Hi,
when operating scrivener my cursor is very glitchy. There are times when I try to move it and it’s slow to take – I see the spinning color time wheel. In general it does not work smoothly. I have pictures inserted here and there throughout my text. Could this be causing the problem?
Thanks so much. I love your software.
AEW
If the images are huge it is possible that they could cause a slowdown - that is, huge in file size rather than in dimensions. So that would definitely be the first thing to check. One way to check this would be to create a blank project and drag one of the text files with images in that is causing slowdown from your current project into the blank project, then have a look in the Finder at the previously-blank project’s file size.
Thanks for the kind words!
All the best,
Keith
is there anyway to reduce the size of the image in scrivener?
I’m afraid not, because Scrivener maintains the integrity of the image data. The only way would be to edit the image in Photoshop or another image editing app to reduce the file size. You will need to do it in an image editor anyway because you will want full control over how the image looks after you have resampled it, and that may take a bit of experimentation in something like Photoshop, reducing the size of the image, the image quality, DPI and so on.
All the best,
Keith
Thank you, Keith ! I really appreciate it. Can you tell me… if I’m dropping images in frequently (like almost every other paragraph) what size would you suggest I reduce the images too. I did some testing and it is definitely the images that are making the software glitchy. The quality of images doesn’t really matter much. I use them as guideposts.
Thank you, again. You’re software is amazing.
Couldn’t you just add the images to your Research folder and then link to the images in your text instead? That should improve performance greatly while still allowing you to have references to your images everywhere. Then, you wouldn’t have to fiddle with re-sizing them.
Woowoo’s suggestion would definitely work - you could use the <$img…> placeholder tag to add images from your Research folder, which will keep your test fast and only add the images during export. That’s one option. Although it would slow down Compile a little as those images are added, and it does mean you cannot see the images in the text as you work, which may not always be desirable.
There should be nothing wrong with having images in the text in general, though. However, there is no specific size that I can recommend because this will vary depending on hardware and your intended publishing medium. The main thing to worry about is the file size rather than the image size, but unfortunately this is difficult to gauge, because if you import a heavily compressed PNG file, for instance, Apple’s text engine may save that in a much less compressed state and so inflate the file size (see this thread). So the best thing to do is work out the minimum size and DPI you are going to need for your publishing medium. A printed book is going to require a higher DPI and larger images than an ebook, for instance.
All the best,
Keith