Day: March 2, 2009

In order to submit files to Baen for electronic distribution, I had to dust off the old book files and open them up. I did some minor copy edits and then inserted the cover so there would be one electronic file instead of a separate file for the cover. Then I went to upload things to Baen. This is when I discovered that Tub of Happiness was 8 GB, Teraport Wars was 5 GB, Under New Management was 3 GB, and Blackness Between was 2.5 GB. Uploading Tub of Happiness was going to take three days. Hmm. Not good. So I stepped away from the computer and did other things while my back brain worked on the problem. At some point my back brain went “Aha! The files are huge because they are high resolution images intended for print. Since Baen will be doing electronic distribution, you can make the images much lower resolution!” So I went back to work.

I opened up photoshop and figured out how to set up a macro to reduce the size of the files. (I made a macro all by myself! The fact that I’m proud of this should tell you a little about how clueless I am when it comes to photoshop. Also a “macro” is a set of instructions like “Take all the files in this folder and make them 200 pixels per inch.” I learned a new word too.) I ran Under New Management and Blackness Between through. Then I had to re-link the images to the InDesign file. (Note to self, when modifying images for Indesign change either the files OR the directory structure, but not both or you will have to re-link all 768 files individually instead of by folder.) Except for the one little re-link annoyance, it went well and the result worked. Then I ran Tub of Happiness through the same macro and it rendered all of the strips unreadable. I turns out that Howard has changed his file formats several times as the strip evolved. So I made a new macro, figuring that it would work for Teraport Wars as well. Um. No. That macro changed the resolution of the strips to 200 pixels per inch, which works great for reducing a strip from 600 pixels per inch. When you apply that macro to strips that were saved at 72 pixels per inch, the files get bigger not smaller. I managed to turn Teraport Wars into a 19 GB monster and I spent most of two days doing it before I realized my mistake. (The fact that the process was taking so long, should have told me something, but it didn’t. See note above about cluelessness and photoshop.)

So, the upshot is that instead of being done with Baen edits on Thursday, I am still finishing them today. Fortunately now that I’ve sorted out my mistake, it is going very quickly. I should be done before noon. I also need to finish up the poster shipping that did not get completed on Friday because the cell print posters did not arrive until late. But I can’t start shipping until my computer is done thinking about Teraport Wars images. I feel like I’ve been waiting for my computer to think all weekend long. It is probably tired, poor thing. After the shipping will be the accounting. Then I will finally get to the house cleaning which was intended to be the major task for today. All my business things spilled over into my house cleaning day. Ah well. Sometimes family stuff spills into business time, so I guess it all comes out in the wash.