Applies to ScribeWright 1.1.117

Images

Interior images (illustrations, maps, and ornaments) live inside the project file and travel with it. (The cover is separate: set it in Book Setup on the Cover tab.)

Tools ▸ Images… (Ctrl+Shift+I, or Insert ▸ Image… on the ribbon) opens the book’s image gallery:

  • Add brings image files (PNG, JPEG, GIF, SVG) into the book.
  • Insert places the selected image at your caret in the current chapter, with its description and caption.
  • Remove takes an image out of the book. An image that’s still used by a chapter will show as a broken reference there, so remove after you’ve deleted its uses.
  • Close (or Esc) puts the gallery away.
The Images gallery: the book's pictures, each with a description and a caption.
The Images gallery: the book’s pictures, each with a description and a caption.

Describing an Image

Under the thumbnails, every image has two fields that are saved with the book:

  • Description (alt text): what a reader who can’t see the picture should know, in a sentence: "A hand-drawn map of the island, north at the top, with the lighthouse marked." Screen readers speak it aloud, and it stands in for the picture when an e-reader can’t show it. Say what the picture shows; never its file name.
  • Caption (optional): text printed under the image. A captioned image goes into the chapter as a figure, centred, with the caption in smaller italics beneath it. The Style Editor’s Custom CSS can restyle figure and figcaption.

If you insert an image that has no description yet, ScribeWright asks once. Yes takes you back to the field; No skips it and marks the image as decoration (an empty description), which suits an ornament or a flourish but not anything a reader would want explained.

Layout Review (F9) lists every image that still has no description, or whose description is a file name, under MARK-005 in the Markup group. Fill in the words and the finding goes away; the review never invents a description for you.

Working with an Image in the Chapter

Click an image in the visual editor to select it: it gets an outline in the accent colour and a small toolbar appears beside it.

  • Description… edits the alt text of that copy of the image.
  • Caption… adds a caption (or changes one); leave it empty to take the caption away again.
  • Width steps a captioned image between the full text width, 75 % and 50 %. The choice travels with the book into the EPUB, the PDF and the Word file.
  • Remove deletes the image from the chapter (the file stays in the gallery).

With an image selected, Delete or Backspace removes it, Esc drops the selection, and typing carries on in the paragraph after it. All of these go through Undo like any other edit.

In a non-fiction book a captioned image is a figure and gets a number (Figure 2.1: in front of the caption) when you export. The editor shows the same number as a preview; the caption you typed holds none, and the Code pane shows none. See Non-fiction books ▸ Figures.

Importing a book keeps the descriptions it already has: an EPUB’s alt text comes across into the gallery. (Images in Word manuscripts are not imported yet; add them from the gallery.)

Where Images Go

Added images are copied into the .swj project: the original file on disk is no longer needed, and moving the project to another machine brings every image along. On export they’re packed into the EPUB with correct references.

Tips

  • E-readers vary wildly in screen size; images scale to the reader’s width, so favor generous resolution over exact dimensions.
  • Keep an eye on total size: a picture-heavy EPUB downloads slowly and some stores impose limits.
  • For a decorative scene break, a styled text break (see Writing & Formatting) is lighter and adapts to the reader’s theme; save images for content.
  • A good description is short and concrete. Don’t start with "image of" or "picture of"; the reader’s software already says that.

This page is generated from the in-app Help. Report a problem on the support page.