I lise John here, am an administrator of a few computers, all with Photoshop CS5 12.0 Middle Eastern version (for Macintosh) I’ve tried to find an update to 12.0.4. If you have come to this blog for updates to my books Aiming at Amazon or POD for Profit, please note: Because of various changes mostly discussed on this. Keeping Photoshop Up- To- Date. Many software issues are resolved by simply updating Photoshop and Adobe Camera Raw to the latest version. For details and instructions, see: Photoshop Help / Keep Photoshop up to date. Table of Contents: Looking for info on older versions of Photoshop? See: Legacy version updates.
Aaron Shepard's Publishing Blog (Amazon. Lightning Source, Create. Space, Kindle)Spam Authors, and How to Nail Them. Nov. 2. 8, 2. 01. Since my first post about spam books on Amazon, there have been some excellent news articles on the subject. I was especially intrigued by Caitlin Dewey’s article in the Washington Post. She focused not only on how these books are produced and promoted but also on the fact that many of their authors do not exist. It turns out that it’s common practice among spam authors to create fake identities with fabricated credentials. This gives an appearance of authority and trustworthiness, or at least presents an attractive persona. And of course, there’s nothing wrong with that practice—in fact, I use one myself. But the difference is huge. For the bio of my pen name, I pick and choose facts from my background and career that relate to the books written under that name. The pen name represents only a part of me, but it’s still me, and everything I say about myself is true. Even a corporate name, such as used by book packagers for a children’s book series, is different. Yes, the named author may be a nonexistent personality credited with the work of multiple authors hired by the packager. But you won’t be told that this author has an MBA from the University of Michigan plus twenty years running a health spa and lives with her husband and three special- needs children in Savannah, Georgia. Spam authors, on the other hand, just make such things up. They present themselves as something they’re not, to get you to buy their books. This is called fraud, and it’s both unethical and illegal. These authors could, and perhaps should, go to jail. They certainly shouldn’t be allowed to sell their books. I’m finding it fairly easy now to spot spam nonfiction, given the slick covers with stock photos, the copycat, keyword- heavy titling, the publishing frequency, the focus on stock subject areas, the lack of paperback editions, the flood of 5- star reviews just after publication. But how do you spot a fake author? You might investigate the author’s bio, as Dewey did—but that’s pretty labor intensive. Dewey mentioned, though, that her main example had used a stock photo for his (her) author pic—the portrait photo that appears on an Amazon Author Page, among other places. I wondered if using stock photos was common. I also figured that a faked photo of this kind was a dead giveaway that the entire identity was fake, so I really wouldn’t need to look further. So, I set out to investigate the author pics associated with a number of books that looked to me like spam. The first thing I discovered was that many of these authors don’t have author pics at all. Though that limited the usefulness of my approach, I also found that the spam authors most likely to have pics were those with the most books. In the end, I examined ten author pics for authenticity. How to do that is not widely known, but it’s really not hard. It’s done with what’s called a reverse image search. That means you upload the picture to an online search service and within seconds get matches to pictures found around the Web. I used two such services: Google Images and Tin. Eye. com. I found I needed both, because each gave different results, and sometimes only one search was helpful. Here’s what I found: Of the ten author pics, three came out clean, with no suspicious matches at either search service. Three pics were stock photos, available for purchase from numerous online agencies. Another pic had been lifted, directly or indirectly, from a portrait photographer’s Web site in Hong Kong. The remaining three were the real surprise. They were cases of outright identity theft. The publishers had stolen photos of real people. And not just anyone, but people of some prominence, including one TV personality and one author of real books sold on Amazon. In other words, these publishers were not just deceptive, and not just dishonest, but also downright stupid! With the discovery of seven faked pics out of ten, the question now was, what would Amazon do with this kind of information? First I’ll tell you what they should do, as I recommended to Amazon. Any author who has submitted a faked author pic should have his or her KDP publisher account terminated immediately—because a faked pic is a sure sign that the rest of the author’s identity, and the books themselves, are fraudulent. What’s more, I believe Amazon staff should themselves run reverse image searches on every author pic submitted, using the two services I’ve mentioned. Unfortunately, what I found was that Amazon itself does not yet know how it wants to deal with fake authors. It has become a vigilant crusader against phony reviews, but the issue of phony authors is new to it and confusing. In fact, Amazon has not yet even sorted out the difference between a pen name and a fraudulent identity. I found, though, that some people at Amazon are listening and considering. What they need now is to to hear more about the prevalence of the problem and our concern over it. So, I invite you to join me in this campaign. If you spot an author identity that’s likely to be fake, run the reverse image searches. And if you find that the pic is a stock photo or a stolen identity, report it to Amazon KDP. In my own report, I included the author name, the Author Page URL, the search service that provided the best results, and my conclusions from these results. For the identity thefts, I also included an email address for each victim, for Amazon’s verification. I had already searched these out and notified the victims myself. I figured, if Amazon didn’t want to listen to me, it would certainly have to listen to them! If your first response from KDP is inadequate, bounce it back so your issue will be sent to the next level. Also, you’re welcome to refer to this blog post for explanation, if you need to. There are many factors currently causing the world of Kindle publishing to self destruct. But this might be one we can do something about. JPEG XR on Kindle. Sept. 2. 8, 2. 01. Updated Dec. 1. 9, 2. In my last post, I wrote about the new Kindle Format X, which Amazon has developed to go along with its new layout engine. One of the features of this new Kindle format turns out to be the conversion of all pictures to a new graphics format: JPEG XR. Originally developed by Microsoft, it gives higher image quality at smaller file sizes. Using JPEG XR makes perfect sense, now that Amazon has drastically raised its file size limit for submitted graphics. It also makes sense that Amazon prepares grayscale JPEG XRs of most pictures for delivery to monochrome Kindles. What makes less sense is something I’ve seen through my testing: It’s not only JPEGs that get converted to the new format, but also GIFs. That means that, for Kindle Format X, you can no longer use a GIF to get the cleanest possible lines and text in a picture. You can’t use GIFs for transparency, either. On conversion to JPEG XR, transparent portions of GIFs are flattened to white—which looks fine on a white background but dumb on sepia or black. Though JPEG XR does support transparency, Amazon ignores that capability. Whether that’s from a decision to keep file sizes smaller or is just a remarkable oversight, I can’t tell. Is there another way to get what you could with a GIF? You could instead produce your image in SVG, a format that’s related to PDF and that’s displayed by all but the oldest Kindles. But then you’d need to compose your book directly in HTML or in an app that imports and exports SVG. First let me clarify that there’s currently no way to submit pictures in JPEG XR to Amazon KDP. The format isn’t recognized by Kindlegen, which is still used for initial processing. Technically, the best acceptable format to submit pictures for conversion to JPEG XR would be PNG, because of its lossless compression. To avoid unnecessarily large files, you could use 8- bit PNG for GIF- style pictures, and 2. PNG only for JPEG- style. Also, Amazon discards transparency in PNGs, so you’d lose your transparency for when it might otherwise still be displayed. So, no, don’t optimize for Kindle Format X. It’s best to stick with the recommendations in my book—at least for now. This does put me in a bit of a quandary, though, about that book itself. Much of Pictures on Kindle is aimed at putting pictures in the best format and at preventing Amazon from harming them by conversion. That is no longer possible, because for Kindle Format X, conversion is guaranteed. And there’s the slight problem that the examples in my book are displaying differently according to the Kindle they’re read on. Should I redesign the illustrations to make the content less dependent on the platform? Withdraw the book? Make it paperback- only? Tolerate the imperfections and move on? Amazon never ceases to present interesting challenges—but after a while, they get tiresome. Update, Dec. 1. 9, 2. I’ve been told that the ignoring of transparency will be corrected. Kindle Format XSept. Updated Dec. 1. 9, 2. While I’ve been researching the typographic failings of the Kindle’s new layout engine, members of the Mobile. Read forums and others have been plumbing its technological underpinnings. Part of what makes it work, it turns out, is a new Kindle format with the file extension . I take that to stand for Kindle Format X, with the X pronounced “ten.” Amazon seems to have been inspired by Microsoft and Windows to skip Kindle Format 9. Like me, the Mobile. Readers tend to believe that this new format is not at all produced by Kindlegen—the Kindle converter that Amazon KDP uses for proofs and initial processing of our books and that is installed automatically on your desktop along with the Kindle Previewer. Instead, KFX files are likely produced by a new tool being dubbed kfxgen—a tool being applied to our books only sometime after publication. In other words, as I said previously, there is no way to proof your book before or even immediately after publication.
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