Virtual books software...?

[bandgeekmafia78]

Hi
Due to the high cost of colour printing, our Art Department is interested in software that produces "virtual books", where images can be presented on a screen in a book format and pages turned by clicking and dragging. I have looked into this a bit but have not found anything yet that I feel would work (Most of these programs are for web design).

Does anyone know if this software exists? If so, can you please recommend something suitable?

Thanks,
Alan.

[dhicks]

Due to the high cost of colour printing, our Art Department is interested in software that produces "virtual books", where images can be presented on a screen in a book format and pages turned by clicking and dragging.

Would a PDF document not suffice? What is it the art department wants to display, and where? Are they intending to display work on large screens, or on some sort of eBook reader format?

--
David Hicks

[bandgeekmafia78]

Would a PDF document not suffice? What is it the art department wants to display, and where? Are they intending to display work on large screens, or on some sort of eBook reader format?

--
David Hicks

They'd like to do it in a sort of eBook reader format, almost like a scrap-book of the student's Graphics work. A lot of their work is done in Photoshop and Fireworks so I'm looking for software that is compatible with these file extensions.

[TechMonkey]

Does it have to have page turning wizzy graphics? Could it not just be portfolio software. Something like Mahara?

[bandgeekmafia78]

Hi TechMonkey - no I dont think it needs to be page turning. Not heard of Mahara before - is it any good?
Thanks for the suggestion.

[Domino]

They'd like to do it in a sort of eBook reader format, almost like a scrap-book of the student's Graphics work. A lot of their work is done in Photoshop and Fireworks so I'm looking for software that is compatible with these file extensions.

You've photoshop and fireworks - do you have inDesign?

Adobe InDesign CS4: Producing EPUB eBooks from InDesign How-to guides

[dhicks]

They'd like to do it in a sort of eBook reader format, almost like a scrap-book of the student's Graphics work. A lot of their work is done in Photoshop and Fireworks so I'm looking for software that is compatible with these file extensions.

Photoshop should be able to export PNG, and I think PNG is Fireworks' native format, so you could just have the pupils shove some PNG files in a folder somewhere and have a script pick those up and produce a simple HTML slideshow of images, with buttons to go to the previous and next images. You could also get the pupils to produce a PDF document, sized to fit an eBook reader, which you could then load on to a bunch of eBook readers for people to view. The issue there is that I don't think there's any dedicated eBook reader devices out yet that do colour, so your best bet might be one of those cheap Next Android tablets or similar - they might not be much good for whatver they were intended for, but they might just be able to manage a slideshow. You could also, of course, use a basic LCD picture frame.

--
David Hicks

[bandgeekmafia78]

Awesome. Cheers!

[AyatollahPies]

And this is where Tablet PC's can really shine in my opinion.

[SneakyBeaky]

I use flip PDF for publishing my books on the internet and for supplying them as a flipbook on a CD. I am very pleased with the software.
Trial it here:
Page flip ebook creator_make flipping book from pdf, powerpoint, image and more. [FlipBuilder.com]