had no errors and the images looked amazing. Plus by doing that I was able to rearrange images so they worked better.
Images in a digital format have to be in line with the text. There is no creative placement. With print I’m able to move them around and place them where I think they look the best rather than where they work digitally. While it has been a lot of work to change up the images, I feel like it has been a good lesson learned as it has allowed me to produce a better product.
At this stage, all I want to do is work on finishing the images. Unfortunately, I have a lot to do this weekend. My todo list is filled with grocery shopping, errands, gift wrapping, food prep and so on. I’ll still carve out time though. Barring any more technical difficulties, I’m hoping to have a paper version ready by the end of the weekend. Fingers crossed and chair situation resolved, I hope to accomplish this. Then I can look at poetry books next.
Smashwords:
Amazon:
While you are out shopping, take a look at Secret Past too. It is available here:
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Available on Amazon: