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frankb91561333
Participant
October 31, 2021
Question

InDesign epub images are draggable after export. Why?

  • October 31, 2021
  • 1 reply
  • 497 views

InDesign is great for making epub books. BUT I don't want to proceed with "marketing" until I have the answer to this "problem." Why are the images draggable in my exported epub books? (By "draggable" I don't mean "copy-able," that is a different topic). What I'm talking about is, unlike a PDF, where the image is securely fastened to the file, my epub images are easily lifted out by dragging). I have posed this question to Adobe and have tried all of their suggestions, unfortunately, after each attempt at one of their fixes, when I've sent my successfully completed (fixed layout or reflowable) epub book to someone outside of my "Adobe family," they report that they are (still) able to drag the images out of the book. I would love to know what I am doing wrong. Is there something specific that I need to do BEFORE export? OR, is this just the way it is with Adobe InDesign produced epub books? Thanks in advance for any assistance! 

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1 reply

James Gifford—NitroPress
James Gifford—NitroPress
Legend
October 31, 2021

I would think this has far more to do with your reader than with the EPUB file per se. Nothing in EPUB or any other e-book file "permits" image dragging (or, AFAIK, prevents it).

 

It's very similar to image management on web pages. (If you're not aware of it, EPUB is just a packaged web page, more or less — HTML file, CSS style file, TOC and index files, some miscellaneous bits. You can open it with any ZIP file manager.) It may be possible to add code to lock the images, as is done on some websites. But mostly, I think you are seeing EPUB the way it works from pretty much any production tool and on any reader.

F
frankb91561333Author
Participant
November 1, 2021
Thank you for the suggestion that it could be the reader… but having sent the ePub to someone reading it on Apple Books, the images in the ePub were still draggable.
Any other suggestions are appreciated.

Sent from my iPad
James Gifford—NitroPress
James Gifford—NitroPress
Legend
November 1, 2021

I have never considered the issue, but I'd suspect it's integral to EPUB (as noted above). It would take a reader feature/function to lock the images against dragging and export. I am not sure any of the (web/browser) code that can be used to lock images against user download would work in the EPUB format (and they would again be reader/software dependent).

 

Is your concern that readers will be able to drag the images outside the reader for use, as with web images? Or do you just not like that it happens?

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