Compile to PDF Doesn't Include Cover Image

Scrivener Scrivener for macOS
1

When I compile to PDF the cover image doesn’t get embedded. Its not at the first page.

Its does compile into the ebook version. I can’t work out what I’m doing wrong for PDF compile.

1 Like
2

PDFs don’t compile with default / standard cover images:

literatureandlatte.com/foru … 84#p218984

Best.

3

Thanks for the help. Appreciate.

Sigh, would have been nice. I can do it manually with a PDF editor as a work around.

But I’m compiling four ebooks from a single Scrivener doc and thats kinda painful.

4

Try to use this service https://www.altopdf.com/. It is free and very convenient. With it, you can edit PDF files of any size.

5

Ebook covers scale to fit different devices / reading apps, but within fairly limited parameters, and often to standard ratios, such as 1:1.6 or 1:1.5.

Scrivener doesn’t know if a PDF will be produced / printed at A4, A5, 6x9, 5x8, landscape or portrait, etc, so there is no simple “one cover fits all” solution as there is for ebooks: any PDF-related image scaling is likely to be a kludge.

Also, text-only PDFs are often created for an environment in which high-resolution front, spine, and back covers will be produced as part of a separate design / colour-printing process. Users usually want and need to provide discrete covers in such cases to get the right output.

A cover-page image added to a Scrivener text file would work, but it would be output with the same margins as the text pages, rather than with the usual full-bleed design.

Adding a separate cover to the PDF after compiling is very simple (just drag and drop in Preview), and it allows users to get dimensions and resolutions absolutely right. I think your solution is the best way forward.

Good luck with the books.

6

To date almost no one does anything useful with pdf files because its a print issue not an editing issue and everyone from Microsoft down can’t figure that out. Open office is starting to get close, but you can wind up with an extra sent of margins… To make it an editing issue one could convert a single pages of a pdf to jpgs and use the images, but inserting a 50 page document in a manuscript is not an editing issue. Its a print issue solved by appending or concatenating 2 or more pdf files.one or more of which might come from compiling dynamically to the insertion point followed by a page break and printing the pdf, then continuing the compile from the top of the next full page.
Open office finally figured this out , now they need to get it to work!