KDP quirks

The book is now on both the kindle store, and the ibooks store.
iBook- 49p 

Kindle (not iOS) - £1.49

It's minimum price allowed on both stores.
The idea isn't to make any money, but to see how that side of things works, and I'm learning a fair bit.

What I'm learning is that there are some quirks, particularly with the Amazon store.
The Amazon KDP admin tools are far easier to use that the iTunes Connect/iBooks publisher except when they aren't.

For example I created the kindle version in the "kindle kids book creator", because it's a fixed format book  and letting the text flow as it does in a normal e-book just wouldn't work.

However it seems Amazon have some beef with apple, and won't let you port this format of book to an iPad... they don't mention this until it's in the store.
Of course it could be that the iPad simply can't handle the format... but that seems technically very unlikely, and as Amazon manage the app for the iOS devices they could easily tweak it?

If I were suspicious I'd think they might be trying to drive sales of their Fire things... but they'll probably just hack off a bunch of people.

I did ask why the book wouldn't work on an ipad and here's the reply from Amazon:
"Please note that in order to provide readers with the best possible experience, fixed layout books are currently only available in the following devices and applications:

Fire Tablets:

"Kindle Fire HDX 8.9''
Kindle Fire HDX
Kindle Fire HD(2nd Generation)
Fire HDX 8.9 Tablet
Fire HD 7 Tablet
Fire HD 6 Tablet
Kindle Fire HD 8.9"
Kindle Fire HD(1st Generation)
Kindle Fire(2nd Generation)
Kindle Fire(1st Generation)

Fire Phones:
Fire Phone

Free Kindle Reading Apps:

Kindle for Android Phones

Kindle for Android Tablets
Kindle for Mac
Kindle for PC

This is the reason why you were unable to open the book using iOS. When you create a fixed layout book, our system identifies it as such and determines the content is best viewed on a color device that supports Kindle Format 8."

30 drawing apps in 30 days- day 18 pixelmator

Pixelmator is a full fat drawing app, with layers, more brushes (in infinitely variable sizes and opacities) than you shake a stick at, a wealth of colours, which you can select from hex codes, and the ability to make your own palettes.

The pinch to zoom works as expected, there's a proper undo button, and the only over sensitive touch control is the tap and hold colour picker which gets a bit too helpful if you are drawing dots.

There's a bunch of filters, and effects, and a built in help function.

The only real complaint is that the menu system for picking brushes is a bit too menu-ey, you click the paintbrush, and the the brush type, and then pick the brush, and then click on the size/opacity controls, and then pick your colour... it's a bit long winded.

I briefly used the desktop version of Pixelmator on my mac back when I was doing the weekly webcomic, it loaded quickly, and worked reliably, but didn't work any better than Photoshop so I reverted to that. I can see pixelmator on the ipad is probably much like that, it's fine, but if you are already settled using sketchbook or something else, you are unlikely to switch, unless you are a big fan of brushes, which it has in abundance.

Today's challenge was to draw cords, so I opted for a Geography teacher on a field trip..

Export to png, jpg or psd, save to photos, open in another app etc...

I was slightly concerned when I started the app that it would be a memory hog like Artset, as it warned me I only had 1Gb of memory free on my iPad, but that doesn't seem to have been an issue.

30 drawing apps in 30 days- day 16 Adobe Shape CC

Adobe Shape CC... see if you can guess what it does?

No.

You are wrong.

The idea is to create a shape, I've no idea why you'd do that, perhaps you'd add the output to your Creative Cloud Library and use it elsewhere...

Anyway what is does is allows you to take a photo of something and then filter the image into dark and light, which it converts to some form of vector image.

So in this case I drew a sketch doodle whilst listening to the keynote at the conference.

I guess I should have drawn a bolder shape, without shading to make  useful vector image, but there you go... today is a bit of a departure.

By the way the pencil was a horrible smooth conference pencil, and the paper had no tooth, so it was a bit of a grey skecthing experience anyway.

Then I took a photo, using the app...

I adjusted the sensitivity...

Named the Shape... "two"...

and saved it.

...and exported to my image library

There is a Moleskine app that is listed under the Creative Cloud app collection that does something similar too...

30 drawing apps in 30 days day 9 Adobe Illustrator Draw

Adobe Illustrator Draw is a polished app, part of the creative cloud offering.

It has layers, it zooms, and it has the useful template tool for outlining. The pens size and opacity are set using a drag left or right, and up and down.

...and that's about it simple and accurate.

The undo is a two fingered left swipe which seems to work without issue. The positioning of the shape tool is one of the only tricky things, especially when you try to position the shape template near the edge of the page.

Export to illustrator and photoshop, save to the photo library, or all manner of other places... and because it's linked to creative cloud there seems to be 2Gb of online storage available, and the ablity to share your work with a community using the Adobe Behance portfolio tool. I'vve shared my pic and will follow up on the community and Behance tool some time later.

Sketch today was draw a school... so it's a school of fish.

30 drawing apps in 30 days day 8 Adobe Illustrator Line

This app is by far the most professional and considered of all I've used so far, as one might expect from Adobe who have been doing this sort of thing for a while now. This app comes as part of bewwildering panoply of apps under the creative cloud banner, and looks like its been designed for the graphics pro on the move... offering an alternative to coughing for a wacom companion tablet, or one of the increasingly attractive Windows touch surface touch things, or whatever they're called.

The Adobe Creative Cloud for mobile approach seems to be to divide the functionality into individual apps, so there's an app that just builds brushes, there's this version of illustrator for folk who want some perspectives, supported by a wealth of grids, and viewing tools, and the neat template/ruler thing, which allows you to pick shapes to use as pen guides.

The app is designed to be used with the adobe stylus (and slide guide) which I think is there as a palm rest? further esearch required.

Zoom works reasonably well, though as per usual sometimes it thinks you are trying to draw a line, leading to additional undoing...the two finger left swipe to undo does work well, and didn't miss a beat.

The lack of fill tool is a bit of a pain, as is the lack of layers... there's a sort of layer thing, but it is really there to allow photos to be used for tracing, it has a level of opacity, but doesn't allow say a background tone to be layed down with a marker, and then have something drawn over the top... unless to draw your background elsewhere.

It could well be that the workflow is to do some tasks in the sister app "Adobe Illustrator Draw".. I'll try that tomorrow.

Sketch challenge for the day was  draw a computer...

Procreate app

My Twitter stream has been full of procreate hoopla the last few days so I thought is have a bash at using it.

It's ok, the colour fill takes a bit ofbgetting used to and the edge detection is a bit random, but compared to the tools I remember trying in the early days of iOS it's not bad at all. 

Will it be useful in creating finished artwork? 

No.

Will it be useful for quick sketches...?

Maybe.

The biggest issues are still down to the problems inherent in finger painting, bold strokes are fine, but precision is tricky.

https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/procreate-sketch-paint-create./id425073498?mt=8