Adobe Books

Good book for beginners. I use it to teach a community college introductory Photoshop Class (along with the Illustrator equivalent). It has exercises for each chapter that are outlined step by step. There are a couple of "design" exercises which provide a more creative opportunity for students rather than just doing more pre-set exercises. (However, most of the book is pre-set exercises though).

If you are beyond beginner level, however, you probably don't need this book.

This book is a great resource for any Photoshop user. Excellent buy! Great step-by-step examples and a full color example section. Awesome book! If you are a Photoshop™ user, Buy this Book! 5 Stars!!

I find this book to be very helpful thus far. As an older Graphic Design student I've noticed many software books are written for a younger crowd. A lot of steps are left out because the author assumes I've learned them in high school. We didn't have computers when I was in high school! This book doesn't appear to leave anything out and I've been able to complete each project easily and enjoyably.
So far I've learned how to restore damaged photographs and to combine and transform other images. Very Fun!!!

This book is a little different than it's competitors; Classroom in a Book, WOW! Series and the Revealed Series of design texts.

Anessa not only shows you how to use Photoshop efficiently, she tells you what tools to use for the right job. I thoroughly enjoyed going through and using this book. It's a great book for beginner's and intermediate-level Photoshop user's.

Kudo's.

Regards,

Elias

For every kind of learning experience nothing beats having a "live" teacher illustrating the subject matter with his voice and actions, but this is even more important for learning a "visual" software tool like Flash. Learning Flash is not much about absorbing deep and intricated concepts that a well written book could expose at best, but mostly about learning to DO things, like drawing, or using the various capabilities the software has to offer. Books are nice & useful, but it's quite painful having to read pages of text just to know where the lasso tool is, and what it does. As next best thing to being in a classroom with an experienced teacher, comes having a series of video tutorials like in this title. And I have to say Shane Rebenschied has done an outstanding job. You can feel he knows what he is talking about, but at the same time he shows infinite clarity and patience (which is not true for example, for 3DMax guru George Maestri). I teach for a living so take my word on this: Shane is a kick ass teacher. Just let me point out that this title is really about the basics...the interface and main tools, drawing, symbols, graphics, animation, shape and motion tweens, text, button, movie clips, and a little bit of actionscript to give you basic control over your movie clips. At the end of this title you will be able to build simple movies like slide shows or basic animations , even add a preloader bar, create a dynamic menubar but you won't be nowhere near to building your own website. You will anyway get a solid and really painless intro to Flash foundations. My only gripe is about the outrageous price.. 140 bucks for 2 CD when an equivalente book would cost about $40?
The video course should cost LESS since you are even saving paper (and trees).

I am already a Flash user but I picked up this title anyway because I always learn so much from Shane and knew he would help me learn all I need to know about this new version of Flash.

Once again he made it simple and fun to learn. I came away knowing so much about this new version and had absolutely NO issues moving my projects and working in Flash 8.

His instruction was clear and to the point with detailed yet easy examples and fun exercises. You will not find yourself doing a lot of backtracking or spending a lot of time going over the same movie tutorial trying to "get it". You will move through lessons smoothly and come away feeling comfortable diving into Flash 8.

I highly recommend this title.

i recently bought this book and for those of you out ther ei would highly recommend it. this bood gives lots of colorful and inventive ideas about what you could use photoshop for. for instance: business cards, posters, calendars ect. i would suggest buying this book.

This book has a lot of different examples of graphic design that has been published. There's a short description on how every one is set up, the idea behind it, the client, designers and list of programs used. You have to know some about how to work photoshop, illustrator and QuarkXPress to use the effects since they are not explained in detail. This only means that there are so many more examples to look at and be inspired by...

This book is good for someone who is tech savvy and would like to build some structure to their family photography. I liked how he was detailed in the areas that no one else writes about (organizing principle of photo collection, what to take pictures of) and then light on the stuff better left to other books (how to start a blog, how to use your camera).

THE FUTURE OF MEMORIES: SHARING MOMENTS WITH PHOTOSHOP ELEMENTS AND DIGITAL CAMERAS is for anyone with a passion for digital photography and a willingness to learn Photoshop Elements. Acknowledging that great images don't necessarily equal to great stories. Dane Howard uses his years of professional experience to show how new technology can bring these photos to life. It's the story which should dictate the process, not the image: THE FUTURE OF MEMORIES tells how to pair both, how to organize images to tell the tale, set up shots, and more. Examples and coverage of all modern photo-sharing media, from photoblogs to mobile devices, set FUTURE OF MEMORIES apart from others.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

I needed to teach myself Pagemaker for projects at work. I had done design in other programs, i.e. MS Publisher, but not Pagemaker. Even though I was unable to learn about the Pagemaker program before I needed to know what I was doing for an official project, the book was able to help me get it done.

Although I am usually not a big fan of the Visual Quick Start series I really like this one. Mr. Alspach certainly knows what he is writing about. Written in a clear, pleasant way without the unnecessary stupid jokes you encounter far too much in computer books these days. Great coverage of all the basic and intermediate Pagemaker stuff. Good as a study book and very good as a reference book. If you are a beginning or intermediate Pagemaker user needing a book to support you when you are using Pagemaker, buy this one.
If you buy this one and Pagemaker 7: Classroom in a book, you have the perfect combination to learn how to use Pagemaker.

This is really an encouraging book for those of us who took one look at Photoshop 5 or 5.5 and threw up our hands in despair. It begins at the very, rankist beginning (where I was!) and progresses simply, logically and humorously. There are ample and helpful illustrations. The book is very simple for newbees, who don't know anything about Photoshop. Its explanations are worded in plain English and any tech-talk is interpreted into English. In my copy, there is an addendum for the 5.5 upgrade. This book, and only this book, got me started and has kept me going in Photoshop, finally, and I love it and use it almost daily. It is really worth a lot more than its measly price.

I guess you can't really expect any more from a "for dummies" book than the basics, but I was hoping that it would have a little more than just the basics. I do like the photoshop program for either the MAC or the PC, but the MAC one seems to be a little faster and a bit cleaner. I would recomend this book to anyone who actually never really used photoshop or know little about it. But if you have taken a class in photoshop it is pretty much a waste of time and money.

Real World InDesign 1.5 is the best book available if you want to get the most out of InDesign. The book is full of practical information that can increase your productivity. Real World InDesign is well written. The author's easy, understandable, and concise style of writing makes what can be difficult subject matter (e.g., color management) comprehensible. The book is full of screen shots complete with detailed captions that aid text explinations. Weather you are new to InDesign or have been using InDesign since the initial release, Real World InDesign 1.5 is the book for you. This is one book that you will keep beside your computer, not in the bookshelf. I highly recommend Real World InDesign 1.5.

This is a strange book, but quite readable and informative. I was up and running with InDesign (as a former PageMaker user) in no time, and this book provided me with all sorts of tips and hints that have made me more productive. Very well done.

Finally an inexpensive reference manual that helps me understand Photoshop... I have several of Andy Anderson's other titles and, I have to admit that I am a fan. I've been to two of his seminars... to say that he loves Photoshop is an understatment... I've never met anyone with his understanding of the program.

This is an excellent title for the beginner, or anyone who wants to know the how and why of what makes Photoshop tick.

This is not a book that goes into a lot of detail; it is useful though as a quick reference to the techniques in photoshop that you need to look up quickly and have a practical demonstration of how to apply. No color photos, now down and dirty tips for weird stuff but useful succinct basic guides.
Some sections suffer from the brevity eg you won't come away with much clue about color management if you rely on the chapter in this book, but it's become my handy desktop quick reference of choice. And it's not expensive.

This is a poetic, love-filled appreciation of a variety of desert architecture that is disappearing. Much of the architecture is made of mud; "the material is pliable and responsive but vulnerable." The authors describe the structures needed in this climate: "Massive mud walls turn the house into a thermal, optical, and psychological fortress. Windowless buildings are friendly--refreshing islands of cool dimness in an ocean of heat, glare, and often stinging dust."

Such buildings have thick mud walls that keep the interior warm in the winter and cool in the heat of summer. There are three main types of mud construction, all of which interestingly are used today in the US: rammed earth, coursing or puddling, and adobe brick. These are amply illustrated, as are the maintenance and decoration of these mud structures.

Of interest are a series of mosques in the Sahel, near the Sahara: towers with ostrich eggs at their tips. The walls and towers are soft, sensual shapes with sticks that thrust out like bristles. These contrast with the motherly breasts that constitute ziarats, Islamic shrines found in Afghanistan, or at least were found there back when the authors visited the region. These are fully rounded hills of earth that mimic and honor the feminine aspect and can be traced back to times before Mohammed. They are something like stupas in appearance, including the possible cloths waving in the breeze.

Many of these mud structures look familiar, as if they could be in Taos or some other part of New Mexico, and in fact the authors did later build a home in Taos. I find these mud structure to be beautiful and have incorporated some of them into my Moroccan series of paintings.

This is an excellent overview of vernacular architecture from various parts of asia and africa. Well documented color photo illustrations were tremendous source inspiration in addressing sustainabilty issues in modern western architecture.