Photo Adjustments

Adjusting the size

A couple of photos should be added to the photo book. To make them fit within the page and also to make best use of the space on the page, tha photos should be "normalized". Usually they'll have different sizes and resolutions. And some will be in portrait and others in landscape orientation.

Depending on the camera, also different aspect ratios will be present.

A lot of variability... You should have decided for a page format of the book already (see planning). A good compromise is anything with an aspect ratio of 3:2 (width : height), since then also a 4:3 image will fit, if the height is made identical (normalized).

Example:
if you have a photo with 1200x800 pix (3:2) and another one with 1200x900 (4:3), the size of your pages could be e.g. 900x600 pix plus a margin of e.g. 10...20 pix.

If we assume a page size of 940x640, we can resize the first image (the one with 1200x800) to 900x600 pix, i.e. scale it down to 75% of it's original size. This woould allow a margin of 20 pix on all sides:
20 + 900 + 20 = 940pix width, and
2ß + 600 + 20 = 640 pix in height. 

The second image (1200x900) has to be downsized to 67% so it fits in height:
1200*0.67 = 800 pix in width, 900*0,67 = 600 pix in height.

Due to the different aspect ratio the  margin in the left and right side is bigger, becasue the photo is now smaller but has the same height.

A margin of (960-800)/2=80 pix an the left and right side will center the photo. Instead of 20 pix margin as for the first photo, the second photo needs an 80 pix margin to center it on the page.

Rule: for the low quality images make all photos the same height while keeping the aspect ratio, and make the pages of the book fit the bigger photos.

And also the high quality photos should be made the same height.
During a resize process the images houldn't be scaled up; this will result in bad qualities. Also try to use even factors and make the images 1/2 or 1/4 of their original size whenever possible to avoid aliasing effects (fuzzy edges due to rounding errors). 

Providing different qualities

To achieve the best compromise between flipping speed and quality, it helps to use low quality images for low zoom levels, i.e. smal books. And switch over to higher quality images when zooming in. 
THis is supported by MegaZine3, if images in at least 2 different qualities are provided and the scale parameter is set.

To prepare for that to be able to use and test that option, two qualities must be created.
Usually the images have a higher resolution then needed for a small book. 8... 16 MB and more are pretty common today. Which results in image sizes of e.g. 3888x2592 (3:2, 10MB) or 4415x3312 (4:3, 15MB).
Most users still have monitors with less than 1600*1280 pix, which results in page sizes of less than 800*640 pix for an open book. Therefore a low resolution image of about 800*600 makes a lot of sense.

For the high resolution option it  depends on the expected maximal zoom level. Usually images sizes of 1600*1200 are sufficient. Flash does not support more than 2560*2560 pixel; please keep that in mind and make your images smaller than that. On both sides...

Several tools let you change the resolution of the images, and also xnview supports it. 

Renaming the photos

To make best use of the MZ3 Tool, the photos should be named following a fix naming schema:

img_l as the first part of the name for the lower quality photos, and
img_h for the higher quality photos.

Followed by a number, starting with 1, and the type specifier like .jpg or .png:
img_l1.jpg, img_l2.jpg, img_l3.jpg, ...
img_h1.jpg, img_h2.jpg, img_h3.jpg, ...

This all can be easily achieved with tools like xnview; as shown in the video.