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Colors Dulling When Exporting from InDesign to EPUB

Forum|Forum|1 year ago
October 27, 2024
4 replies
4782 views

Hi. I made a graphic (e-)novel that I want to publish on AppleBooks and Kindle. In exporting from InDesign to Epub, something is happening to the colours. I've attached two screen captures. The 1st shows how the artwork appears in InDesign (which is also how it appears in the linked file in Photoshop; it's correct). The 2nd shows how it appears in EPub. You can see how the colors have dulled down. I've tried everything I can think of in InDesgn to fix the problem, but no luck. Can someone please help?

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Correct answer James Gifford—NitroPress

Always happy to help within some reasonable limits. Fonts are a non-issue but if you send a file that has color shifts for you (send a link via DM), I can see if it behaves or HOW it behaves for me.

N

Nagy Peter

Participant

Apparently the EPUB exporting routine does not honor the system display profile in InDesign. If you have an ordinary display (with a color gamut almost like sRGB) you will see no or minimal color shift. If you have a wide gamut screen with its on profile in the system (or a calibrated screen with a custom-made profile which is created during profiling) you will see a larger color shift. Basically the better display you have, the worse your EPUB will be... 🙂 The solution is to set the display profile to sRGB before exporting the EPUB.

John PaizsAuthor

Participating Frequently

Hi. Thank you so much for your reply. OK, I switched my display color profile from the default "iMac" to "sRGB IEC61966-2.1" (there is no simple "sRGB" option) and exported my grapchic novel to a fixed layout EPUB, and checked the colors ... and it worked! They are exact. The RGB values are EXACTLY the same as in the original TIFFs. Amazing!!!

I have already uploaded my graphic novel to Apple Books after I swapped all the PNGs in the EPUB using Sigil, but now for future updates I won't have to do that. Thank you for your help!!! Phew, what a relief to know there's a simple fix for this problem on my Mac!! 🙂

While I have you, though, there's something else that I found that InDesign was getting "wrong" in the fixed layout EPUB export of my graphic novel. I expanded the tracking on my titles as well as in the front matter text in InDesign, and centered it all. But in the EPUB fixed layout export, the tracking was no longer acurate (as widely spaced), and the text was no longer perfectly centered. I found however that if I converted the text in question to outlines in InDesign, that fixed it. So yeah, something else that I figure shouldn't be happening in my exports to fixed layout EPUB on my Mac.

But thank you so much again! This is a game saver!!!

James Gifford—NitroPress

Legend

Well, to confuse what seemed to be a straightforward solution — I did a few tests with RGB images (copped from stock image sources, to make sure they were reasonably 'pure') and ran them through FXL export in v20.1/Win11. I then extracted the images from the resulting files.

Even with considerable compression, I see no significant color shift in any of them. That is, the original images, the images as displayed in Thorium, Calibre and Kindle Previewer, and the images compared side by side in a gallery app, show the same color balance, allowing some tiny bit for exact values. Noticeable shift in any of them. I then converted one image to CMYK —with notable dulling — and ran the export again; the colors shifted, but to the brighter.

@John Paizs , I have to conclude it's something in your workflow, files or system setup, and it still looks an awful lot like a CMYK-RGB shift to me. The hitch has to lie in your processes and settings for your page-image files. You might try taking some clean/known/vanilla RGB images from another source and running them through FXL export to see if you're still getting a color shift in readers (and in the exported image file). 'Cuz right now, I can't find fault with ID's process, not when the steps are carefully managed.

John PaizsAuthor

Participating Frequently

Wow, jeez... OK, I downloaded two RGB stock images of colour bars, and took a random RGB pic from my photo library, and created a new InDesign document. In the new document window I clicked on the Web menu, and created a three page document in letter size. Then I placed my three RGB images, one per page, and exported to EPUB, selecting PNG. I opened the EPUB in BOOKS, made screen caps of the images. Then I used Sigil (yes, I downloaded Sigil! They have a Mac version!) to extract the three PNGS from the EPUB. And unfortunately again there was a dulling down of the exports. The screen caps have the same RGB values as the PNGs I extracted from the EPUB, plus or minus a negligable amount. So if the problem is in my workflow, I can't see where. Unless there's some CMYK setting in InDesign that I'm not aware of, because I agree, it's like I'm getting CMYK values in my exports. I wonder... could it be because I'm on a Mac, and this is some unknown problem with the Mac version of InDesign?? (BTW... I really appreciate you sticking witth this. That's really awesome... thank you!!!)

M

m_0752

Participant

Go to Links panel, click on image. See if it says RGB or CMYK.

If CMYK, try Edit>Transparency blend space... if needed switch from CMYK to RGB.
Excuse me if you've tried this, I'm skimming the discussion.

L

Laura Brady

Inspiring

Make sure that the images place in the InDesign file are RGB. InDesign will convert CMYK to RGB, but you might want to manage that yourself so that the colour doesn't go haywire. If it's still happening, you could open the EPUB and replace the images with versions that you are happy with.

One caveat: you cannot control how the colour displays on device. It will look great on an iPad probably, and less great on a colour Kindle or Kindle Fire.

James Gifford—NitroPress

Legend

We've established that the source images are RGB, and substituted source file types to make sure it's not a weird TIFF thing. Readers on two systems (and platforms) show the dulling, as do images extracted from the EPUB. Clearly, InDesign is doing something to the image values, but what or why is as opaque as the black box that is its FXL export process. (The OP seems to have very good grasp of image files and color models and such, so I don't think it's an understanding/communication issue.)

ID is simply not a useful tool for FXL creation except to the lowest, least demanding standard. Which, IMHO, is on a level with it not making good paper airplanes, either. 🙂

James Gifford—NitroPress

Legend

EPUB == HTML/web. Any graphics you include must be, basicallly, web-optimized.

So if your source files are not web-RGB JPG or PNG, the conversion is going to change the colors one way or the other.

What format are your source images in, and what's your workflow for the export? What Object export options are you using?

Also know that some of the result depends on the reader (as does so much with EPUB). It's not as wide an issue as some other format and presentation ones, but you might try viewing your export on more vanilla readers like Thorium or Calibre, just to see if the color issues are the same as in the (somewhat off-standard) Apple reader.

John PaizsAuthor

Participating Frequently

Thank you, James, for your reply! My source images are tiffs, in RGB mode. As for the object export options, they are "EPUB and HTML", if that makes sense.

And thanks for the heads up re the different readers. I'll try them once I get my export to look right in my Books app, on my Mac, which is what I've been using to check my epubs.

So what I'll try now is converting my source files to PNG. In my document setup in InDesign, does it matter if my "Intent" is "Print" or "Web"?

Thank you so much again!

James Gifford—NitroPress

Legend

Thanks for letting me know. I'll give 72 a try.

This is my first e-book, so a bit of a learning curve.

There are a lot of hurdles. And fixed-page layout, which is more or less required for 'picture page' books like graphics novels, can be difficult to get optimal results from.

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