Equipment and Software Books

I have three other PSE 2.0 books, but this is by far the best one. Plotkin takes you through every element, tool, method, etc. He has two chapters (52 pages) on layers alone, which to me was especially important. Although he doesn't have a lot of color pictures (using less expensive black and white), the explanations and effects are quite clear and easy to understand. I was really only scratching the surface of PSE 2.0 before I got this book.
I highly recommend it. It is also very reasonably priced as compared to some others I considered.

I found the book well-organized and quite lucid. The author clearly understands the program well. The book's Achilles heel (and probably the reason for its relatively inexpensive price) is that there are only a few color illustrations in the center. All of the other illustrations are done in low resolution B&W, making it nearly impossible to appreciate the techniques or changes in images. If the publisher had raised the price a few dollars and done the illustrations in color, the book would be vastly more valuable.

Digital photography is all about color. Why would any publisher release a book on the manipulation of color images in Photoshop with mostly black and white examples?

Save your money

The only well printed page (in color) is the cover. The book is printed in material that is virtually newsprint -- extremely hard to read and illustrations are poor as a consequence, some to illegibility. The book is in no way an improvement over the original Adobe manual -- or rather, it is in no way comparable. A waste of time and money.

As a beginning Photoshop PC user, I found this book almost completely useless.

The author gives no step-by-step instructions on creating specific items. Instead, he just says, "I opened the logo and inserted into the image (see Fig 12)" etc, but since no CD is included, you can't follow along! Unbelieveable. The author's website does not have any downloadable examples from the book, either.

The sections on the individual web masters are a waste of space. Again, no technical details or how-tos are included. Seems more of a marketing gimmick for the author's pals.

In some of the screen shots, the menus don't match the layer that is supposed to be current. Very confusing.

I bought this book at a remainder table for [price] and it was [price] too expensive.

In my exhaustive search for literature to help me in my career to becoming a web page designer, Mastering Photoshop 5.5 for the web is the one. In part 1, the fundamentals of photoshop are covered with great clarity. With specific relavence to web design. This is the ideal introduction to part 2, Photoshop and the Web. This section is loaded with tips and advice on the way to make the most of Photoshop in the web design arena.

Mastering Photoshop 5.5 for the Web is a must for anyone who wants comprehesive yet lucid introduction and companion to web page design.

I have my Photoshop 5.5 and sad to say, the Help functions of the softwares proved a lot more helpful than this book. It offers very little of what a beginner needs. A step-by-step example would've been useful. Discussions of the features are too simplistic, but this couldn't even fit the mold of a for Dummies or a for Idiots book. It's neither! Not for beginners, not for intermediate-skilled users, and definitely not for experts. A lot of features on Photoshop web artists are included, but you'd wish not to find here but on a magazine. It's a total disappointment!

While we are well on our way through 2005, this book still has merit for many readers. Its attraction is the clear language and objectivity of its assessments of the myriad types of hardware and software associated with personal computing. Buttressed by technical explanations of new features, like command queuing, or how to set up a tri monitor display.

Even if you have no specific need in mind, this guide is nice for its overview of the entire PC arena. It neatly characterises waht is available in 2004-5. One day, future historians of technology might also find this book valuable, on this account.

Yep, it's a recap of the last years magazine articles. Not bad if you need to get a clue what's up with the most recent pc hardware. It will explain the difference between the north bridge and the south bridge and other tech stuff you need to know. Lot's of reviews of last year's products (now available for great deal prices). I'd buy the latest one, the 2006 buyer's guide. Like reading a whole year's worth of the magazine.

Written by the chief editor of Maximum PC, a magazine devoted to modding and overclocking but not particularly good at it, this is a very poorly written and edited "book" that's basically just a compilation of equally poorly written and edited articles from the magazine's 2003 issues. Published last summer, it's already out-of-date. But that's not its true vice; the problem is 1) it has a lot of factual errors, and 2) it doesn't give you critical comparisons you need to choose among the products in each category.

The book is broken into sections by the different PC components: mobo, CPU, hard drive, etc. Each section begins with some general information which is too simple for power users yet too difficult-to-understand for beginners. If you fall in the middle, you would have found this useful, except the author keeps saying everything is great and dandy, so you end up not knowing which technology or brand you should pick. An author who's more critical and opinionated would have been more helpful.

For example, between Intel and AMD CPUs, and among the many different models, which one should you buy? There are 12 pages on processors, but the section reads like a typical magazine article that says "model A has features 1-2-3, model B has features 7-8-9, but the higher numbers are not necessarily better than the lower ones, except if you are willing to overclock, which BTW may void your warranty, if not causing your PC to explode if not done properly, but you should really do it because the manufacturer says it's okay as long as you do it right, which BTW BTW is not possible if you didn't buy and read the last 20 issues of our magazine." You get my point.

One more critical point from this reviewer: when a book like this recommends specific products, you are never sure if these products are truly the best in their respective categories, or they are here only because the manufacturers pay the author or publisher or both some kind of kickbacks. One thing I learned working in different industries in the past is how corrupt private businesses are, despite our country's having the best legal system in the world. Kickbacks and "soft money" are just everywhere. Anyway, many products in this book are of dubious usefulness or quality, and there are certain better products out there, so one must be skeptical about the author's picks, esp. when he works for a magazine and publishing company that relies entirely on advertising dollars for profits. (Organizations like Consumer Reports do not accept advertising and are thus more trustworthy in their reviews.)

This book is a waste of money. Books like PC Bible have more in-depth and, more importantly, *accurate* information that you can rely on.

Both book jacket and the book say you can download images from the sybex.com site which are used as samples in the book lessons. Unfortunately that is not true. The Sybex site only has images from a couple of chapters. Three out of 27 chapters!! You need to have your own catalogue of all kinds of pictures available which match the book lessons in order to use the book. What a waste of money. The publisher should refund everyone's money who bought this book under false pretenses.

This is the absolute BEST book I've seen on Photoshop 6. I reviewed what feels like 100's of books on the subject and NONE of them told me how to do everything I needed to do - except, Photoshop 6 Complete by Sybex. The price of the book can't be beat either. Other books that didn't have half as much information in it cost 2 and 3 x's MORE! I love this book and recommend it to all my friends. This book has taught me how to do things that I needed to know how to do yesterday.

A 900 page Photoshop book for a really low price. Seems like an unbeatable bargain. Forget the fact that it seems to be printed on paper three grades below newsprint. Pay no attention to its external dimensions, which are smaller than most hardback novels. Although it's natural to be skeptical about any book that has "complete" in its title, lets ignore that. The key question is: What's inside the book?

Why did I get such a déjà vu feeling when I started to thumb through the it? Turning to the table of contents I soon realized why some of the material seemed so familiar. The entire book is made up of chapters from other books! Do you own the book Mastering Photoshop 6? Well six chapters of that book show up in this one. All in all about 8 books were raided in order to compose this one volume.

Now if you don't own any of those 8 books, then by all means consider buying this one. It does have a lot of useful information in it, and it certainly won't require you to take out a three-year loan to pay for it. I do own a couple of the other books, however, and so I feel a bit cheated.

This is an essential book for getting the most out of Adobe graphics software in practical applications. It is illustrated in full color and includes the work and methods of several leading artists in the field. The book presumes a working knowledge of the basic programs. The focus is on moving images back and forth between Illustrator and Photoshop to utilize the special features of each program. The use of other software, including Freehand, Painter and filters by KPT, Extensis and Alien Skin is also covered. It provides the how-to of getting the programs to work together to produce stunning results. The CD-ROM includes demo versions of the major programs, some useful plug-ins and all of the art from the book. This book is full of art to inspire and ideas to stimulate backed by sound procedures to execute.

When I pay $40 for a graphic design book, I want more professional illustrations and fewer snapshots. The author, under the influence of deadlines or laziness, appears to have raided the family album for many photos. The many examples of what Photoshop filters can do are gratuitous filler. We've never seen those before, huh? Ditto for the usual suspects on the CD, demoware of programs available from many other sources. The publisher has tacked an extra $10 on the price of the book for a CD that cost $1, a shameful practice that is all too common in the book business. This book is a compelling reason why publishers don't give refunds. It's also a good reason not to join a book club, where I bought this book sight unseen.

the title of the book is "photoshop & illustrator Synergy". but indeed only roundabout 50pages discribes the possible synergy. the rest is filled with 3rd party plug-ins and im-/export from/to other programs like freehand, bryce etcetera.

the back of the books says "reader level: intermediate to advanced". this is ridicoulous.

although this book is recommended for experienced user, it mentioned on the first 70pages at least five times that you should pay attention that text/types in illustrator becomes pixel in photoshop! so if these basics are already "intermediate" stuff, i don't want to see a beginners by miss alspach.

another big drawback of the book is the fact that it lacks images of the different stages of creation ("this is the first step... this is after the work in illustrator... blablabla"). it only shows the final result.

the book is also "old-fashioned". for the synergy with 3D-programms, it mentioned only extreme 3D and dimension 3, two programms that weren't updated since roundabout 1997/1998 and that are plain dead.

This book claims to have dowloads available, and yet, nothing to be found. This book is useless without it's downloads. Their website is down- their publisher's website offers no help, and customer support seems clueless. So if you would like a giant paper weight to adorn your desk, buy this book.

Computer graphics has come an immense way in 25 years. Now, it can do essentially photorealistic rendering of many types of objects and environments. But a hard boundary of the art still remains. A realistic imaging of the human form, especially in motion. It is something that since childhood, any non-blind person learns quickly what are normal movements.

So for your games [or other applications], it is non-trivial to establish a sense of natural human movement. Plus, how to dress the person in various types of clothing that also move naturally. Pardew supplies ideas that will make your task easier. They are not perfect, because this is how things currently stand. Maybe you can even improve on what the text offers?

Most of the experiments are simple logic design such as decoder, AND, OR gates, which are implemented using schematics. Only a few experiments are based on VHDL. Therefore, you could almost ignore the CPLD in the book title, this book is more like digital electronics simulation using schematics capture, such as PSpice or Electronics Workbench. The only usage of CPLD in this book, is for the student to download and run the program. Anyway, since the experiments are pretty simple and straight forward, I think computer simulation alone would be sufficient.

This book is target at student in their first digital electronics course. Don't be fooled by the term 'CPLD' in the book title.

I bought this book thinking that you could actually learn something from the labs. I was actually disappointed. First of all, it uses an old version of what it is now known as Webpack 5.2i from Xilinx, or foundations. the examples are very bleek and take the assumption you took the lecture before you can perfom this lab.

It is obvious this book is geard towards a technical school rather than an engineering school. There is not much you can learn from this book other than learning a lesson on how to be careful next time when buying books.

Disapointed buyer

This book was originally used as a college text book for DeVry Institutes' (Now University) Associates Degree Program. It was introduced into the ciriculum in the 5th trimester.

It is a good book for those already familiar with digital components. It is however, very dated since it was published in 1988.

It uses old 8088, Z80 and Motorola 6800 (Apple/Mac) processors to name a few. It also uses old "BASIC" programming. Which is what was used before Visual Basic. This makes it pretty much useless as far as learning newer technology but, it is a good starter book for those wanting to get a basic understanding of how microcomputers got started and the language used.

The Book delves into the various microprocessors and thier support chips, storage discs (Hard/floppy Drives), keyborads, stepper motors, communication devices, i.e. modems, video technology, and printers. It also provides instruction sets for the 8085 Z80, and 6800 processors, data sheets and excersize questions and answers, and finally application examples.

this book is a good book but we need to translate with carefully to understanding this book

Had I realized that this is basically a Microsoft manual, I wouldn't have purchased it. Since receiving the book, I've thumbed through it twice, used it once to reference a scheduling question I had, and it's sat on my bookshelf since then.

Don't get me wrong - I love Visio. I just have this innate feeling that the fox writing a manual on how to enter the henhouse ain't gonna give me the full scope on the program. My experience has been that manuals & guides written by 3rd party authors unaffiliated with the software company about which they write tend to be more candid about the product's faults, and, curiously, better informed about making the product perform better.

If you want clear and candid advice on making Visio jump, buy a 3rd party guide.

This book is good for the person that is using Visio and wants to update skills.

This book gives a nice comprehensive well organized series of blurbs on the features of Audition. But it is extremely poor at teaching you HOW to use Audition. If you're looking for a skill set to make your own music demo or Indie film you will be very disappointed.

Just introduction for total newcomer to PC and sound editing, VERY simplified theoretical information is given about the processes (compression, for example), almost all about practice (How-To-Do-It with Cool Edit), some good tips (chapter "Fades and edges" I found as most important and original to me).