Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

E-Books and extracting only the bits that you want.

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

    E-Books and extracting only the bits that you want.

    Wanting to dig deeper into the subject, I've been looking at books relating to Flash Photography, and there are an awful lot of them, ranging from not a lot of money, to quite expensive.

    Amazon was good place to look, as with many of their books you can "look inside", and also read the reviews of 'end users'.

    I often find that when I buy a book on a particular subject, photography, astro-imaging, and the like, that only parts of the book are about a specific area of interest I might have, and the rest I don't particularly need, or its knowledge that I already have.

    I noted that from Amazon, you can download a free Kindle Reader for the PC, and that many of the books on offer have a downloadable Kindle version, at significantly less cost than the printed version.

    So, I thought I would give it a try, downloaded the Kindle Reader, and a Kindle version of one of the books on flash photography, that was well reviewed.

    I found that there was some really useful content in the book, but also a multitude of pictures, and areas of the subject that are not currently of any interest to me (studio work etc).

    Now as I much prefer to sit in an armchair and read printed material, than sitting in front of a PC monitor, I copied the sections of the book that were of real interest to me, and pasted them into a Word document.

    The Kindle Reader software has an inbuilt facility for copying the content, to paste elsewhere.

    Of some 136 pages in the book, I condensed this down to a nine page A4 Word document, containing all the content that was of real interest to me, and printed it out.

    I now have exactly what I wanted from the book, in a form that I can sit down and read, without having to flick through lots of pages that I didn't need, and for significantly less money than the printed book.

    Of course, I still have the complete book in digital format, should I want to refer to it at a future date.

    I should add, and I assume this applies to Kindle versions of other books, the author sets a limit on the amount of content that can be copied, and if you reach this limit, the software will not allow you to copy any more content.

    That said, I was able to copy all the content that I needed, without reaching this limit.

    However, the limit only applies to 'cut & paste', and if you wanted to, you could copy much more, by using a 'screen grab' application, to copy the page and then paste it into a document as an image.

    Dave
    Last edited by Dave_S; 11-12-2013, 22:47. Reason: Typo
    Dave

    Website:- https://davesimaging.wixsite.com/mysite

    #2
    Re: E-Books and extracting only the bits that you want.

    [ Canon 1DX ] [ 70-200 f2.8 L is II ] [ 300 f4 L is usm ] [ 50 mm f1.8 II ] [ 24-105 f4 L is ] [ Speedlite 430 ] [Yongnuo 568 ex II flash ] [ Yongnuo flash triggers ] [ Cokin P filters] [ Giottos Silk Road GYTL8384 carbon tripod ] [ Photoshop CS5 ] ... Wish list Canon EF 500 mm f/4 L IS USM.

    Some nice gear, but not much idea ... https://www.flickr.com/photos/123175589@N03/

    Comment


      #3
      Re: E-Books and extracting only the bits that you want.

      I guess that the problem with a lot of factual publications, particularly those which strive to teach, there's a lot of superfluous information either designed to pad-out what might otherwise be a slim volume or to cater for absolute novices I'm currently 135 pages into an 800 page book on Photoshop, and have condensed my learning points so far onto an A5 piece of notepaper.

      Nine pages out of 136 isn't a great hit-rate, but at least you've condensed the useful stuff into a manageable format. I wasn't aware that Kindle apps would allow cutting and pasting at all, so thanks for enlightening me
      Steve's kit - Canon 6D/EG-D/BG-E13/60D/EF-D/BG-E9/600 EX-RT/17-40L/24-105L/40/100L/70-200L/70-300/2x iii/Sigma 8-16/Yongnuo YN-568EX (x2)/YN560EX II/YN622C-TX/YN622C (x4)

      Comment


        #4
        Re: E-Books and extracting only the bits that you want.

        Perhaps the solution is to convert the Kindle MOBI file to another format such as TXT or PDF and copy/paste from that (or delete the parts you don't want). Googling 'MOBI to TXT convert' found EPUB Converter which may be worth experimenting with.

        Cheers,
        John

        Comment


          #5
          Re: E-Books and extracting only the bits that you want.

          I save all my manuals on my iPhone in iBooks, then take a screenshot of the odd page I want to quickly refer to, and save them in one Album.
          Janet

          Canon 90D, 77D, Plus a load of lenses, especially macro.
          http://www.leighcameraclub.co.uk/

          Comment

          Working...
          X