Working with Figures
Figures are essentially visual aids. They can provide information that is otherwise hard to understand just by reading the text. As with visual aids in a presentation, you want to make sure each figures actually does some real work. Don’t include figures just to include them. Make sure they really add to or support the text. On the other hand, where a figure is really needed to make your point, don’t neglect to include one either.
There are basically three types of figures: screen shots, line art, and photos. Screen shots are self-explanatory. You capture what is on your monitor as a graphic image. You can do typically do that with some simple keyboard commands through your operating system and a graphic tool, or you can use an application specialized for it such as Snag-it or SnapzPro.
Line art refers to any sort of figure that is drawn in some sense. It would include diagrams, maps, illustrations, graphs, and cartoons. Typically you would send us something that gives us an idea of what you want drawn and we would have an artist create it. You could use PowerPoint or Visio or even Illustrator if you have those skills. Or it could be something you drew by hand on a cocktail napkin and scanned. As long as we can read it, we can probably work with it.
Digital photos are the least commonly used figure in our type of books, but they are used from time to time.
Figure submission standards
Figure submission standards for screen shots are the most complicated. Let’s start with the file format. You want to submit you screen shots in TIFF format. That is the format used in publishing. Ideally, you want to capture your screen shots with your screen resolution set at 1024 x 768. “Why so low?” you ask. Because the higher the screen res you use, the smaller things will appear in the printed book Think about it like this: you are going to have a fixed amount of space for a screen shot in the book, roughly the size of a 3 x 5 index card. The higher you run your resolution, the smaller everything — icons, windows, text — will appear in that fixed space.
Line art can be submitted in a variety of formats — any format we can read if we are redrawing it. If you want it to go in as is, without redrawing, then typically you would have to submit the figures as PostScript files, in EPS format.
Photos should be high quality and submitted in TIFF format.
Capturing screen shots
Capture screen shots full screen. Let us do the cropping to the part of the screen you want us to use. If you do it that way it ensures that we get consistent sizing. Make sure you save the screens in TIFF format. You can use the built-in tools in your operating system to capture screens, but if you are doing a significant number of them use a specialized tool. If will do nice things like automatically name and number the figure files for you.