Desktop Books

I put this book on my "must have, don't loan it out," shelf right away.

I really like the approach and the presentation. The teaching style is casual and encouraging with a welcome absence of jargon. Don't get me wrong, if you follow the chapters you will get a FP site up and running, you just won't have to suffer a barrage of technical details to do it. Why utilize FrontPage in the first place if you are excited about the all the nuts and bolts of how web site programing works?

The included CD helps tremendously ... the combination of reading it and seeing the author go through the steps just further demystifies the process. Between the two presentations, you're bound to "get it." I watched some of the how to's, that I didn't even want to do yet. It got me interested and curious and gives you a sense of all the things you can do with FP2002.

I already had the FP Bible 2002 by this author. Did I "needed" the Virtual Classroom? ... Yes! The Bible is great for digging deep into the FP world, but the Virtual Classroom is clearly the right way to get yourself up to speed and in the running as a web site designer, painlessly. My advice, if you asked me, would be to get yourself a copy.

I found everything I needed in this book and the cd that comes with it. Having known nothing about FrontPage before owning this book now in just a couple of days I know a lot of things to create my perfect web site. Thanks David Karlins. You are one of a kind. I am looking forward to your other books to be published with the same format.

If you want to have an instant website without wasting a lot of time, this is the book for you. The CD takes you step by step to creat a fairly sophisticated website with input forms, scrolling/fly in text, differing themes, inserting pictures and video. etc. Using the CD, I really did not need the book all that much. Well worth it!!!

Text and multimedia combine in David Karlins' 384 page instructional reference guide, Frontpage 2002 Virtual Classroom to create an effective and "user friendly" learning experience. Readers will learn how to create large or small Web sites that are sophisticated and attractive, and effectively manage the organization, content, and style of their site. Readers can follow along on the CD-ROM as the on-screen guru explains and demonstrates the techniques discussed in the text. Frontpage 2002 Virtual Classroom is a confidently recommended "how to" introduction for all Frontpage 2002 users.

I am so glad I bought this book! It is truly a lifesaver! I learn better visually, so the CD Rom Virtual Classroom that's included helped me tremendously. Thanks to David Karlins' for sharing his knowledge of FrontPage. I hope to have my website up & running very soon!

I like this book so much, I've purchased it 3 times! (My first copy was "borrowed" by one of my designer/producers, my second copy was left at Ubisoft SF, and this is my 3rd copy for myself.)

Great mixture of theories, old-school practices, and new-school techniques.

Although I personally disagree with some parts of what this book teaches, it this game design book is one of the most comprehensive I've seen. Well-recommended.

This might be a good book for teachers looking for material in their classes gamedesign or gamedevelopment. It may also be a good book for selfstudy, if you have the discipline to do the exercises. You need to have played a lot of the classic videogames though, otherwise you might not be able to do the exercises, which are mostly about thinking about gamedesigns and making little designs or design alterations on existing games.

Few people realize just how big a business digital gaming has become. Think of it this way: It's bigger than the domestic box office of the film industry. The amount of time spent playing games by young people now exceeds everything but television in time spent on entertainment. The main factor driving the development of the new extremely powerful computers is gaming, slower machines are capable of handling almost all office tasks.

The authors of this book have a great deal of experience in both designing games and teaching how to design games. This has given them an understanding of how beginning designers grasp the structured elements of games, common traps they fall into, and certain developmental exercises that help the student learn to make better games.

Note that this is not a programming manual, nor is it a graphics design manual. It is on game design. What are the characteristics that make a game, how can you prototype and play test the game without a horrendous programming expense, and finally some input on the game industry and how to decide on how you might like to be employeed in that industry.

I consider this an excellent book on game design. As an amatuer board game and basic computer game designer, I found a lot of the material extremely useful in the *process* of coming up with a game from start to finish.

The chapter on prototyping did a great job in showing how to go ahead and create a prototype from a game idea, while keeping it simple and concentrating on the "core gameplay mechanism."

The chapter on "Playtesting" and "Functionality, Completeness, and Balance" builds on the prototype chapter by emphasizing the iterative nature of design where one go aheads and evaluates, tries new things, identify problems and keep evolving.

The next chapter following is maybe the most important chapter that discusses whether you game is fun, goes in to some theory of what makes a game fun, and relates various techniques of improving player's choices so as to make the game fun.

This is a great book that gives you the necessary tools to go ahead and be able to at the very least create a viable prototype of a game that is possibly fun and playable.

I'm not a graphic artist, and I don't have time or the desire to read a mammoth tome on image manipulation. What I want is a book that will teach me the basics of GIMP in as little time as possible. This is that book. With this book I was able to get up to speed with most of the basic functions in just a couple of days. This is the best GIMP book I have seen for beginners. My only complaint is that most of the illustrations are in black & white, and the sections on color manipulation, etc. would probably be a little easier to follow with color illustrations. I plan to read the author's book on CorelDRAW in the near future

This is an extremely complete guide to the Gimp. Everything you can do in PhotoShop, you can do in the Gimp -- and more! (Plus, the price of the software is right!) Phyllis Davis' book tells how to do anything you might want to do, with easy step by step examples. It is well illustrated. Perhaps the best part is the full color gallery section, showing Gimp art from around the world. If you want to learn to use the Gimp, I highly recommend this book. (Heck, you could learn stuff about PhotoShop from it while you're at it. Phyllis Davis is a wonderful writer, and explains computer graphic concepts and tools very clearly.) If you are just curious about all the fuss about the Gimp (Gnu means images!) check it out, too!

I agree with previous reviewers that this book provides easy-to-follow instructions for learning GIMP. I used it recently to help me devise lesson plans for a 5-week class for children ranging from 8-15 years old! Having it with me to consult during class boosted my confidence, since I had never used GIMP before teaching the class! My only additional comment is that I quickly discovered that GIMP, which is continuously being revised, has new and different features which are not covered in this book. Fortunately, the online manual fills these gaps. Still, I think this book was a good purchase, and I do recommend it to GIMP newbies.

At the time of this writing, this is easily the best introduction to the GIMP. It covers about 90% of the material in the GIMP for Linux Bible, but the explanations are more concise. I would recommend the other book only if you need coverage of scripting, which this Quickstart doesn't really have.

This book is *so* easy to use. There are pictures with each step and instructions that are really easy to follow.

Graphic Design Portfolio Builder is a good supplemental book for designers and beginning students. I wrote supplemental because this book does not comprehensively cover the features of Photoshop and Illustrator software (and it wasn't suppose to) but to help beginners you get familiar with the software and up and running.

The book is very colorful, well laid out and full of useful information. What is comphrehensive is that it covers all aspects of what designers or artists would face and be challenged at work or in classrooms. Each lesson is written by an professional designers and artists with years of experience and I highly enjoyed reading the chapters so far.

The projects in the book are fairly challenging and somewhat time consuming which is good since it makes you explore the software to its full potential if you're feeling ambious.

For inspirations, I recommend you checkout other students work in the book or on their website. It really challenges you to come up with your best work and experiment with different ideas and creative concepts.

PROS:
Easy reading... lots of hands on pratice, which is also worded in an easy to understand language... Comes with a FREE membership to basically a webgroup website, but if you choose to take advantage of the service, the very authors of the book will critique and help you develop your projects, VERY HELPFUL/VERY COOL

CONS:
You have to have photoshop and illustrator in order to take advantage of this product

This book was so very helpful in aiding my desire to build a portfolio! It helped me learn more about Photoshop and Illustrator - plus gave me assignments that were reviewed and critiqued by a very helpful and polite instructor. This is more than just a book it is a full class at a book rate! I would recommend it to anyone looking for this type of work or just to improve what they already know.

[...] The company is centered around on line training in the general area of graphics design. ==This book is designed to go with one of their courses. The goal of this course is to help you create a portfolio of your work. It has a series of projects where you download various components of a project, then you do the project and post your results back on-line. A Sessions instructor will then give you a short critique of your work so you will have specific person to person contact that lets you know how you are progressing. This is kind of like working as a designer and having the client look at what you've done.

As you might well guess from the sub-title, these projects are oriented to Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator. This is not exactly a beginners course in these software package. You should have at least some beginning understanding of how to use these packages. The concentration hers is on improving your design skills, not on the details of the software.

Having taught graphic design for the last 13years, I am always looking for material to use as a reference or even text in my classes. This book gives many ideas on projects that students can use to create a quality looking portfolio for that first job interview. Even though I am constantly encouraging my students to go beyond the simple text assignment, many do not. This book my just give them that spark to do just that.

Adobe Illustrator is a highly regarded professional software for creating digital artwork. Over the years Illustrator's capabilities have been closely identified with print publishing, where the application's high quality precise vector line-art can be scaled up or down in size and not change its resolution. It turns out there's far more uses for Illustrator than just print work. Adobe has been steadily adding features in its last three versions that make Illustrator a very valuable tool for creating Web graphics.

"The Hidden Power of Illustrator CS: Web Graphics Techniques", by author Steve Kurth, focuses on many features that Adobe has bestowed to its latest version of Illustrator. What the book does very well is elaborate on important Web graphics features that Adobe sparingly describes in its Illustrator CS users manual, or omits all together.

Prior to reading "The Hidden Power of Illustrator CS: Web Graphics Techniques" I've been creating navigation buttons, banners, and most other Web page visual components in PhotoShop. If I've needed to slice a graphic or create a button roll-over effect, I have relied on PhotoShop's integrated companion ImageReady. Thanks to this book I'm now much better informed about what Illustrator CS can offer, and it's going to change the way I create Web graphics.

I wouldn't recommend this book for the person who hasn't spent some time using Adobe Illustrator. The author attempts to address many of the application's basic features in the first two chapters. However, it's not going to be adequate for beginners, although users already experienced with Macromedia FreeHand or CorelDraw may find these two chapters quite useful for understanding and adapting their acquired knowledge into effectively using Illustrator CS.

Chapter Three begins explaining what makes Illustrator CS such a great tool for creating Web graphics. The author, Steve Kurth, has more than 10 years experience as a graphics professional. His "how-to's" with Illustrator CS are peppered with explanations of time-saving techniques for increasing workflow productivity when creating Web graphics with Adobe Illustrator. This is particularly the case in chapters five and six "Preparing The Work Environment" and "Preparing Single Graphics".

In Chapter Eight, "Creating Complete Pages", Steve Kurth explains and shows (with sample screen shots) how an entire Web page can be an Illustrator graphic sliced into sections that lessen the apparent wait of screen loading for dial-up users. He also explains how links can be created with specific bits of HTML code embedded into Illustrator Web graphics. Additionally, there are good explanations and examples throughout the chapter explaining how important Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) embedded code can be for precise placement and alignment of graphics in a Web page (better than HTML code instructions), and for creating fancy functional items such as drop-down menus.

With Adobe having given Illustrator CS 3-D graphics creation abilities, the possibilities for making sophisticated Web animations are exciting. Chapter Nine provides some easy-to-follow examples that certainly fueled a number of animation ideas I will be trying. Sequential frames created in Illustrator layers can be exported as a series of GIF graphics, or they can be exported to Macromedia Flash, Adobe AfterEffects or LiveMotion to create quick-loading vector graphics animations.

Chapter Ten is devoted to explaining the features, advantages, and the hopes for the Scaled Vector Graphics (SVG) format. Similar to SWF Flash files, SVG is also a quick-loading vector format that displays well in Web browsers-as long as you have the free plug-in that must be downloaded from Adobe and installed. Unlike the proprietary Flash format, SVG is an open standard. The descriptions given of SVG makes it seem considerably more versatile for website designers than SWF. The Flash plug-in, however, was introduced well before SVG and now enjoys a much larger market share. SVG's ultimate success (and survival) may hinge on developers writing future versions of Web browsers that will natively display the SVG format the way they currently support JPEG, GIF, and PNG.

"The Hidden Power of Illustrator CS: Web Graphics Techniques" is a treasure of information. If you use Illustrator and have not moved up to CS (v. 11), the book will likely motivate an upgrade.

Tom Shackle is a freelance media professional and a member of the Alaskan Apple Users Group

I hardly ever buy books on software because they are all hard to read and follow. This book intrigued me because I am coming from an extensive print background trying to venture into web design. Who knew the program that I use on a daily basis had such web design power? This book is awesome, it's set up in a clear, easy to follow way and the author is extremely knowledgable in the ways of Illustrator. Pick up this book now!

This book was a real eye opener for me. I love Illustrator, and I've been using it for many years, but never realized it has such practical application for web design. Steve Kurth gives practical examples of ways to make your workflow more productive, and his technical expertise in Illustrator is unsurpassed.

Kurth presents a comprehensive training course in the efficient use of Illustrator and aspects that especially apply to web creation. The "Save for Web Reference" gave an excellent overview of file formats and optimizing for web.

Some features were new to me, such as exporting to CSS layers for creating motion animation and more complex design effects. Pixel dimensions when transferring art to GoLive and Dreamweaver was a very useful reference. I found the detailed color discussion most informative.

In the section on creating browser templates. Steve Kurth walks us through constructing an Illustrator template for creating a full web page, something I had never thought of doing before.

All in all, I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested in fully and efficiently using Illustrator to design for web. It will definitely increase your production knowledge.

The Hidden Power Of Illustrator CS Web Graphics Techniques by Illustrator CS software expert Steve Kurth is a "do-it-yourself" guidebook for tapping into the depths of Adobe Illustrator's graphics capabilities with respect to an effective and attractive website presentation. Express instructions, screenshots, tutorials for advanced web tools, instructions for building one's own page, and so much more utilizing Illustrator CS software fill the pages of this resourceful and easy-to-follow instructional from cover to cover.

I got this book even though I already know Illustrator. I am a print designer and I wanted to learn web stuff, too. There was plenty of that, and current stuff too. A lot of books on web graphics were written 4 years ago and a lot has changed. This book was up-todate and pertintent. It was complete and easy-to -read.

The part that came as a surprise is that I learned a lot I didn't know about Illustrator in general while reading it. I was surprised at that. I especially liked the animation section. A good book for any Illustrator user.

this is a good reference book if you don't need to go to deep into the program. I recently upgraded to Illustrator CS and a few of the things confused me i.e. how the text to path tool works....so I bought this book as a quick reference and it has done a great job of fulfilling that purpose.

I would highly recommend it to anyone else that needs a book for the same purpose...If you are learning Illustrator for the first time or need something to really go deep into the program you might be better off with another book

Ideal for the beginning novice and strongly recommended for those with intermediate level skills with Illustrator software, Illustrator CS For Windows & Macintosh is the collaborative work of experts Elaine Weinmann and Peter Lourekas. Part of the simply outstanding computer software oriented "Visual QuickStart Guide" series from Peachpit Press, Illustrator CS For Windows & Macintosh provides a visual and easy-to-assimilate approach to learning Illustrator as the pictured images guide the reader through the software showing just what to do at each step of the way. Illustrator CS For Windows & Macintosh will also continue to be of immense value as a working reference.

I learned how to use Adobe Illustrator very well with the aid of this book. The book is organized in logical steps and the authors speaks in plain english which makes the instructions very easy to understand. The method of teaching in this book allows you to understand why you're performing a certain action. The book shows you how to create results with detailed instructions and mini pictures of Illustrator's tools and menu system. I found that the lessons tied in nicely and it provided me with a natural progression of learning. This book is great for print and web professionals. I found the chapter named Web to be very helpful to myself because I intend to use the complete Creative Suite to create my web pages. There are examples for each technique that is explained. If you have basic or decent Illustrator skills I can't see how this book can't help you. I became so proficient at Illustrator in such a short period of time that my wife marveled at some of my designs. I couldn't believe it myself to be honest. I've never learned software from a book form; I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised with the results. Even if you don't absorb all of the information in the book, the index makes it easy refresh your memory or learn of a new technique. There is a pattern to this book that allows you to absorb the information very easily. Outstanding book.

I purchased this book upon the recommendation of my professor for a college class in Computer Design. It is my first experience with the Visual QuickStart Guides and I am very impressed. It has been a valuable tool in helping me understand and use this previously unfamiliar software application. The table of contents is clear and well organized and the index is very extensive--I refer to it constantly. The book uses many illustrations with clear instructions and explanations. Commands and shortcuts and given for both Mac and Windows. I would definitely purchase another Visual QuickStart Guide.

The book has helped me learned or brush up on the application in matter of minutes. It's concise and it saves time when learning new things during crunch time. For more, in-depth, sunject matter, a more advanced book is required. This done does a job well for beginners!

A pleasure to read, both for the inspiration coming from reading about people being very successful being idealistic, and from learning about the history of the Desktop Publishing revolution.

We at the Designer's Bookshelf have just awarded this book "THE BOOK OF THE YEAR" award for 2002. These awards are given by the editors and staff at the Design Bookshelf, DT&G Magazine, and the Graphic Design network as top choices for all those involved in the design, publishing and visual arts fields.

The only real flaw in this book is I want more. Adobe's story is fascinating, and I could probably read a detailed history of each product without being bored. (And I would have loved to have found out why Adobe never made an Illustrator 5 or 6 for the PC).

I got the book in the morning and started reading right away, skipped lunch and finished. Short read you might say... not at all; the text and the images are excellent and the book reads like a novel (reason why I skipped lunch). What a story!

It answered many questions that came up in my 10+ years of experience as a graphic design professional. Why Adobe this and how Adobe that.

The great thing about the book that it made me re-live my experiences; the advent of the mac and the LaserWriter, early releases of the software (it is quite touching to see pictures of the first, say, Illustrator), the successes and the failure the company went through. Those of us (graphic designers) who have pasted photostated type on the blue outline grid by hand will relate.

The book is about what and how things happened to allow us (graphic designers) to work the way we do today; it is, however, also about how Adobe changed the publishing world and global communication altogether.

Thumbs up on this one. Thank you Pamela Pfiffner for a great piece of research and writing. Thank you Adobe for the perseverance in bringing it all together towards the age of Network Publishing.

Anyone who uses a computer to design graphics, create printed documents, edit Web graphics, make movies and animations, or just type a letter should read this book.

While most people recognize the contributions Apple and Microsoft made to computers, few realize how much Adobe was right in there with those other companies.

This book tells that story--and does so with humor, behind-the-scenes gossip, and inside information. What were the "Font wars" of 1989? What were Adobe's original plans for Photoshop? What was the original purpose for the Acrobat PDF format?

Even better the quotes from industry greats. What did Steve Jobs think the first time he saw PostScript added to a printer? How did designers such as Roger Black and Louis Fishauf feel about products such as Illustrator and Photoshop?

The book is filled with tons of candid photos of those early days. You'll gasp as you see the much-younger versions of today's famous speakers and industry giants. My favorite is the extremely young Steve Jobs (in a tie and jacket!) at the debut of the PostScript LaserWriter.

The author must have been given quite a bit of leeway with the writing because she also describes those times Adobe didn't get it exactly right. What were the mistakes Adobe made in their first Web page-creation program? What was the problem with the original distribution of Acrobat Reader? And who was the only person at Adobe who could easily use the original Illustrator Pen tool?

And in an age of trade paperbacks, this book is a physical joy--a beautifully bound embossed-hardcover book with a varnish-coated dust jacket. The inside pages are exquisitely designed, with full-color photos throughout the book.

This is the sort of book you pick up and read, then pick up again, then again, then again. There's always one more little tidbit to laugh or smile over.

The Missing Manual series has been around for quite some time, but I have never felt the need to buy one until I started doing some serious work with iPhoto. iPhoto 2: The Missing Manual was a good volume to assist.

One of the things I like about Apple's iApps is that they hide a great deal of complexity behind a simple interface; they do indeed make the complex simple. The drawback to this is that I often find myself ignoring the more powerful aspects of the application and never using it to its full. It was here that the Missing Manual came to my help.

The target audience for this book would probably be a little less technical than myself, however when I find myself in a field I don't understand well I don't mind a little stuff for the absolute newbie. This book has an entire first section that deals with photography and digital photography in particular that may be a total repeat for some, I found it a welcome reminder of how to get a good photograph along with some extremely useful hints about the new technology and choosing a camera. It covers such topics as composition and lighting for a host of different situations such as landscapes, night, portraits, children and sports.

It then goes on to a section of similar size on the basics that covers getting the photos from your camera to the Mac, organising the photos using albums and keywords and then editing your shots.

A third section covers the various ways of publishing and showing your photos such as printing, CD, and web pages, and a final section with some tricks and tips on things like managing your libraries. There are two appendices: one very useful troubleshooting guide, and a menu-by-menu look at iPhoto 2.

I particularly appreciated the thorough treatment of how to get the most out of iPhoto when printing photo books and creating web pages in the third section; it was here that I really discovered how little I knew from just `playing' with the application. The book is peppered with useful information and tips that take you beyond the level that most of us discovered when we ran and used the program. The authors have also provided some marvelous explanations of what is going on, the "why" as well as the "what."

The book is well written with a readable, light, almost witty style that somehow deceives the reader as to the depth of the material being covered. It is only when I reflected back on how much the book taught me that I realised how well it had done the job.

O'Reilly have their usual web page for the book with a sample chapter, Table of Contents and Index. Pogue Press have a neat idea - they have a page that features all the software mentioned in the book. A neat idea that I liked a lot.

In conclusion, I would recommend this book to everyone who is serious about digital photography on their Mac. If you have used iPhoto for a long time you may think the book a waste, but I'd be surprised if even long-time users didn't get their money's worth out of this book. I much preferred the style of this volume to IDG's iPhoto 2 for Dummies, the only other real competitor for this volume was iPhoto 2 for Mac OS X: A Visual Quickstart Guide, and that is a shorter volume with less depth and less advice for photography and nothing on the camera technology, though I think Engst's writing seems a bit clearer at times.

I wouldn't buy a "Missing Manual" for every iApp or the operating system, but if you take the slogan for the series seriously, "The book that should have been in the box" (for the box is entirely devoid of books), I think they are a marvelous help for becoming a true `power user.

Can you imagine a software manual that makes you feel smart, not dumb? David Pogue's iPhoto 2: The Missing Manual does just that. It's written in a way that's easy to understand without being condescending. The straightforward style is well organized, sometimes humorous and always informative.

I'm new to Mac and iPhoto. Some things come easily but the details are often evasive. The Missing Manual fills in the blanks. I was hooked from the first chapter. The discussion of digital cameras and their use has opened my eyes and was a terrific intro to using iPhoto.

The Missing Manual is a reference book that's enjoyable to use.

At first I wondered how an entire book could be written about iPhoto--this one is packed with useful information. I had no idea how much can be done with this application. I own a number of Missing Manuals, and they're all very good.

I've had iPhoto for about a year, but wasn't familiar with any of the features save importing my photos from my camera. After a few hours with this book, however, I've mastered the program and received a lot of kudos on the improved quality of my shots.

The first section is on how to take better pictures. As I've never taken a photography class, this section was particularly useful for me. It breaks down the different types of pictures (portraits, action shots, close-ups, night shots, etc...) and tells you how to get the best shot.

The meat of the book is in the second section though - that part details how to use iPhoto, from importing pictures to touching them up and eliminating red eye. I primarily use my photos for my website. As such, I wanted to crop them, touch them up, and eliminate red eye. All three of those functions are easy to use after reading this book. It takes me a minute or so to turn my original, off-centered, dark, photo into something worthy of going online.

The Missing Manual goes through each function in order, explains what it does, and what the potential drawbacks are. It also goes into file management - I had no idea that iPhoto stored a copy of the original of any image I altered, even if it was just to rotate it. I followed a suggestion in the book, downloaded a piece of freeware, and was able to open up a lot of space on my hard drive by eliminating these unnecessary duplicates.

The Missing Manual also details how to edit photos in other programs (such as Adobe Photoshop) without causing problems in iPhoto. As I occasionally have to resize pictures based on the DPI, this information was quite useful.

The third section describes how to show off your photos. As I usually just upload them to my website, I only perused this section. It looks to contain some useful information though - how to make a slideshow with a soundtrack, turn the slideshow into a QuickTime video, back up your photos on a DVD, upload them as a photo album to a website, print out a photo album, e-mail them, and more.

Apple Computer markets a concept they call "the digital hub" representing its integrated hardware and software combinations, especially the iLife package (iPhoto2, iTunes, iChat, iMovie, and iDVD). Beyond Apple's traditionally elegant and harmonious hardware-software integration, the iLife programs are brilliantly designed to allow users to easily enjoy important non-computer things in their lives - photos, music, home and family and recreational video, etc. - while benefitting from the enormous background power of computer applications.

With iPhoto2, for example, images (scanned or from a digital camera) can be easily imported into the computer, viewed, printed, burned to CD or DVD, emailed, posted to websites, or composed in professional quality albums with only a handful of clicks. Other than acquiring the images themselves, iPhoto2 and the Mac can facilitate an enormous depth and breadth of enjoyment of photo images without great effort or computer knowledge. The iLife idea is to have the computer aspects work seamlessly and near sub-consciously in the background allowing the user to enjoy his or her photos.

In essence, Apple has designed and created a hardware-software combination which, in itself, does virtually everything a non-professional needs to fully enjoy photo imaging. All of the iLife applications are designed with the "hub" concept - put all the tools needed into one easily learned and implemented application; - in other words, think of what people need and give that to them in an integrated and elegantly-designed package.

As easy as the iLife applications are to use, like all computer aspects, ease of use is relative - there is no real "easy" computer or application - it's an issue of something only more or less easy to use than another thing. Consequently, there is still a need for focused documentation and instruction to allow users to better and more fully utilize the features and power of the applications. This is where "iPhoto2: The Missing Manual" becomes useful. "iPhoto2" is part of the acclaimed "Missing Manual" series published by Pogue Press/O'Reilly & Associates, Inc. Like all of the other "Missing Manuals" it is a comprehensive, systematic, well-written paper manual where Apple provides none.

Whether intentionally designed, or not, "iPhoto2" mimics the "hub" concept - bringing together into one elegant unit all the information and tools needed to productively enjoy digital imagery. "iPhoto2" contains five parts - an opening section on how to select and buy a digital camera, and sections on

how to use a digital camera, iPhoto2 basics, how to create and produce photo projects like slideshows, prints, web galleries, photo CDs, etc., and a section on how to take advantage of specialized iPhoto2 features like making screensavers and desktop images and using Applescript. Also included is a separate set of appendices about trouble shooting, a menu-by-menu description of iPhoto2 features and commands, and a small section describing where to find additional digital photo resources.

The trio of authors are David Pogue, noted writer, NY Times computer columnist, and wit; Joseph Schorr, established Macworld writer and author of "Macworld MacSecrets"; and Derrick Story, author of "The Digital Photos Pocket Guide" (which was reviewed here favorably a number of months ago).

This book is structured into two overarching themes - as an iPhoto2 manual and as basic instruction in near-professional quality photography. Overlapping some material from "The Digital Pocket Guide", part one of this book covers basic digital camera concepts: resolution, memory cards, batteries, controls, etc. It then continues with guides on image composition and tips and tricks on how to obtain good quality photos in a large set of situations: portraits, travel, sports, night scenes, and the like. It does no good to have the ability to easily view, print, and e-mail bad photos. Learn how to take a good shot. These sections of the book will help a lot.

The iPhoto2 parts describe how to get your "good" images into the application, how iPhoto2 is structured on the hard drive with its designated Library, for example, and its organizing concepts - "Albums" and "Rolls." Other application features like editing, copying, and archiving images are well- explained and detailed.

The most interesting chapters are 7-12 detailing how to get quality and efficient production from the program.Features like the "One-click Slideshow" and how to make Quicktime movies from a folder of images are highlighted.

All in all, this is another well-done publication from Pogue/O'Reilly.

This is a best book I have ever seen. It has every details about how to use the iText. It's very clear in every technical aspects. iText is also a great API for Java programmer. It's also really easy to learn. I love iText.

I love this book. I strongly recommand this book.

This is a great book for people developing or maintaining applications using iText. It covers every corner-case I've run into, typically offering various options on how to solve a problem. The writing is concise, with easily approachable chapters and examples.

In January 2006 I was assigned to build a system that would create lots of PDF reports, typically with hundreds of pages of tables, and with tables nested in other tables. I started with an an open-source tool called BIRT that is well-designed and powerful, but it didn't quite give me sufficient low-level control over some aspects of PDF creation. When I realized that BIRT wasn't going to work for me, I was behind schedule and in trouble. Then I discovered iText. (BIRT actually is built using iText jar files.) I found that iText gave me exactly what I needed: an easy-to-use yet powerful Java API for creating PDF files. The remainder of the project, using iText, went smoothly, and my boss was very happy with the results. But I sure wish that I'd had Bruno Lowagie's "iText in Action" book at the time! That would have shaved a few weeks off of the project and would have saved me from learning some things painfully, by trial and error. As the original developer of iText, Bruno Lowagie is uniquely qualified to write this book. He obviously put a huge amount of effort into it, reflecting his longstanding commitment to iText. He made every effort to explain things as clearly as possible, and to document the pitfalls as well as the attractive features. It is evidently a labor of love for him. The book is written to the high editorial standards of other Manning books, with clear organization, good typography and layout, and so on. I highly recommended iText itself, and also this book, to anyone who is using Java to work with PDF files.

This is nice book, though most of the contents can be found online (I believe it is linked from the author's website). I have created some complex PDF files using iText following the examples on the book and online tutorials. This is the book from iText creator, surely it worth a 5 starts.

I've always figured that there should be some way to create PDF files without the manual effort of any 3rd party software client. Now I find out there is a way, and it's rather exciting... iText In Action by Bruno Lowagie covers the iText open source software project. It's a very well done reference manual that can also serve as a tutorial for a decent Java developer.

Contents:
Part 1 - Introduction: iText - when and why; PDF engine jump-start; PDF - why and when
Part 2 - Basic Building Blocks: Composing text elements; Inserting images; Constructing tables; Constructing columns
Part 3 - PDF Text and Graphics: Choosing the right font; Using fonts; Constructing and painting paths; Adding color and text; Drawing to Java Graphics2D
Part 4 - Interactive PDF: Browsing a PDF document; Automating PDF creation; Creating annotations and fields; Filling and signing AcroForms; iText in web applications; Under the hood
Appendixes: Class diagrams; Creating barcodes; Open parameters; Signing a PDF with a smart card; Dealing with exceptions; Pdf/X, Pdf/A, and tagged PDF; Resources; index

Lowagie starts off with a brief background of how iText came into being, along with a scenario of where the ability to programmatically create PDF files could dramatically change the way a college would run a department. Then after a short Hello World example that involves creating a simple document, he delves into all the different features and capabilities. The book at this point starts to change from tutorial to reference manual, but it's done in such a way that you could just keep working through the material in tutorial fashion with little effort (and good results). The example code in all the chapters are extensively annotated and explained, so you're not left to your own devices to try and figure out what the logic is trying to accomplish. In fact, I would say that the code annotation and commentary is some of the best I've seen in a book of this type. Great job...

The main target audience for this book is the Java developer, as the iText project is Java-based. There are .NET ports for J# and C#, and knowing how close those languages are to Java, this book should work pretty well for those development efforts with a little bit of thought and modification. Other languages should be able to use the iText toolkit if they have some way to call Java code modules from within their programs. As a Notes/Domino developer, I should be able to utilize all of this package in any Java agents I write, and the LS2J feature of LotusScript might also work well. After reading this book, I know I have some things I need to try...

If you have any sort of need involving the creation of PDF files from within your own system, iText is a great alternative to explore. And if that seems to be the way to go, I don't know of any better book to get than this one...

This book contains a wealth of information on the construction of a 3D pipeline, including all the geometry handling and also texture mapping. However being presented as it is, a collection of articles, makes a logical progression from start to finish a difficult task. There also seem to be gaps in some of the explanations, which is a shame as they are mostly complete and written in an easy to digest and lighthearted style. All in all, the book is packed with useful stuff, highly recommended.

I am a graphics book addict, but few produce changes in my code. I passed his clipping method around to the team and we are starting to change our pipeline. We were clipping to polys in a portal engine. The new idea is to clip to a bounding rectangle FAST and let the new hardware zbuff the rough edges.

His books have these sort of 'GEMS' that you might use the week you get it.

This book is old enough (the original articles were written in '87-'92 - ancient history by graphics standards) that it probably isn't going to appeal to everyone, but any graphics geek should definitely check it out. Jim Blinn is a graphics god, and he shares his knowledge in an entertaining and easy-to-understand manner. As the title suggests, the topics covered center on core concepts in the graphics pipeline, such as homogenous coordinates, perspective correction, viewports, clipping, coordinate spaces, and so on. Whether you're writing a software renderer (as I am), writing shaders, or just want to better understand what goes on under the hood, you're sure to find something useful here.

This book is a collection of articles written from the late 80's through the mid 90's about various computer graphics topics. Even though the book doesn't look serious, it does a very good job of explaining several rather complex computer graphics topics better than many other much more expensive textbooks on the subject. Mathematics is clearly explained when needed, and there is some pseudocode included. Since each chapter is an article totally independent of all others, I shall review each article/chapter separately:
1. How Many Ways Can You Draw a Circle?
For people who can program and who can draw points and lines on some system this is a splendid introduction to the way math is used in computer graphics. The "exercises" range from easy to medium hard.
2. What, Teapots Again?
Martin Newell's Teapot is the trademark of computer graphics. The GLUT library for OpenGL has a pre-computed object called the teapotahedron, right along with the dodecahedron and the icosahedron. Here are the coordinates if you want a teapotahedron of your very own in whatever graphics system you want.
3. Nested Transformations and Blobby Man
This is a classic exercise in how matrix algebra makes articulation trees easy to program. It basically uses a set of scaled and translated geometric primitives such as spheres to "build up" the crude figure of a man. This chapter might be useful to robotics students looking for a project.
4. Platonic Solids
The platonic solids are widely used as sample objects. They are the tetrahedron, hexahedron, octahedron, icosahedron, and dodecahedron. Blinn intends this to be a "hip pocket" program for the five platonic solids, something you can tuck away in your memory. OpenGL+GLUT has all these solids as primitives, so this is something you should study once as part of your general computer graphics education.
5. How to Write a Paper for SIGGRAPH
Chapters 5,7,12 and 20 are more about programmers than about programming. It makes for amusing reading, and if you take Blinns advice to heart now, you may improve your technical writing style in other areas too.
6. Me and My (Fake) Shadow
It should be mentioned beforehand that this methods merely allows shadows to be cast on flat ground. This means two things: it can only be used to cast a shadow on a flat surface AND it can only cast the shadow of one object. Blinn admits to having first attempted a hack approach to solve the problem in an unintuitive but slightly quicker way. He also presents his revised methodical approach and shows problems with it.
7. Things I Hope Not to See or Hear at SIGGRAPH
Talks about what makes a bad presentation - Talks read verbatim, illegible slides, micro-sized text, magenta lines on a cyan background, the entire talk echoed on slides, the fading voice, "I'm Almost Out of Time so I'll Just Run Through the Rest of These Slides Real Fast.", "Uh, I Guess That's All I Have to Say."
8. Where Am I? What Am I Looking At?
A generalization of the lookat transformation that Blinn used in space movies. This is pretty advanced unless you've had a course in linear algebra.This chapter is also a very compact summary of what you know after you have worked with the graphics pipeline for a while.
9. The Three-Dimensional Kaleidoscope
Some playing with 3D groups to make related polyhedra and other interesting shapes. This is an interesting entry portal to the whole subject of symmetry. It goes with the Platonic Solids chapter, but can be done independently. This article encourages greater artistic experimentation and free-form design for a smaller investment of effort than the other chapters so far.
10. Fractional Invisibility
A way to remove most of the singuarites in quantitative invisibility types of hidden line algorithms, this is definitely an advanced subject. OpenGL provide a z-buffer which makes the techniques described here necessary only for special parts of computational solid geometry (CSG).
11. Optimal Tubes
A simple modelling primitive for long cylinders that takes into account the viewpoint, this is also an advanced subject. If you ever get a job designing chemical structures or space stations you may need to digest this material, although programming tools are generally available which incorporate this wisdom.
12. The Ultimate Design Tool
This is a more serious piece of advice than it might first seem. Unless a computer graphics programmer can visualize and sketch with pencil and paper there is little chance for fluency and efficiency in their work. This is essential reading.
13. Line Clipping
This is a chapter from a regular course on computer graphics. This is good example of what people do in the field of computational geometry, which is one of the abstract or technical fields behind the applied field of computer graphics.
14. Pixel Coordinates
Mapping the continuous range -1...+1 to pixel coordinate values and how it is usually done wrong.
15. Subpixelic Particles
How to map sub-pixels to regular pixels for subsampling. Chapters 14 and 15 are definitely advanced. A cursory reading will give you an idea of what happens at the very end of the pipeline, the part most computer graphics courses skip.
16. Grandpa, What Does "Viewport" Mean?
The matter treated in this chapter is at the heart of all modern windowing systems. Despite all the things "windows" systems can do, be they Apple, Microsoft, or Sun, they can't help you do anything original, like non-rectangular windowing.
17. Hyperbolic Interpolation
Discusses how to interpolate colors and texture indices onto objects viewed in perspective. This chapter is really about homogeneous coordinates, and those are at the heart of the geometry pipeline. This is definitely advanced, because it requires an understanding of matters discussed in the next chapter.
18. The Homogeneous Perspective Transform
How the perspective transform works in homogeneous coordinates.
19. Backface Culling Snags
More on drawing solids quickly. Rather more computerish than mathematical.
20. Farewell To FORTRAN
This chapter is largely out of date. It is only a part of what Jim Blinn had to say about the "language wars" back in 1994. Of course, now nobody really needs to be coaxed from FORTRAN to C++.

I teach graphics and have been doing graphics for 15 years, and this book still taught me a lot. And it is a good book for a novice as well. I know that sounds implausible, but it really is true! Blinn just states things SO clearly. I was driven to write this review today after reading his discussion of perspective-correct rasterization: what a masterpiece! The rest of the book is just as good.