Best practices for adding illustrations

Question

Given that any illustrations inserted will be sent via send/receive, what then are best practices for working with illustrations as one goes along, especially in low bandwidth contexts where it is undesirable to add to the send/receive?

At the moment, one team, for example, is simply inserting a note to indicate a desire to add such and such illustration at that location. Is there a better way?

Answer 1

Tim:

How often does this send/receive happen per illustration? Assuming that neither the bitmap nor the location inside the PT project are being changed after insertion, is is so that the data is being sent to all-the-concerned once and later only checking-for-possible-changes is happening?

Yes, S/R will only send the entire file once and then from then on will only send any changes. For binary files like images, any change will resend the entire file. Any changes to text files will only send the smallest amount of data needed to describe the changes.

Tim:

So would those occasions not be great moments to add illustrations and then do a send/receive before everybody leaves?

Yes, this would be a good time to do these types of things. Note that the data will still need to be S/R’d to the internet at some point, but it should only be a one-time thing.

The biggest issue to adding large images is for anyone who gets the project later (like a year from now) and they now need to download all the large images for the first time. Obviously, if this is done via a non-internet S/R too, then it won’t be that big of a deal.

Comments

Very helpful explanations, thank you; will bookmark for our absence next year.

Answer 2

When an illustration is added, the full resolution version is placed in the \local folder, which is not shared through Send/Receive; a lower-resolution JPG version is placed in \pictures and is shared through S/R.

In one or two projects I’ve gone into the \pictures folder after inserting a picture (and before doing S/R) and reduced the lowres version even more, using a tool like VSO Image Resizer. The result was a thumbnail of e.g. 150 pixels which still gave a rough idea of the picture and which was light on bandwidth.

Paulus+Kieviet

Answer 3

Paulus+Kieviet:

In one or two projects I’ve gone into the \pictures folder after inserting a picture (and before doing S/R) and reduced the lowres version even more, using a tool like VSO Image Resizer. The result was a thumbnail of e.g. 150 pixels which still gave a rough idea of the picture and which was light on bandwidth.

To reiterate: This must be done immediately after inserting the image to ensure that it happens before the project has marked a point in history (or S/R’d) or it will already be part of the project history and resizing it will not help with the bandwidth of S/R (and will actually make it worse).

Answer 4

How often does this send/receive happen per illustration? Assuming that neither the bitmap nor the location inside the PT project are being changed after insertion, is is so that the data is being sent to all-the-concerned once and later only checking-for-possible-changes is happening?

I think of one project where the entire team meets in one room regularly. There is even a machine with a chorus hub where they meet. So would those occasions not be great moments to add illustrations and then do a send/receive before everybody leaves?

Sorry @drwww if your team never meets like this. I find your question important and will be in another continent next year… So just grabbing a chance to learn more about send/receive of “heavy stuff” in your thread.

Answer 5

I’d like to set up SAB for one or two books, with illustrations. The directions for this require inserting the illustrations into Paratext. However, the co-workers and their computers are in extremely low-bandwidth areas, and if I add illustrations good enough for this application, I’m guessing it will halt all S-R for quite some time. As it is, with no illustration pointers inserted, it’s rare they can effectively do S-R.
Any suggestions?

Comments

Hi @anon498524,

You may be able to add low resolution versions in Paratext, and then replace those images with a higher resolution in SAB (but not in Paratext): swapping out the low resolution version for a high resolution version with the same filename wherever SAB gets the files from. I’m not sure if that would work or not…

This may also be a good question for the SAB community: Scripture App Builder - SIL Scripture Software Community

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When you add an illustration into Paratext, the full-size file is only saved in your own Paratext Projects folder, under [project]\local\figures. This “local” folder is not included in Send-Receive. A low-res copy is placed into your [project]\figures folder, which is received by the other users. Thus all users can see a draft copies of illustrations. Looking at the contents of my low-res figures folder, at least 2/3 of the files are under 30kB; the largest is 50kB.

If your users have trouble even doing S-R with no illustrations, you’ll have to evaluate the load vs. # of pics you want to add, but at least they will receive the very small versions of each one.

You might be able to do what Paulus+Kieviet suggested earlier in this thread:

In one or two projects I’ve gone into the \pictures folder after inserting a picture (and before doing S/R) and reduced the lowres version even more, using a tool like VSO Image Resizer. The result was a thumbnail of e.g. 150 pixels which still gave a rough idea of the picture and which was light on bandwidth.

To reiterate: This must be done immediately after inserting the image to ensure that it happens before the project has marked a point in history (or S/R’d) or it will already be part of the project history and resizing it will not help with the bandwidth of S/R (and will actually make it worse).

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With extremely low bandwidth, I would not add any illustrations to Paratext if they’re only for use in SAB. If I’m not mistaken, SAB can insert pictures from a piclist.txt file. Look for that. (Sorry, don’t have SAB installed here.)

Answer 6

I have a somewhat different question on the same topic: what file formats are supported in Paratext for figures/illustrations? In supporting materials only JPG is mentioned, it seems that PNG also works. What about TIF and EPS, which are used for professional typesetting as well as other vector-graphics formats like AI and PDF?

Comments

MatjazCrnivec:

what file formats are supported in Paratext for figures/illustrations?

When you do a browse for a figure, the default import function looks for .tiff, .tif, .jpg, or .png. You cannot import .ai or .pdf files into the Paratext project.

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Thanks for the information. This is rather unfortunate, though, since it means one cannot use any vector graphic in Paratext, although it is an industry standard for logos, simple illustrations, line-art etc. Quite a limitation.

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Keep in mind that the intention in PT to some extent is to be a placeholder for real pictures. Hence the fact that only low resolution copies get shared back and forth over the Send/Receive mechanism. Typically a high resolution copy of the same file (with the same name) would be stored in the /local/figures/ folder of your project. Quite a few publishing programs built for PT (like ptxPrint) can read the high quality file from that location.

BUT, it should also be possible for whoever does your publishing to substitute vector versions of your files in place of the low resolution ones inside of PT. That is an extra step and will take renaming some extensions, but it should be possible.

All to say that just because PT doesn’t handle vector graphics doesn’t mean you can’t use them when you actual publish (both physically or via phone/web apps).