Designing a book with Microsoft Publisher

Hi Aaron, I worked in the Print industry for many years . . .

The best typesetting applications like QuarkXpress and InDesign, do not store the images in the document. The images are stored in an images folder and a references is added to the document. The app then displays a preview in the image place holder. The reason this is done - an image can be added a hundred times to a document and the document file will not really increase in size.

This cannot be dome in MS Publisher, so if you intend having a lot of images in your document, break it up into possible 4 documents of 40+ pages. There is nothing worse than slaving away creating the document and near the end finding you cannot open the document, due to corruption ot the applications inability to cope with the document size

Once you have the sub-documents created, convert them to Hi-Resolution PDF files for the Printer and they can merge the document into one large PDF.

With regards to image quality the produced PDF will be fine for the Printer to work with, MS Office applications typically store 2 versions of the image in the document file, the resized image to fit the document and the actual original image file - that is why Office Documents are so large . . .

<snip>

The best typesetting applications like QuarkXpress and InDesign, do not store the images in the document. The images are stored in an images folder and a references is added to the document. The app then displays a preview in the image place holder. The reason this is done - an image can be added a hundred times to a document and the document file will not really increase in size.

This cannot be dome in MS Publisher... <snip>

You can link pictures to the Publisher publication rather than embed them. Reference: Reduce the size of your publication by using linked pictures: https://support.office.com/en-us/article/tips-for-working-with-images-in-publisher-2edbdb84-e56a-43d9-b16c-090c38970c8b#bm3

DavidF

in itself, 176 pages is not over large. But the ultimate size of the file will depend more on the quantity and quality of image files you insert.

The controlling factor will be your computer. If you have a relatively current desktop or laptop computer, vs a low end tablet, with 4-8GB of RAM I expect you won't have much trouble handling a file 176 pages long.

you might was well start with a single file. Only if you find you have performance issues should you consider splitting it. Ask the printer about handling split files. Depending on how they print they will have specific requirements. For example, if they are using "real" printing presses, vs "photo copiers" there will be a different requirement for splits. A "real" press will print in 16 page "signatures". The images of 16 pages will be pressed at one time on a single large sheet of paper. That will be folded and cut and stitched together. These "signature" bundles will then be glued together to create the book.

In other office applications there are options to control image quality ie "Online" at 96DPI vs "High Quality" at 600 DPI (or higher). I don't see that in Publisher.

When you have inserted an image, you can crop it to eliminate unwanted parts. Then with the image selected, the Picture Tools > Format contextual tab is displayed. In the Adjust group there is a "Compress" button. But, it seems to be ornamental. Performing the compress did not reduce image size when I tried it.

Bottom line, you probably should crop the image outside of Publisher, and set the desired DPI in that outside program. Again, talk to the publisher to find out what the maximum desired DPI is. I am guessing it will be at most 300 to 600 DPI.

For working with pictures, refer to following guide which answers your questions

https://support.office.com/en-us/article/tips-f...

<snip>

In other office applications there are options to control image quality ie "Online" at 96DPI vs "High Quality" at 600 DPI (or higher). I don't see that in Publisher.

When you have inserted an image, you can crop it to eliminate unwanted parts. Then with the image selected, the Picture Tools > Format contextual tab is displayed. In the Adjust group there is a "Compress" button. But, it seems to be ornamental. Performing the compress did not reduce image size when I tried it.

Bottom line, you probably should crop the image outside of Publisher, and set the desired DPI in that outside program. Again, talk to the publisher to find out what the maximum desired DPI is. I am guessing it will be at most 300 to 600 DPI.

Compression is not ornamental and you can control image quality.

Reference: Picture tool Tab - Compress Pictures: https://support.office.com/en-US/Article/Picture-Tools-Tab-1d2e8f37-922c-4032-b1c0-56c13ca50533?ui=en-US&rs=en-US&ad=US#__toc256694329

Commercial Printing output is 300 dpi.

I do agree though that for best results you should use a third party image editor to edit, resample and optimize your image rather than the relatively simplistic image editing tools offered by Publisher. And you should link the images rather than embed them to further keep the publication size down.

DavidF