Hello,
This question may have an obvious answer, but it’s a mystery to me.
My current workflow when it comes to handling photos (background images, setting pictures, character likenesses, etc.) is to copy the photo I’m interested, then paste it in into an “archival” text document–meaning I have one document (or sometimes more than one) which might contain dozens of such images. Unless the photo is particularly important, I don’t bother to save a copy of the original image.
I am aware that other users import the actual image files into Scrivener, rather than pasting a copy into a document. My question is, is one method better than the other? Since I can’t examine the size of individual documents, I have no idea how large my “consolidated” text document is, versus the size of individual jpg files. I do know my projects are taking longer and longer to save, and longer and longer to upload via dropbox. I’m wondering if I’m causing myself a problem.
I’m sure someone knows the answers, but I’d suggest that you test this yourself.
Create two new projects from the “blank” template.
Gather 10 images to one central location.
Import the images into the research folder of one project.
Copy the images into one or more document bodies in the other project.
Quit scrivener, and then compare the sized of each project & the backup files too.
I’m moderately sure(?) that images get converted to a particular image type when pasted into a Scrivener document which may alter them in quality or size. I’m not sure if the same is true when importing the file into the binder. But by starting with two blank projects, you could explore the package contents of your experimental projects and examine the internals without all the extraneous files if you wanted to find out for sure.
Until one of the developers drops by with a definitive answer, I will say that I believe it makes no difference.
The images are simply copied into the project either separately or part of the document, which is stored within the project as an rtf document.
You can check on the sizes by right clicking on the project file and choosing 'Show package contents". Look around for the different documents and you will see their sizes.