Software Books

There was a time when artists bread and butter work was painting true to life pictures: portraits, battle scenes, ships, landscapes. With the advent of photography, art changed to other forms, some of which bore no recognizable appearance of anything known to anyone but the artist.

With the advent of digital photography and the necessary software to manipulate images, digital artists began to move in the way of the painters. Their digital images are formed by the manipulation of multiple images, of changes that can be made down to the bit level if desired.

This book explores digital art. While as of yet this is not well received by the conventional art community, it is a sign of coming times. Specifically in this book the same three specific images have been given to seventeen artists to use to illustrate what they might create. The procedures they followed to create new images coming from these three seed images are documented. The results are wildly different between the resulting pictures.

This is the forefront of digital art.

Joseph Nalven and JD Jarvis' Going Digital: The Practice And Vision Of Digital Artists is written by a cultural anthropologist who developed photography as a tool for working on ethnographic research, and an author who has long worked in TV production and graphic design: the two together offer a survey of the digital process as it applies to creating the art, from photos to finished products. 17 artists were asked to take three seed photos and use the images creatively in their own works of digital art: Going Digital takes these 17 efforts and blends them with discussions and examples of digital art from around the world, considering common challenges, presenting step-by-step processes from digital pioneer efforts, and creating a solid set of practical examples. A must for any aspiring digital artist.

Anything written about the practice of digital art today is doomed to be obsolete shortly. Very little is likely to survive even as being "quaint" in the way of Bill Gates's famous comment that 640 bytes were enough for anyone.
Since we have digital artists in the thousands, however, all eager to learn more technique, to make the most of all that's available, to see what each other is doing, we need resource material to serve them. "Going Digital" does this admirably in an original way. Seventeen artists each take the same three given photographic images and use up-to-the-minute tools to mold their own creations. The results are startlingly different. Most important, each artist has recorded his or her creative process in a sort of running diary, illustrated with dozens of images used or discarded en route to the final one.
The technology will more than likely change drastically as artists and computer scientists continue to interact. What will remain exciting and inspiring in Joe Nalven and JD Jarvis's book is the implicit discussions among editors and contributors about the meaning of art, the value of art, the place of artists, what changes and what abides. Both the many fine prints and the thoughtful questions raised fit into the history and practice of art, as always fascinating every one of us. Every question has more than one answer; rarely are these answers just yes and no. Although the discussion is implicit, the reader knows that he is in the hands of experienced teachers. The authors leave no doubt that their book goes past "now".
You'll want this book on your shelf or in your hand always. I wish that Amazon would let me give it a sixth star.

There is little that I can add to the previous excellent, detailed reviews. But I did want to add my two cents worth:

I received my "Going Digital" from Amazon a few days ago and read it cover to cover in two sittings - loved it! I especially enjoyed the participant's musings on the three seed photos. It was interesting that most all of them liked the image of the figure.

The resulting prints could not have been more different - a very interesting intellectual/artistic exercise indeed. It is a "must have" book for all digital artists - and will undoubtedly be a classic text book on the subject.

(...)

I find that having to create something with images not of your own choosing forces
you to stretch the limits - to step outside of your comfort zone. I have produced images that I NEVER would have done otherwise.

I have been working digitally less than two years, most of that time I have been in
an internet group with weekly challenges. I credit the "seed image" restriction with helping me grow and find my own voice in this digital world.

When I switched to digital everything was so new and unfamiliar. I have not been able to get into a comfortable rut with the ever-changing challenges. They have pushed me in directions I never would have chosen for myself- and that's a good thing!

When I finished the book I looked for a website that had the images available - I was dying to try my hand at it!

Buy the book, then try out the concept of "seed images" for yourself. It is a fantastic learning experience.

Oh wait... while I am here. Harald Johnson's other book "Mastering Digital Printing" (second edition) is another "must have" if you are serious about your digital art.

Carol
(...)

This book is a treasure trove of ideas for aspiring digital artists. Digital art has come of age, and Nalvin and Jarvis offer a comprehensive overview of the revolution that is transpiring before our very eyes. The book features an international group of digital artists working their magic on three simple images, while explaining their techniques and exposing their creative thought process at every step along the way. For the reader, each chapter provides a compelling intimate journey through the creative mind of a digital artist. My favorite was Greg Klamt, whose creativity is boundless. For me, this is digital art its at its very best. As Jarvis has stated in his digital manifesto, in the digital art world ".high cost will no longer signify superior work. Galleries and critics alike will soon have to realize that creativity, vision, diversity and craftsmanship have returned as the benchmarks of "value". Bravo!

This book has everything I need to know about computer networks. It's the best book I read about networking.

I read a review of the new Network+ exam from CompTIA, and this book was listed as being one you could use in studying for it since no books on the new exam were out yet.

Skeptically, I plunked down the money, read the book, and took the exam. I passed with 95%!

This is one of the best books I have read in preparation for the Networking Essentials Exam. The tear out booklet is amazing and was a great help the night before the exam. This book uses a lot of excellent illustrations and examples to explain concepts and ideas. The 'Key Concepts' section in each chapter focus on important points to remember for the exam. Using this book helped me pass this exam on first try. I highly recommend this book to anyone preparing for exam 70-073. This is the only book you will need to buy!

This book is fantastic and it covers in its pages what most books do in 600+ pages of fluff. The advantage is you don't get lost in the influx of information. I highlighted the book from front to back, then purchased the Transcender study engine - every question in that engine was answered in this book!

Unfortunately, I had to take this exam twice. So, be ware, do not depend on this book for the MCP exam. I am wondering about other people who previewed this book and said that they passed the exam using it???

I do not recommend this book for those who are planning to take the MCP exam. This book covers almost 50 % of the material of the exam. There are some poor parts in it which represent some objectives of the exam. These poor parts are: troubleshooting, performance enhancement, topologies, and protocols. From experience, I can tell you the following points are mentioned heavily in the two exams and were not slightly covered by this book which are:

*Troubleshooting: It does not tell you about the way to low-level troubleshoot a bus topology networks, which include measuring resistance in different parts of the network .

*Performance Enhancement: nothing about window size and packet size for TCP/IP protocol.

*Topologies: Nothing about mesh topologies.

*Protocols: Nothing about the TCP/IP suit and IPX/SPX suit. It does not mention which protocols are under these Protocols and to which layer do they belong to.

Besides, the sample test at the end of the book is silly and does not represent real MCP exams.

Comprehensive. A good resource to have in the collection of books.

Andre Van Staden - Senior Developer
Marco Giani - Group IT Back end Developer

This is a great book. I have recommended it to coworkers who also purchased the book and they were equally impressed. This helped me have a much greater understanding of both Access and SQL Server and how they work together.

I would highly recommend this book to anyone using Access with SQL Server. It is easy to understand and has plenty of useful code examples. I use this as a reference on a regular basis.

This answers a lot of programmer level questions about using MS-Access with SQL Server. It describes the limits and penalties when going the various routes. The book is quite clear in its descriptions. It would make a good addition to any Access programmer's collection.

I have been an Access developer since 1.1 (1993). I have bought many a book over the years. Some good, some bad. This book, however, is super! It is designed totally with the Access developer in mind. All of the questions that popped into my head seemed to be answered in practical terms chapter by chapter. The organization is terrific and the flow is second to none. The topics that are worth repeating are repeated while others are left for a one-time only view. The writing is easy to digest, powerful and very explanatory. The pictures are all also very helpful. You can tell the writers paid attention to every line they wrote. But they also inject a human kind of writing style which keeps things interesting throughout.

In addition to a thorough discussion on SQL Server security vs. Access security, data conversion, upsizing, etc., the book covers the differences among MDWs, MDEs, ADPs and ADEs beautifully and it addresses scenarios for when to use stored procedures, server functions, views, etc and with great attention to detail. The chapters ADO vs. DAO and on T-SQL are well written too. Later the book even goes into simplifying building multi-tier apps with Access as front end, VB-based COM+ components in the middle and of course, SQL Server sitting in the back. And just when you think the last chapter will be a letdown as many last chapters are, it wows you with an incredible amount of insight into how to optimize, backup and perform other settings in SQL Server.

If you are a serious Access developer like me, and are timid about moving full force into SQL Server, then this is the book for you! I recommend it highly!

I have a lot of SQL server books. Everything from SQL Server 2000 for Dummies up to SQL Server 2000 Stored Procedure Programming. And many times none of these books had what I needed. Then I would turn to this book. I was using VB.Net, so I figured this book wouldn't apply, but I was wrong. Even if you are not using Access, this book explains SQL Server the right way. Chipman and Baron offer simple but thorough explanations and samples of the things you actually need to know as a developer. They don't spend a lot of time on the things a SQL Server DBA might need to know that a coder would not.

Maybe their approach works so well for me because I came from an Access background, but I am willing to bet anyone coming straight from VB and needing to understand Transact SQL, effective stored procedures, funtions, and triggers would appreciate this book as well.

This book gives you all the goodies about Windows Server 2003, perfect view of what this new version has within, plus a lot more! This book was simple to read and understand, finished it in one weekend, and most of all, it's a great reference unlike some 2,000 Page Bibles...

It is clear, concise, and very well written. I get tired of reading tech books that are hundreds upon hundreds of pages long because they fill them with so much useless information and "fluff". That is not the case with this book. If you just want the plain and simple facts and useful information then this is the book you need.

This is an excellent book for those of us who have extensive experience with previous Windows releases, and need information dealing with just what's new and improved in Windows Server 2003. This book is well-written, well-organized, easy to read, and gives you everything you need, and nothing you don't.

I highly recommend this book to all experienced Windows Server administrators who need just the new info and just the facts, from authors who actually know what they're talking about.

Returned my Mastering Windows Server 2003 (Minasi) book today and bought this one. MUCH better. Short, sweet, and to the point. Now I'm getting a handle on what I should care about in Windows 2003. This is great - I hope they keep up with this series. It's a time saver and I'm betting it will help with my MCSE upgrade exmas too.

Page 78: windows clients DO NOT require a GC server to find a domain controller.
Page 130: stub zones are NOT secondary zones with glue records. They contain read-only SOA, NS and "glue" A records and nothing else.

The book weighs a ton and there's lots packed in it. Have not attempted to use the CD-ROM. Index helped me find specific answers to specific issues, since I don't know the program at all and had to hit the ground running. Have not been able to find answers to more esoteric matters, but the book has been invaluable for my quick-fix situations. Legal-specific and more useful on a daily basis than the "Dummies" book my boss bought. Thank you, Payne Consulting Group!!!

real world advive for anyone interested in applications of word in a business setting

I found the book easy to follow with a lot of useful information in the form of tips and cautions. I purchased the book to prepare for the Word 2002 MOUS exam (and passed). I cannot recommend it highly enough.

Any law firm that uses MS Word has been influenced by the work of Payne Consulting. Payne Consulting was in a conference that went into a committee that worked closely with MS to influence Word and to make it compatible to what law firms got used to with Word Perfect. Interestingly, Word finally has a feature that offers you the opportunity to recover documents if you had not saved it the day before.....wow.....why didn't they do that for corporations.

Well, if you are a Word Perfect user in a law firm today, you will want to open up new vistas by learning MS Word for Law Firms. I recruit in Legal, and this tool is useful to improving your skills and making a transition to a larger law firm possible.

As a forced convert from Word Perfect, I was looking for a resource that would allow me to do two things: (1) learn Microsoft Word; and (2) integrate it into my practice.

Ms. Payne's book helped me with the first task and made Word a much easier program for me to utilize.

I was somewhat disappointed, however, in the second aspect. I would like to automate my litigation documents to a greater extent, but I couldn't fully realize this goal. At the end of the day, I'd like to turn out better, more polished legal documents, but, I think there are some limitations in either my own understanding or the software that prevent me from being as effective as I'd like. At more than 700 pages, Ms. Payne's book certainly contains a good deal of information and suggestions as to how Word can be used in a law firm environment, but I found it to be most helpful as a Microsoft Word resource.

As a student at Yale Law School planning to go into estate planning, I found this book very helpful. Highly recommended for anyone who needs to plan their estate or for law students taking estate tax or planning courses. This book is easy to understand, well organized, and provides a good amount of detailed information, not just vague ideas. Highly recommended.

This book provides an easy to understand overview of estate planning plus easy to understand detail on many special circumstances. It is very easy to understand which estate planning techniques are right for you, and there are many examples that illustrate how the techniques work. Approximately half of this book is relevant to everyone. The other half gives clear, common sense explantions of advanced planning techniques that are typically reserved for those fortunate enough to be planning a high net worth estate (lets say $1M+). The advanced techniques are not for do it yourselfers, but the book gives you a good understanding of the issues and lets you converse intelligently with an attorney.

Now in a newly updated and expanded seventh edition, Plan Your Estate is a resource provided by attorneys Denis Clifford and Cora Jordan which is packed from cover to cover with everything anyone needs to know to ensure their worldly goods are promptly willed to loved ones. Written in no-nonsense terms that the non-specialist general reader can readily grasp, individual chapters clearly address wills, how to avoid probate, living trusts, property-control trusts, naming guardians for children and leaving property to children, estate taxes, living wills, how to reduce estate taxes, and much, much more. Especially recommended for individuals who own a business or who have children from a former marriage, Plan Your Estate is a "must-have", "do-it-yourself" legal resource, which is applicable to all American states except for Louisiana. Even those who prefer to let a professional handle the whole process of estate planning would be well served to read Plan Your Estate cover to cover, before stepping into an attorney's office where time is money and the clock is running.

Great for law students taking an estate planning course or an estate and gift tax course. Also good for people wanting to learn about estate planning in general. I would recommend this book.

This book is a must buy resource for persons interested in estate planning. Whether you are planning to do-it-yourself or use a lawyer, it is good to know what your options are. I am much better informed after reading this book.

As described on the cover page, this book is cookbook style so I went through the programs on the CD before reading the chapters. I like this book for two reasons.

First, the book is easy to read. A bunch of equations may not always be helpful to understand a problem. What confuses readers most is how an implementation/program corresponds to those equation(s). This book explains the image processing techniques in a plain language and gives you an hand-on experience with those techniques.

Second, to practice image processing, clicking a button on windows or just calling a built-in function, e.g. process(image), will not be enough. When you go to the directory of programs on the CD, you may find out every details. Each program is relatively independent to each other. You will not be stuck by a function call, which you never know or find. Each program is well commented and can be easily modified and incorporated into your program.

This book is good for those who are new to image processing, because it helps you understand what image processing does. It is also good for an experience practicer, because you can find well-organized stuff to build your own applications. It is a must-have book for your shelf of image processing.

Searching for an easy plug & play solution for simple imaging tasks?
No time for programming & debugging things yourself?
No interest in crawling through literature to figure what & how you should program "the methods that solves all your problems"?

Here's a book that deals with most of the elementary - and most used - approaches in image enhancement and analysis. The CD offers a collection of ready-to-play-with programs, both in C source as in executables.

I appreciated the book set-up: each section describes one single task, describes the problem, gives an example, discusses a solution given in literature, and presents the input / output / options for the C code.
- If you want to know more: get the recommended references.
- If you want to modify the program: why not? (well, perhaps because the code is good enough!)
- If you don't care about the scientific background and/or programming: just plug & play!

I have found this book to be extremely useful as a reference for my class on document image analysis. The book discusses (with software which is a bonus!) a whole bunch of image processing techniques that are very useful.

Students can now find in one place- a reference for techniques such as gabor wavelet analysis, convex hulls, moments, fourier descriptors, thinning, hough transform, and chain coding. This allows me as an instructor of an advanced document recognition course to let the students self-study these image processing techniques while I can focus on the recognition topics.

The authors have done a great job of picking examples from a wide range of applications such as outdoor scenes, fingerprints, and documents. The book is "easy to read" and requires just basics of linear algebra to follow.

I already knew image processing when I bought this book, so I am not sure how it would appear to the novice seeking a textbook on the subject of image processing and analysis, but I imagine it could be somewhat confusing. I always recommend Gonzales and Wood's "Digital Image Processing" for those seeking a clear read on image processing and analysis from the ground up. Where Seul's book comes in is with clear descriptions and working code for many basic - and some not so basic - image processing and image analysis algorithms. The book is also very good at explaining the applications of the various transforms. One of the little things that the author of this book does that authors of other books similar to it don't bother to do is to realize that when you are working in image processing you likely have an image as an input and you want an image as an output. Thus the author has built his code libraries so that they work that way. You are not left with arrays of pixels that you have to figure out how to store and manage. In the end you have a nice functional toolbox of working image processing and analysis subroutines that you can chain together and make just about any type of image transform tool you could think of. I'm mainly interested in image effects, and I know this book has been useful to me. The accompanying CD-ROM contains all of the C source code for the algorithms so that you can port them to another language or tinker with them if you so desire. Highly recommended.

The title of this book corresponds to its content, the tutorial gives an excellent overview of basic key points to those readers who are unfamiliar with the subject (as I was). The book can not be used for rigorous study of even simple things but rather kicks you with essentials that are easy to understand with high-school background. This book, written for non-specialists in "image field", gives them techniques for their practical needs and concentrates exactly on image analysis, not on image processing. If you have no time to go through more complex (and deeper) books, take this one to discover basic principles in short form with no attempt to explain the fundamentals. The authors just put you into the facts, so that is why I would characterize the "Practical Algorithms" book as being "handbook". The good point is that the areas of applicability of these facts are explained, the drawback: you have to go to other books to get more details on image processing roots, e. g., to R. Gonzalez and R. Woods' "Digital Image Processing". I bought both, and use them as good annex to each other. The "Practical Algorithms" has lack of some significant areas, like snake algorithm and image binarization (thresholding) techniques but e.g., the cellular processing is quite well highlighted.
Surprisingly, the CD that comes along with this book gave me almost 80% examples that I was able to recompile instantly, and only several examples have failed, mainly due to image file format issues. The source code is not both elegant and bugless, but it is very transparent and portable and can easily fit, e.g., a 16-bit microcontroller.
Overall, this is good book for fast start. You can get real output and pick up ideas on practical side of image analysis. Just remember, the most book examples came from the medicine world, so they are quite specific and may not be implemented directly in your particular application.

I'm using this book as the text book for an Electronic Publishing course I'm teaching. Claudia's style is dry and humorous, which makes the complex material easier to digest. Lots of wonderful tips and insights. I highly recommend it for anyone trying to comprehend how design goes from computer to print.

I am a trainer in the graphic arts field and I recently read this book for a group of students I am working with that needed to have more of a printing understanding. It was such a great read and very informative that I had to buy it for my students. The information has proved very valuable to them. Anyone who wants to get their jobs on Press with the least amount of problems should read this book.

If you are new to the desktop publishing business, this book has lots of answers and even brings up questions I didn't know to ask. Ms. McCue is to be commended on her writing style, as well. Buy this book!

This was a great book and a tremendous resource for a designer. Author has engaging and straightforward writing style - didn't take long to read and will save numerous headaches at the printer.

I highly recommend this for anyone who produces digital media for print!

I have been a designer with an Ad Agency for 6 years. Where was this book when I was just getting started?

In today's design schools we are taught how do run the programs and how to make a good looking design but nobody teaches you how to build a proper file that won't drive your prepress guys in to screaming fits... until now. Learning how to do 1001 tricks in Photoshop/Illlustrator/Quark/InDesign/Freehand will do you no good unless the files you send to the printer will actually print. This is the book I wish I had read when I first started and I highly recommend it. This is money well spent. I use it to teach our newer employees on what to do and what not to do when sending files to the printer. It explains problems in an easy to understand manner.

The only flaw in this book... some things seemed to be repeated constantly.

After reading this book over the holiday, I decided to give it a try on my new project. I applied the authors categories to business plans I needed to prepare. I have to admit that her approach made an improvement that even impressed my managers. Her questions in the appendix were also extremely useful in helping me think of more needs than I had originally thought were important. Her chapter on the parts of a requirement helped me supply the details that I would have omitted previously. Bottom line, the author makes you think allowing for better definition of product needs.

When trying to understand what information architectures are all about, this is the only book I have come across that answered all of my questions and placed the field in context with modern technologies. Unfortunately, most books on information architectures fall into two categories that miss the mark:

1. There are books written by IA experts before the internet, and the terms and viewpoint used require considerable on-the-fly translations to modern technologies.

2. There are books written by IT experts who couldn't spot an IA if it bit them on the leg. These books are fat with useless lists of IT technologies and acronyms.

Fredinandi's book is worth reading cover-to-cover, and more than once.

This is the first book about Requirements Pattern. You can easily understanding your problems after define all project's requirements. This book also provides a completes framework to categorizes and organizes the different types of requirements, forming a requirements set. It makes our project done on time and within budget. Thanks to Pat for this excellent book.

This book servers as an excellent source for gaining insight into the field of requirements engineering. Developers, Managers, Requirements Engineers and Testers could all benefit from reading this book. In addition to providing important information about requirements engineering in general, the book presents a requirement pattern framework targeted for e-business and web based applications.

This book servers as an excellent source for gaining insight into the field of requirements engineering. Developers, Managers, Requirements Engineers and Testers could all benefit from reading this book. In addition to providing important information about requirements engineering in general, the book presents a requirement pattern framework targeted for e-business and web based applications.

I enjoyed every topic covered. It opened my eyes a little more on QB. It truly is the next level up from your ordinary QB programming.

The Revolutionary Guide to Qbasic is by far the best book out there for programming games in basic. It is filled with chapters on sound and graphics that nearly every other book on the market neglects to include. I make games in my spare time and until now have been picking apart other games and asking more experienced programmers how to write complex sections of code. Well, no more! This book has it all: 3-D scrolling, tile based gaming, creating music, and more. Why buy another book about how to make a loop or print data to the screen? This book it truly the best way to advance your hobby in Basic programming.

Very, very nice. Forget the petty nitpicking, this is a GREAT book for people serious about using QBasic as a programming language. If it had a true introduction to QBasic for beginners it would be the one-stop-shop for the language. As it is, though, you need to be somewhat familiar in order to appreciate just how good this book is!

This book is great. Despite one person's comment on the authors' English it is not bad. I understood it perfectly. No book will make sense if you carefully select a part that needs another paragraph to make sense. The book has a great disk of code along with info on advanced QB topics. Great book! Buy it!

This book, I feel, is the greatest QBASIC tutorial/reference ever written. It is definitely considered to me a sequel to all the other QBASIC books on the market, in that it seems to take you not only one, but many more steps ahead. I have been looking for a book with even just a little bit of advanced graphics and sound programming. Buying this book got all that and tons more. I pity all those who don't own this title!