Figures and Images

Figures

Click the Insert Figure button and choose a file from your computer. As well as image files, Inkwell accepts PDFs as figures — useful for vector diagrams from drawing or plotting software, which stay sharp at any size.

Once uploaded, it appears as a figure with a label beneath it:

Depiction of a figure inserted into Inkwell
Depiction of a figure inserted into Inkwell

Click the caption below the figure to write one.

Selecting a figure brings up its own toolbar: Crop trims, turns or mirrors the picture, Replace Image swaps the file while keeping the caption, numbering and settings, and Remove Figure deletes it.

To refer to a figure from the text, type Figure and pick it from the list that appears. Inkwell keeps the number correct as figures are added, removed, or moved.

Cropping

Select a figure and press Crop to open the crop window.

The crop window
The crop window

Drag the box to move it, drag its corners or edges to resize it, or drag anywhere on the picture to start a fresh box. The area outside the box is dimmed, so what you see is what will print.

  • Aspect ratio — leave it on Free to frame by eye, or lock the box to Original, Square, 4:3, 3:2 or 16:9. Original follows the shape of the picture, so it keeps up when you turn it.
  • Rotate left and Rotate right turn the picture a quarter turn at a time — the quick fix for a photo that came off the camera on its side. The box comes round with the picture rather than jumping somewhere else.
  • Flip horizontal and Flip vertical mirror it.

The numbers in the corner are the pixel size of the picture you will end up with.

Press Crop to apply it. Inkwell makes a new picture rather than remembering the rectangle, so the printed book and every export simply see an ordinary image. The picture you started from is kept, so reopening the crop window puts the box back exactly where you left it and lets you widen the crop again — you are never cropping a crop. Reset to original puts the whole picture back.

Cropping throws pixels away, so a heavily cropped figure may start showing the low-resolution warning. That is the warning doing its job: there really is less detail left to print with. Crop less, or start from a larger file.

SVG and PDF figures cannot be cropped. They are drawings rather than grids of pixels, so there is nothing to cut — which is also why they stay sharp at any size. The Crop button is greyed out for them. Trim them in the program that drew them, or use Replace Image to swap in an image file.

Per-figure settings

With a figure selected, Local Settings offers:

  • Width — as a percentage of the text width. This is an upper limit rather than an exact size: a figure whose picture and caption together come to more than a page is scaled down until the two fit, so a long caption can never run off the bottom of the page. Shorten the caption if you would rather keep the picture large.
  • Bleed — how far past the text the figure reaches. See Bleed below.
  • Hide caption — keep the figure numbered but without caption text.
  • Hide label — drop the "Figure 3" label while keeping the caption.
  • Caption Position — above or below, overriding the project default.
  • Automatic Placement — let Inkwell move this figure to where it fits, or pin it exactly where it sits in the text.

Bleed

By default a figure sits inside the text column. Bleed lets it reach further:

  • Inline — the figure spans the full width of the paper, margin to margin, while the text carries on above and below it.
  • Full page — the figure takes a page of its own, filling it edge to edge.
  • Two-page spread — the figure runs across a facing pair of pages. Inkwell splits the image down the middle: the left half prints on the left-hand page, the right half on the right-hand page, and the two meet at the fold. The top, bottom and outer margins are kept, and the figure prints its caption and number as usual.
  • Two-page spread, full bleed — the same, but filling both pages right off all four edges. There is no margin left to put a caption in, so it prints none.

Set Width below 100% to hold the image back from the edges; it stays centred in whatever area the bleed mode gives it.

Bleed changes only how the figure prints. It is still numbered, still referred to by number from the text, and — as long as you have written a caption — still listed in the List of Figures, even in the modes that do not print the caption.

Where a spread lands

A spread has to start on a left-hand page, or a reader turning the page would meet the right half first. Rather than break the text where the figure sits — which would leave a short page and often a blank one — Inkwell carries the text on to the end of the next right-hand page and puts the spread on the opening after it. That is what Automatic Placement does for a spread, and it is on by default.

Turn Automatic Placement off to pin the spread where it sits instead. Inkwell still moves it to a left-hand page, so expect a blank page before it about half the time.

If a chapter has more than one spread, only the first is carried forward this way; the rest are pinned where they sit.

Project settings

Project Settings → Figures has three groups: Layout, Caption, and Label.

The Layout settings include:

  • Numbered By: Determine whether the figures’ numbering should be per-chapter or per-project.
  • Numbering: Displays the numbering format, which includes:
    • Numeric (Figure 1.1)
    • Alphabetic (Figure 1.a)
    • Roman Lowercase (Figure 1.I)
    • Roman Uppercase (Figure 1.I)
    • Greek (Figure 1.α)
    • Star and Dagger (Figure 1.*)
    • English Words (Figure 1.One)
  • Choose whether to display the Chapter Number as a prefix in the Numbering scheme
  • Top and Bottom Margin: Determine the amount of extra whitespace before and after the figure.
  • Gap: Amount of space between the figure and the label
  • Automatic Placement: If enabled, Figures will be moved to the top or bottom of the page so as not to interrupt the text.

The Captions settings include:

  • Alignment: Determines whether the caption is left-aligned, right-aligned, centered, or fully justified
  • Position: Moves the caption to either above or below the figure
  • Font: Over 1500 fonts available
  • Font Size: Determines the size of the font
  • Line Height: Determine the distance between lines, increase to produce double spacing
  • Bold or Italic

The Labels settings include:

  • Font: Over 1500 fonts available
  • Font Size: Determines the size of the font
  • Line Height: Determine the distance between lines, increase to produce double spacing
  • Bold or Italic

Images

Any figure can be converted to an image, which can appear independently or as an inline image. To convert a figure to an image, click on the figure to select it, then click on the Local Settings icon along the left side of your screen.

Click on the Figure menu:

Next, click on Convert to Inline Image:

The figure becomes an image that can be resized if needed. To resize the image, click on it to select it, then click on the Image menu:

From here, you can resize the image by adjusting the point size either up or down accordingly. Click outside the size field to make the change.

To go back the other way, select the image, open the Image section of Local Settings, and click Convert to Figure.

Inline images crop exactly like figures — select one and press Crop on the toolbar. A crop survives converting between a figure and an inline image, in either direction.

List of Figures

Every captioned figure can be collected into a generated listing. Add it with Insert → List of Figures in the chapter list, and it fills itself in with each figure's caption and page number, staying up to date as the book changes. Its formatting is under Project Settings → List of Figures.

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