Portfolio

Download DS10 portfolio book one – epub

davids197 — Thu, 10 May 2012 10:44:59 +0000

My first epub is available for download now, it is called DS10 Portfolio Book One. I have made some notes about how I created the epub and on my attempts to get it uploaded to the iTunes App Store, follow this link.

Promo video

davids197 — Thu, 03 May 2012 11:07:07 +0000

A short promo film made in iMovie on an iPod touch featuring some of my work.

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Smokin brush set

davids197 — Tue, 01 May 2012 09:54:06 +0000

A Photoshop brush set for you to download and freely use to create work for yourself, or work that you wish to sell. Download the smokin brush set here.

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Keep calm

davids197 — Sun, 22 Apr 2012 13:49:36 +0000

This artwork was generated in Adobe Illustrator then imported into Adobe Photoshop for finishing. I can have a rather dystopian view of the world in general, this piece came about from my memories of 2000AD a British comic book which was popular in the 1970′s and I remember fondly from when I was a kid.

Keep calm on a gallery wall, photo manipulation.

Design for a iPhone case.

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Tears of the dammed

davids197 — Sat, 07 Apr 2012 18:31:01 +0000

Tears of the dammed my homage to the zombie movie, photo-manipulation worked up in Adobe Photoshop (CS5.5 version).

My picture on your wall, photo manipulation.

Design for a iPhone case.

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DS10 portfolio book one – ePub

davids197 — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 14:15:58 +0000

Well, after hours and hours of blood sweet and tears (if I had hair I would be pulling it out) I have achieved what I thought was impossible. I have successfully uploaded a fixed width ePub to Apple iTunes.

Now this was no mean feat as I have been messing about with the ePub format for a couple of months now and I think I may have cracked it, a successful upload to iTunes is only half the story your iBook will then stay in your iTunes Connect account (if you have one) until someone looks at it and approves it to appear in the store. I have no idea about the time scales on this, but it could take a while.

So this is how I got this stage, I am not going to reinvent the wheel so I will just link out to the sites I got my info from as we go along.

The first thing I did was get my template from here. I also followed Ben’s tutorial on how to make an iPad/iPhone photo book.

I used Adobe Dreamweaver to edit all the code, but any basic html text editor should do.

Just to be clear I want whatever book I make to work and look the same on as many devices and platforms as possible, this book works on my iPod Touch 4G plus my (New) iPad. I have not tested it on any Android devices but they should work as you can get ePub readers for Android, you can also even get a Blackberry ePub reader.

This type of ePub is called a Fixed Layout Book (fixed width), and to get it past Apple you must make the following modification open the content.opf file and find the line of code that begins with guide and replace with the following:

cover – the href must point to whatever file name that you have called your cover.

text – the href must point to your first content page.

If you don’t add this modification you will get this message:

ERROR ITMS-5107: "Fixed-layout books must supply a text or bodymatter starting location in the guide which corresponds to a location in the book spine." at Book (MZItmspBookPackage)

You must also make sure that your coding in the content.opf is spot on, what I have found is that if you are just side loading your ePub onto your device your coding can be quite ropey and it can work. With Apple on the other hand your coding has to be of a very high standard. I use Adobe Digital Editions to read/view my ePub on, if it works on this your 90% there but you may need to do more tweeking .

TIP – When you are ready to zip up your completed ePub, just highlight the OEBPS / META-INF folders and the mimetype file and then make a zip archive. I made the mistake of zipping up the folder these files where contained in, big mistake much time wasted. After you have zipped them up change the file name to .epub

TIP – When you upload your assets to iTunes you will be asked to provide a screen grab to go with it, I got this message:

ERROR ITMS-9000: "Image dimensions '960x640' of image file 'IMG_1362.PNG' do not match the supported dimensions. Must be one of 1024x768, 1024x748, 768x1024, 768x1004, 2048x1536, 2048x1496, 1536x2048, 1536x2008" at Book (MZItmspBookPackage)

I just changed my screen grab to one of the supported dimensions and it then worked fine.

You can only upload direct to Apple if you have an Apple Mac Computer, you will need to check on the Apple website if your particular model is supported.

You can get a company like Lulu to do all the uploading work, there are others but this one did look more professional. I am also just planning on realising free books so payment models are of no interest to me now (but maybe in the future).

You can download the ePub I sent to Apple, it is called DS10 Portfolio Book One.

I am also posting the entire content.opf code below, this is the code that got me through so I hope it is of some help to you.



  
    DS10 Portfolio Book One
    David Stephenson
    en
    All Rights Reserved.
    DS10
    urn:uuid:http://www.davidmstephenson.com

I hope this post has been of some help, if you have any questions please leave them below.

Spotlight newsletter

davids197 — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 15:23:40 +0000

Spotlight is a monthly internal newsletter, I work on the production and layout of these publications for the UK Marketing department. The document is artworked up using Adobe inDesign (CS5.5).

Download this edition of Spotlight.

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Isolation

davids197 — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 14:38:22 +0000

I have always loved the music of Joy Division, so I decided to create this image which I hope sums up the feel of the music of the band. This is a photo manipulation created in Adobe Photoshop (CS5.5 version), I have darkened the clouds on the bottom image which I think adds a bit more atmosphere.

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The pier

davids197 — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 14:14:46 +0000

Image of a spotlight on Bournemouth Pier, England. This photo-manipulation was worked up in Adobe Photoshop (CS5.5 version).

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The plane

davids197 — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 14:11:02 +0000

Image of a Vulcan bomber, the last one still flying. The photo-manipulation was worked up in Adobe Photoshop (CS5.5 version).

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