: Color scheme for print and ebook I am currently writing a book intended for print (POD) and eBook (PDF/ePub displayed on different devices, including iPads). I use InDesign (CS4) to create the

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Just to sum up what I have learned in the meantime: It is not possible for the kind of book I wrote to do a print and an ePub-eBook version with the same document. Reason being is that the print version (and an PDF Version viewed on an iPad or similar device) uses tables and a range of colors that look stunning on a medium to large display (and hopefully also in print, will take a while), but the hardware of ePub devices is too limited to achieve it there.

It's like the old days with Netscape, Explorer, and Oracle -- only worse. Tables look awful unless you format them manually (InDesign does not export them with formatting), and using a colored table-style does not make sense on a small device (screen too small for the tables to look good with this kind of margin effect and some device offer no color, i.e., the information value vanishes).

So the best solution is to create an own ePub version -- removing any color, replacing the tables (and the need for a color scheme) with bullet point lists, and keeping to basic formatting. But doing both with one file is -- I think -- not possible for the formatting I have used, it would only cripple the print version/PDF ebook version.

Another problem is the formatting of the InDesign file itself -- there is a great guide to use InDesign for ePub creation here (unfortunately in German), e.g., the text has to be on continuous flow (it was not).

So, I think the answer is -- there is no need for such a color scheme if ePub is included, because you can never be sure that the reader is using a device that can display any color. If going for print/PDF ebook and ePub, with complex formatting you might have to create two versions of it.
@Moderator : Not sure, should I have written this as an addendum to my question? Or not at all?

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epub (as well as kindle) are subsets of HTML. So, in essence, there's no difference between reading an e-book on a tablet and reading a webpage on a computer -- and you get some of the same problems. Color shifts between different computers has been plaguing web developers since the start.

I don't have inDesign, so I can't tell you where to go exactly, but here are some things to try:

Set the color palette to be "web safe". I know you can set your GIFs in indesign to be websafe, but I don't know about the rest. If it takes you all the way back to the old school 256 color scheme, it may not work for you, though.
Reduce the bit-depth of your color palette. Initially, ipad was supposed to have a 24-bit color depth, but everyone's complaining online that it doesn't seem to. So, start stepping that down. In fact, if I were you, I'd step it down as far as possible while still getting the same effect. Every device renders just a little bit differently, so you want to go for the lowest common denominator.
I believe bit-depth is where it's at, but if that doesn't help, start turning off features and reducing other settings that add complexity to the color rendering.
Change your colors. There are some colors that just won't display the same, no matter what you do. Others render consistently across devices. So, play around with other color sets if reducing complexity doesn't help.

It all revolves around quality - you want less, not more. If you have inDesign, then I'm sure you also have a really high end monitor to use it on. Tablets are not high end displays (with the possible exception of iPad 3) -- you have to target the low end.

One more thing to throw into the mix:
Remember that e-ink devices are black & white, so you'll want to make sure it works in grey-scale too.

Edit:
I just noticed from one of your comments that you're using CYMK. That's for printing, not displays. Set it to RGB instead. This alone may fix your problem.

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I know a couple of people who have encountered this problem as well, and the way they addressed it was to convert all their charts to images. They generally had better luck in seeing the colors rendered properly when they did this. However, that introduced another issue in that the screen sizes for different e-readers, from Smartphones to Tablets to Computers, could cause distortions in the images. However, since most e-readers will allow you to increase the size of an image to beyond the normal width of the screen, this turned out to be a more acceptable solution for them.

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