Software Books

I definitely recommend this book for anyone working with OpenGL's new Shading Language. I would, however, say that probably the most difficult part of working with GLSL is getting it working in the first place. Especially on Linux, this is somewhat confusing - some cards support GL 2.0, some don't, but still support the GLSL if using the ARB function calls. I would also make sure to point out to new users that GLEW is close to essential when working with the GLSL - you can download it from sourceforge. It might be worth mentioning in future versions of the book, along with ARB functions which are the same as the GLSL standard functions shown in the book.

Twenty years ago, I used to program graphics on an Evans and Sutherland PS340. It was then one of the top of the line graphics computers (costing $100k). It could labouriously do shading, but only Phong and Gouraud. Nowadays, many PCs have this ability, and much faster. But a problem still persists, where often the shading methods are restricted to what is implemented on the graphics chips.

In contrast, you have the approach in this definitive book on OpenGL Shading Language. This lets you implement in your code, shading routines of your own devising. To be sure, given the same shading method, one done in this language, and one in the hardware, then the latter will have better performance. But it turns out that today's computers are fast enough, and have enough RAM, that the difference in response might not be appreciable.

The book describes an extensive set of built-in convenience functions that come with the language. And the language's API is explained in detail. The author rightly recommends that you come at it with some experience in the standard OpenGL.

Since the language is still quite new, you are more or less on your own, when looking at development tools. This dearth is expected to be remedied in a few years. But right now, you'll have to rely on your wits. Along with a chapter that gives general principles of how you should develop your own shader. What may be even more use, however, is the second half of the book. Devoted to case studies of many shaders. Understanding these may be more beneficial than any IDE.

Oh, as you might expect from a graphics book, there is a lovely set of colour plates in the middle of the book, showing what custom shaders can do. Treat it as inspiration if you wish.

The recent trend in graphics hardware has been to replace fixed functionality with programmability in areas that have grown exceedingly complex (e.g., vertex processing and fragment processing). The OpenGL Shading Language has been designed to allow application programmers to express the processing that occurs at those programmable points of the OpenGL pipeline. Independently compilable units that are written in this language are called shaders. A program is a set of shaders that are compiled and linked together. The OpenGL Shading Language is based on ANSI C and many of the features have been retained except when they conflict with performance or ease of implementation. This shading language is without a doubt the most important addition to OpenGL since its inception, and this book provides an excellent guide to programming with it. The author was one of the primary contributors to the development of the language, and he provides a well-written and insightful explanation of the language and its use.
The book begins with a review of OpenGL basics, followed by an introduction to shaders and how they fit into the pipeline. It then covers the language itself, including data types, operators, interaction with the OpenGL state machine and fixed function pipeline, built-in functions, and more. It also introduces and explains the OpenGL APIs needed to use shaders.
The last half of the book focuses on shader development, including general process and workflow, and coverage of many specific techniques, such as procedural textures and GPU-based animation. It even includes a section on implementing the fixed function pipeline using shaders. The book ends with a handy comparison of OpenGL Shading Language with other shading languages, such as Cg, HLSL, and Renderman and a couple of appendices providing a language grammar and API reference.
I particularly liked chapters 6 through 8, which take you from a simple shading example -"brick"- through the specific steps of shader development that you would need to master regardless of the API you are using. Also the chapters on procedural textures and noise and the accompanying code examples helped clear up some matters that were murky when I read "Texturing & Modeling: A Procedural Approach" by Ebert et al. In summary, I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in implementing software shading, both from the standpoint of OpenGL and from the standpoint of the design process itself. I notice that Amazon does not show the table of contents for the second edition, so I do that here:
Chapter 1. REVIEW OF OPENGL BASICS
OpenGL History; OpenGL Evolution; Execution Mode; The Frame Buffer; State; Processing Pipeline; Drawing Geometry; Drawing Images; Coordinate Transforms; Texturing;

Chapter 2. BASICS
Introduction to the OpenGL Shading Language; Why Write Shaders?; OpenGL Programmable Processors; Language Overview; System Overview; Key Benefits;

Chapter 3. LANGUAGE DEFINITION
Example Shader Pair; Data Types; Initializers and Constructors; Type Conversions; Qualifiers and Interface to a Shader; Flow Control; Operations; Preprocessor; Preprocessor Expressions; Error Handling;

Chapter 4. THE OPENGL PROGRAMMABLE PIPELINE
The Vertex Processor; The Fragment Processor; Built-in Uniform Variables; Built-in Constants; Interaction with OpenGL Fixed Functionality;

Chapter 5. BUILT-IN FUNCTIONS
Angle and Trigonometry Functions; Exponential Functions; Common Functions; Geometric Functions; Matrix Functions; Vector Relational Functions; Texture Access Functions; Fragment Processing Functions; Noise Functions;

Chapter 6. SIMPLE SHADING EXAMPLE
Brick Shader Overview; Vertex Shader; Fragment Shader; Observations;

Chapter 7 OPENGL SHADING LANGUAGE API
Obtaining Version Information; Creating Shader Objects; Compiling Shader Objects; Linking and Using Shaders; Cleaning Up; Query Functions; Specifying Vertex Attributes; Specifying Uniform Variables; Samplers; Multiple Render Targets; Development Aids; Implementation-Dependent API Values; Application Code for Brick Shaders;

Chapter 8. SHADER DEVELOPMENT
General Principles; Performance Considerations; Shader Debugging; Shader Development Tools; Scene Graphs;

Chapter 9. EMULATING OPENGL FIXED FUNCTIONALITY
Transformation; Light Sources; Material Properties and Lighting; Two-Sided Lighting; No Lighting; Fog; Texture Coordinate Generation; User Clipping; Texture Application;

Chapter 10. STORED TEXTURE SHADERS
Access to Texture Maps from a Shader; Simple Texturing Example; Multitexturing Example; Cube Mapping Example; Another Environment Mapping Example; Glyph Bombing;

Chapter 11. PROCEDURAL TEXTURE SHADERS
Regular Patterns; Toy Ball; Lattice; Bump Mapping;

Chapter 12. LIGHTING
Hemisphere Lighting; Image-Based Lighting; Lighting with Spherical Harmonics; The *erLight Shader;

Chapter 13. SHADOWS
Ambient Occlusion; Shadow Maps; Deferred Shading for Volume Shadows;

Chapter 14. SURFACE CHARACTERISTICS
Refraction; Diffraction; BRDF Models; Polynomial Texture Mapping with BRDF Data;

Chapter 15. NOISE
Noise Defined; Noise Textures; Trade-offs; A Simple Noise Shader; Turbulence; Granite; Wood;

Chapter 16. ANIMATION
On/Off; Threshold; Translation; Morphing; Other Blending Effects; Vertex Noise; Particle Systems; Wobble;

Chapter 17. ANTIALIASING PROCEDURAL TEXTURES
Sources of Aliasing; Avoiding Aliasing; Increasing Resolution; Antialiased Stripe Example; Frequency Clamping;

Chapter 18. NON-PHOTOREALISTIC SHADERS
Hatching Example; Technical Illustration Example; Mandelbrot Example;

Chapter 19. SHADERS FOR IMAGING
Geometric Image Transforms; Mathematical Mappings; Lookup Table Operations; Color Space Conversions; Image Interpolation and Extrapolation; Blend Modes;

Chapter 20. REALWORLDZ
Features; RealWorldz Internals; Implementation; Atmospheric Effects; Ocean; Clouds;

Chapter 21. LANGUAGE COMPARISON
Chronology of Shading Languages; RenderMan; OpenGL Shader (ISL); HLSL; Cg;
Appendix A. Language Grammar
Appendix B. API Function Reference

I'm not a fan of the 'group of papers' style of book. But this book pulls it off nicely. The text is consistenly good throughout. And the illustrations and formulas are high quality and presented nicely.

I would have liked full color throughout, but I accept that it would have been cost prohibitive on a book of this heft. Speaking of heft, yeah, this is a doorstop of a book. I think some of the text could have been edited down and the formatting tightened up to reduce bulk.

The OpenGL Shading Language is without doubt the most important addition to OpenGL since its inception, and this book provides an excellent guide to programming with it. As one of the primary contributors to the development of the language, Rost provides a clear and well-written explanation of the language and how to use it.

The book begins with a review of OpenGL basics, followed by an introduction to shaders and how they fit into the pipeline. It then covers the language itself, including data types, operators, interaction with the OpenGL state machine and fixed function pipeline, built-in functions, and more. It also introduces and explains the OpenGL APIs needed to use shaders.

The last half of the book focuses on shader development, including general process and workflow, and coverage of many specific techniques, such as procedural textures and GPU-based animation. It even includes a section on implementing the fixed function pipeline using shaders.

The book ends with a handy comparison of GLSL with other shading languages, such as Cg and HLSL, and a couple of appendices providing a language grammar and API reference.

If you're doing shader development with OpenGL, you'll definitely want this book on your desk. My only complaint about it is that it was written before GLSL was officially promoted to the core. When that happened, a number of important things were changed that aren't reflected in the book. However, determining the differences isn't difficult, so don't let that deter you from picking this up.

The book was so useful that we (LDEQ) had Michael visit us for a week. It was great having you here.

This handbook is extremely helpful to the novice Discoverer User. I appreciated the ease in locating specific items that I needed help with. It is user friendly and very enlightening!

I bought this book recently to understand some advanced features of 10G and also get more hold on admin tasks and setups.

I am not through with the entire book yet, but whatever i have red till now is really well written. All features - desktop and admin are well explained with examples and screen shots. Notes at the end of items provide special remarks which are very useful as well.

A very helpful book for beginners as well as advanced users.

This is THE book to get for Oracle Discoverer. What more can I say, it's well written, clear with good examples.

Oracle Discoverer is a complex tool and much more than a single understanding of the functionality is required to use it effectively for business intelligence.

Armstrong-Smith has achieved this goal in a pragmatic book that not only shows the "how" but the "why", with simple illustrative examples from real-world systems.

Sherwood's book changed my email life at work. For the first time I feel like *I* am in control of my email world rather than its piteous slave.

Sherwood's book is funny and immensely helpful to me both on the receiving end of email and the sending end. I have never been more grateful for a practical book. It will change your email life significantly and instantly. It's also a great new-job warming present.

Ms. Sherwood's wit and friendly writing style make this book an enjoyable read. The information, advice, and tips she presents make this book essential. I have gained countless valuable tools from Overcome Email Overload. I came back from vacation to 186 e-mails all sorted, categorized and prioritized. In less than 2 hours I was completely caught up! I am amazed daily with how much time this book has helped me save.

Kaitlin Sherwood's Overcome Email Overload With Microsoft Outlook 2000 And Outlook 2002 is a refreshingly simple, effective guide to using Microsoft Outlook 2000 or 2002 to speed up your email traffic and cut hours from time spent on correspondence every week. Perfect for the novice computer user, Overcome Email Overload features numerous black-and-white illustrations of screens from the Microsoft Outlook programs, the better to walk readers step-by-step through what Outlook has to offer. However, Overcome Email Overload is not primarily a software manual, but rather a practical guide to organizing and prioritizing messages, moving through messages quickly, how to spend less time on responses, how to make one's messages more legible, and so on. An appendix covers scripts in Visual Basic. Overcome Email Overload pays for itself and is an absolute "must" for any worker who relies on Outlook 2000 or 2002 to process vast amounts of email - the strategies herein are superb time-savers! Also highly recommended for Eudora 5 users is Overcoming Email Overload With Eudora 5.

In today's society, the use of email has become standard practice. With this newly developed technology comes the burden of how to manage your email. With the ease of sending and receiving email comes the problem of ensuring you don't spend wasted time viewing obsolete mail.

In the pages of Kaitlin Duck Sherwood's OVERCOME EMAIL OVERLOAD WITH MICROSOFT OUTLOOK 2000 AND OUTLOOK 2002: GET THROUGH YOUR ELECTRONIC MAIL FASTER there is hope for the weary email user. From page one, readers will quickly gain the knowledge to help eliminate countless hours spent sorting through email to determine which requires their immediate attention. This book explains all the advanced techniques that are often left out of general computer classes. The easy to follow language and illustrated graphics allow novice users to quickly grasp the many helpful tips and tricks and put them to effective use within minutes.

Kaitlin Duck Sherwood's book was helpful in teaching worthwhile techniques which I was able to effectively use in my current occupation. Having worked fifteen years in an office environment email has become the primary means of communication. Often, I have felt overwhelmed with the daily struggle of finding ways to manage hundreds of email messages. Ms. Sherwood's simple and helpful advice has been helpful in allowing me to regain the precious time that has been consumed by email. This book has found a permanent place beside my computer. For anyone who is looking for a way to save time, money, and help relieve stress, this book is a must read.

I live on the Internet and e-mail is my communication tool of choice. As a computer professional I read dozens of technical books on all kinds of topics. "Overcoming Email Overload" is one of those rare books that combine technical expertise with pure fun. I have tried various schemes to handle the abundance of email that I receive daily. A few of the suggestions that Ms. Sherwood made in this book I had already incorporated into my daily routine. But I did not have an overall consistent strategy, which, thanks to this book, I now have. When I first picked up this book I expected some simple quick fixes about using folders to store various types of mail and how to set up rules. I was blown away with the depth of material in this one small book. Not only does it teach someone unfamiliar with Outlook 2000 or 2002 how to effectively use the product, it also teaches us how to reduce the amount of emails that we receive; how to write clearer, concise emails; how to convey the right emotional tone; how to get people to read and understand our message. It is a real "How To" manual for everything related to email and effective communication. One danger in buying this book is that you will come to realize how many truly bad emails you receive each day. I recommend to people, on a daily basis, to buy or borrow this book so they can improve their use of email. Really, it is so that I will no longer have to read such poor writing. If you use email, you need this book.

This is a good book for beginners on Peoplesoft. Some of the core concepts are well explained. I am told there are not many books around on peoplesoft that are good and this one ranks high..

I am a DBA and wanted to work on building a warehouse for PeopleSoft HRMS along with generating reports for the client. This book really helped me and my team to understand the hr/payroll concepts quickly. If you are a DBA/developer working in Peoplesoft environment, good to have this book in your library.

It is truly a thorough documentation of every important part of PeopleSoft HRMS. It is a handy-dandy book for anybody working in HRMS. Thanks to the author for taking time and putting thoughts to write such a gem.

I have been working with Peoplesoft product since last five years,I have seen may books in the market but this is the only book I have seen which has very usefull information which helps the begenners a lot to understand main tables and also gives overview of HRMS functionality.

I strongly recommend this book for Begenners and is useful as a reference book for any one.

This book is a treasure for anyone who needs to get quickly up-to-speed on the PeopleSoft HRMS data architecture and the most common tables against which queries and reports are executed. This alone would make the book invaluable because of the confusing PeopleSoft documentation and the thousands of tables. However, the author goes well beyond by breaking down the most important tables, grouped by function, into attributes and explaining how to create highly useful business reports from them.

In addition to the thorough coverage of the data architecture, the book also provides an excellent compendium of information and tips for using SQR to its fullest potential. Although my main interest is in the tables, I considered material on SQR to be a bonus and learned a great deal from this section.

If you are working with PeopleSoft on either the technical or functional side this book will probably be your most used reference. The author deserves the highest accolades for clear writing, technical knowledge and the ability to distill the essentials into one of the best references and tutorials I've read in a long time.

Perl is my workhorse language. I've written more Perl code, both personally and professionally, than any other language I've learned. Whenever I receive a new project, I immediately think of how I would accomplish it quickly in Perl. I've also been a fan of O'Reilly's "Hacks" series of books. When I heard of the marriage of Perl and O'Reilly's "Hacks" series in the book Perl Hacks, I knew I had to pick up a copy. It was a match made in heaven. The nature of Perl for terse, yet powerful constructs, and the hackish nature of the "Hacks" series makes for one of my favorite books in this series. The collection of articles in Perl Hacks are great for putting more productivity into your programming experience.

Those of you not familiar with O'Reilly's "Hacks" Series may need an introduction. The "Hacks" Series is an ever-growing set of books with focused attention on a particular topic, like Astronomy, Mental Improvement, or even Halo 2. The books are generally short, and contain article-length "hacks" of varying difficulty, noted by a thermometer next to the hack number and description. These "hacks" fall into several categories; the non-obvious solution to a problem, the performance improvement, and the "gee, I didn't know it could do that" oddity. What makes this series special compared with other books is the willingness to "void the warranty" on a particular product, and get straight to the internals, whether they lay in hardware or software. If something can be made better by opening the covers, or twiddling with the program layout, then its eligible for inclusion in these books. The series lends itself to a wide range of topics, and the format is great for a quick read, or for (my favorite) just randomly opening the book and reading what's there.

Perl Hacks is not a book that you'd find yourself reading straight through (although you do want to make sure you visit every hack in the book at least once). The book is divided into nine chapters: Productivity Hacks, User Interaction, Data Munging, Working with Modules, Object Hacks, Debugging, Developer Tricks, Know Thy Code, and Expand Your Perl Foo. There are 101 hacks in this book, ranging from the simple (Reading files backward, or managing your module paths) to the truly perverse (Replacing bad code without touching it by substituting the system-wide exit call with your own[...]. Each hack title is listed in the table of contents, with both the page number and the hack number. Each hack contains a graphic of a thermometer next to the number to show the relative difficulty of the hack (higher temperatures = more difficult hacks). There quite a variety of hacks placed throughout the book. Not once did I feel that the book was padded with something that really didn't belong in the book. If anything Perl Hacks opened my eyes to things that I would never have thought to do, but could easily see as being useful. I wouldn't have thought to create my own personal module bundles for moving my Perl programs between machines (I've always done it the old fashioned way: run, cpan install, repeat), but hack #31 makes it so "of course" that I'm thinking of including this in all of my Perl code that I ship. Hack #74 shows how to trace all of the modules your program uses (and all of their modules, too). Hack #52 is a simple hack ("Make Invisible Characters Apparent") but I can see this saving a developer or two some time when figuring out why their code isn't behaving properly. Of course, not all hacks in the book are productive (at least, not while you're programming). Hack #37, "Drink to the CPAN" is a drinking game you and your Perl buddies may want to try.

Perl Hacks is a short book, at less than 300 pages, but it's loaded with incredibly useful information. Much like the "Perl Cookbook" (also from O'Reilly) you'll find lots of useful items hidden in their pages. Many times I started with one hack, and finished the chapter reading the rest of the hacks because there were just that interesting. Perl Hacks is highly recommended for any Perl programmer to have on their programmer book shelf. Sure, you might be able to find some of the hacks out there on the net, but I think you'll find as I have that this is more of a go-to reference for finding out some of the more interesting corners of Perl.

I received this book as a token of appreciation for my contributions to
the 2006 Perl Advent Calendar. It's the first book I read as part of the
O'Reilly Hacks' series of books, and it proved to be a light yet informative and entertaining
read.

The book covers various useful "hacks" or small tricks that allow one to
achieve a lot of cool tasks when working with Perl. These tricks are unorthodox
and stretch the limit of one's Perl knowledge. Since they require an advanced
knowledge and understanding of Perl, I would recommend this book only for Perl
experts. Some of the B:: using modules were even too high-level for me to
understand how they worked internally. However, I understood the purpose of the
code in all cases, even if I didn't understand the code itself.

So it is a recommended read for people who've worked with Perl a lot,
and wish to learn many new and useful tricks. Perl Hacks for Perl hackers,
indeed!

To be completely honest, this isn't the book I thought it was going to be. Most O'Reilly Hacks books start off pretty simply and in a few chapters take you to the further reaches of their subject area. Whilst this is a great way to quickly get a good taste of a particular topic, it has the occasional disadvantage that for subjects that you know well, the first couple of chapters can seem a bit basic. As I know Perl pretty well, I thought I would be on familiar ground for at least half of the book.

I was wrong.

Oh, it started off easily enough. Making use of various browser and command line tools to get easy access to Perl documentation, creating some useful shell aliases to cut down typing for your most common tasks. "Oh yes", I thought smugly to myself, "I know all that". But by about Hack 5 I was reading about little tweaks that I didn't know about. I'd start a hack thinking that I knew everything that the authors were going to cover and end up frustrated that I was on the tube and couldn't immediately try out the new trick I had just learnt.

It's really that kind of book. Pretty much everyone who reads it will pick up something that will it easier for them to get their job done (well, assuming that their job involves writing Perl code!) And, of course, looking at the list of authors, that's only to be expected. The three authors listed on the cover are three of the Perl communities most respected members. And the list of other contributers reads like a who's who of people who are doing interesting things with Perl - people whose use.perl journals are always interesting or whose posts on Perl Monks are worth reading before other people's. Luckily, it turns out that all these excellent programmers can also explain what they are doing (and why they are doing it) very clearly.

Like all books in the Hacks series, it's a little bitty. The hacks are organised into nine broad chapters, but the connections between hacks in the same chapter can sometimes be a bit hard to see. But I enjoyed that. In places it made the book a bit of a rollercoaster ride. You're never quite sure what is coming next, but you know it's going to be fun.

In fact, the more I think about it, the more apt the fairground analogy seems. When you ask Perl programmers what they like about Perl, you'll often hear "fun" mentioned near the top of the list. People use Perl because they enjoy it. And the authors' enjoyment of Perl really comes through in the book. It's obvious that they really wanted to show people the things that they thought were really cool.

Although I did learn useful tips from the earlier part of the book, it was really the last three chapters that were the most useful for me. Chapter 7, Developer Tricks, had a lot of useful things to say about testing, Chapter 8, Know Thy Code, contains a lot of information on using Perl to examine your Perl code and Chapter 9, Expand Your Perl Foo was a grab-bag of obscure (but still useful) Perl tricks.

So where does this book fit in to O'Reilly's Perl canon? I can't recommend it for beginners. But if you're a working Perl programmer with a couple of years' experience then I'd be very surprised if you didn't pick up something that will be useful to you. And don't worry about it overlapping with other books in your Perl library - offhand I can't think of anything in the book that has been covered in any previous Perl book.

All in all, this would make a very useful addition to your Perl library.

From the title, I wasn't quite sure what to expect from Perl Hacks. Was it going to be about rummaging around in Perl's internals? Making Perl do clever, yet ultimately dumb and pointless tricks? It turns out that, while there is some fairly voodooish material here, some of it quite playful, on the whole it's a very practical book. Aimed firmly at the advanced Perl programmer who knows when it's appropriate to mess about with the symbol table, temporarily turn off warnings, or crack out one of the B:: modules, this is a collection of 101 suggestions to improve your productivity, boggle your mind about what Perl can do, or both.

The content reminds me a little of the likes of Exceptional C++ Style, a mixture of advanced best practices, and things which you may not need to know, but you'll probably still be interested in finding out how it works. For instance, have you ever considered tieing an array or hash variable to a function? Ever wanted to name a supposed anonymous subroutine? Print out the source code as well as the line number of a syntax error? Nor me, but Perl Hacks shows how it could be useful. These are illustrative of the spirit of the book.

My favourite material was probably the chapter on modules. Included are how-tos for outputting all the modules used in a package, automatically reloading modules in running code, shortening long package names with the CPAN 'aliased' module, and making up your own bundle of modules for easy installation. There's also an interesting object chapter with subjects such as: inside out objects, using YAML for serialisation, using traits and autogeneration of accessors.

Additionally, there's a little on using those scary B:: packages, using modules which use the B:: packages or other dark magic (e.g. peeking inside closures), some fairly hardcore tracing and profiling, that touches on some Perl VM internals. Also worth mentioning is the hack that hijacks the angle bracket glob operator to create Haskell/Python-style list comprehensions.

You are going to have to be one scarily gifted Perl hacker not to find something useful or at least thought-provoking at regular intervals throughout this book. My only complaint is that the hack format, which the blurb on the back of the book describes as a "short lesson", does not lend itself equally well to all hacks. While I liked the chapter on objects, some of the hacks (in particular the traits hack, some of the testing material) were too short.

If you like the sound of a book that's somewhere between Perl Cookbook, Perl Best Practices and the second edition of Advanced Perl Programming, you're going to love this.

In a time when new computer languages are dime a dozen, perl unquestionably retains its beauty. Keeping with the philosophy of perl - there is more than one way to do it - the book shows you ingenious ways to work with this powerful language. This is a true hacks book and meant mostly for the advanced user. Before reading this book, I didn't even realize what I didn't know and I rate myself just short of contributing to CPAN. Even if you have read all the popular books - Perl Programming, Perl Best Practices etc. you'll still find a lot of gems.

Simply put if you like perl, you'll love this book. Welcome to the next level...

As a former Forensic Video Analyst for a law enforcement agency, I can attest that not only is this the most thorough and easy to understand FVA "Course" book that I have ever read and gained the most from, the author is one of the top Forensic Video Analysts in the country, and even the world.
Any one who is interested in this profession, law enforcement and private, must have this book. Even if you already are an FVA professional, this book is an excellant reference source.

Photoshop CS3 for Forensic Professionals is by far the most informative course book for photoshop users. As a college student working towards a criminal justice degree with a concentration in criminal investigations, I highly recommend this book for any professional or student that needs to improve their digital imaging skills. The instructions are easy to understand and the step by step instructions on the companion CD are detailed. After reading Photoshop CS3 for Forensic Professionals and taking the CD course I can honestly say that my imaging skills have been greatly enhanced. This book is an excellent student resource and an invaluable tool for the forensic professional.

Great resource! Is there another in the offing?

This book both improved my workflow and my abilities to enhance images. The pratical exercises hit home the finer points.

I would compare this book to a "Forensic Photoshop" course costing much more, well done!

Part 1, "The Essentials", is comprised of six chapters. The first two chapters are not specific to Photoshop, and are a must read for anyone interested or involved in the use of digital images within a legal setting. The remaining four chapters provide an important foundation for analysts and investigators using Photoshop.

Part 2, "The Digital Darkroom", and Part 3, "Image Analysis and Enhancement", are detailed instructions regarding Photoshop's settings, filters, and the multitude of related processes to achieve optimum imaging results. Included with the book is a CD-ROM contianing sample images to work with when going through the tutorials, as well as some free scripts and trial plugin's.

I've been using Photoshop for several years now in my Forensic Video workflow, as well as personally for Graphic and Web design projects. This book has already proven to be the single most valuable reference for me pertaining to the use of Photoshop in either setting. It's also probably the smartest investment I've made in quite some time.

A lot of work went into this book and it shows. So many of us in this profession are so overwhelmed with casework that we don't have time to publish. I am glad that George found the time to get this out to everyone. Hopefully, this will inspire others to get their ideas in print and help to convince the publishing community that there IS a market for this material.
Great job George!
Cheers,
Jim Hoerricks
[...]

Instead of reading this book from front to back I read the sections as needed. PHP isn't the only language I dabble in so I haven't had many opportunities to go through the book but the sections I have read are very well written, informative and easy to read.

I would say this book could be utilized by a novice or experienced PHP programmer. The author covers topics starting advanced enough not to bore the hell out of the experienced and thorough enough not to loose the novice.

I'm a bit of a novice PHP programmer still, and I found this book accessible and useful. The scripts are well commented, well explained, I have found them to be secure thus far (I have limited knowledge here but they seem to adhere to best practices), and I can find what I want quickly. When they have special needs like JavaScript or something, they explain why afterward. Each script also has a "How It Works" section afterward. Before each script, they have intro paragraphs saying what is needed in order for it to work, such as a pre-created directory or something.

I can recommend this book to other PHP programmers at the novice/beginner level as well as the more advanced levels.

Generally, I'm not a big fan of cookbooks (for programming!) but this one is really good. A great reference to have as you are coding and think "oh... how do i do X again?" or just to read and review. Another use - give a copy to your friends who STILL are writing PHP 4 code!

I highly recommend this book. It covers all aspects of PHP 5, including OOP, without getting bogged down. Though this book consists of contributions from four authors, it comes together as one smooth read. Its full of examples and hits its mark very effectively. It makes a great companion to the Zend PHP 5 Certification Guide. Well done!!

I normally don't write reviews unless I had a bad experience. However, in this case, the PHP 5 Recipes book is an exception! I love this book! The examples are CORRECT!! The information I need is very well organized - I really love the way that the book was organized! I wish all of my tech books for other languages were arranged in this problem-solution manner. The information you need to build a robust and well organized and valid website is here in the book! I definitely highly recommend that you get THIS book if you are thinking about doing some php work. The php code they have is on the mark! The authors included more than I needed by including a section on XML/XSLT with PHP. Definitely get this book!

Simply put, read this book and you will definitely be able to produce excellent movies.
The book can be read from start to finish or just dip in to where the specific information is. The book is written so both ways work.The clear instructions enable even a novice to be proud - even amazed at what they can do.
Two days after reading this book I put a mini movie on the internet! If I can, you can!

As an owner of the author's Pinnacle Studio 8 book, I waited to buy what I anticipated to be his Pinnacle Studio 9 Plus book. But wait no more. A supplemental chapter covering the 9 Plus features - PIP, Pan and Zoom, and Chroma Key, is avaiable at http://www.doceo.com/studio9.html under "Click here to download free chapter on new features of Studio Plus", and now I have the equivalent of the Studio Plus 9 book.
I agree with the other reviewer's comments and no point in repeating them here, except to say that for me the best parts about the author's presentations are the illustrative examples.

Pinnacle's Studio 9 is a love it or hate it package. At $99 (retail price) it is very inexpensive for what you get. The problem, people report, has been getting it to work on their system -- I also hear that the newest release of the package is much, much better. It also seems to work better with Intel Pentium CPU's than with AMD and it also likes memory, say a gigabyte.

But as for the book, this is one of the Visual Quickstart Guides. They're great. They use a format of having two columns on each page with the outside column being text and the inside being pictures. Each page is devoted to some small task and handles that task completely. You can start at the front of the book and go all the way through and you'll get a pretty good tutorial on the software. Or you can use the index to skip around and quickly get to the particular detail you are looking for.

Jan Ozer is an excellent writer. He starts out with the statement "you have the manual for the software" and then goes on from there. This is not a manual of how to, this is a what and why kind of book that explains what it is that you are trying to do and then goes on to tell you how to do it. The manual tells you how to do a J-Cut and an L-Cut. This book tells you what they are.

I've read numerous technical books on many subjects and have never sailed through the software as smoothly as with this book.
If you're looking for a tutorial that can whiz you through the subject matter with ease and accuracy this is it! No matter where you wish to refer back to, you can do it without reading the whole chapter (as with other tutorials). Quickstart is the name however I feel it should be named Quick referrence.
Best investment I've made in a while. I'm making movies that are in awe at my office. I've been told they have been made professionally.

This is probably one of the most informative books on video editing that you can buy. The author is an expert in the field and has the ability to not just tell you how to do something, but make you understand what is going on and thereby enabling an intuitive feel for using the program. His "Studio 8 for Windows" carried me from the depths of ignorance to a level of competence that allows me to knock out complicated projects in record time; this new Studio 9 version will do the same for you plus. This book will enable the beginner to successfully edit productions with minimum heartache....but READ before you start clicking madly away.

The book is great for issues with Quickbooks. However, after ordering this I realized that it is truly just for issues with QB, not issues you have because you don't understand QB. Great book for what it's intended for!

The QuiickBooks 2008 Solution Guide is a very helpful resource. It saves time by having solutions to many common problems users encounter in QuickBooks. The book is very well organized and extremely useful in the practical world of small business accounting.

Laura's done a great job of not only explaining the how of QuickBooks but the why. As a QuickBooks consultant this book is a must for all of my staff and will be a strong recommendation for my clients.

Jeanne Tarazevits, CPA, CITP Tara Consulting Orange Co. CA

This is one of the pivotal QuickBooks reference books! As a QuickBooks ProAdvisor, I have my own little "QuickBooks Library" that I refer to on a regular basis. And this book is THE book I reach for first, each and every time!
It is jam-packed full of readable and easily understood information needed by users, business owners, accountants and QB ProAdvisors alike.
Don't just bookmark this page and tell yourself you're going to buy it tomorrow or next week - buy it today! You can't beat the price!
And, as QB 2009 is released, I'll be buying the 2009 version of this book, immediately!

We use the 2008 QuickBooks Solutions Guide in our software consulting practice. Our firm, Core Performance Consulting, is an Intuit Solution Provider based in Orange County, CA. Since it is such a comprehensive resource on all things related to QuickBooks, we are giving away copies to our Customers as a promotional activity. Thanks Laura for writing such an excellent book !

Peter Cullen

I've been using QuickTime for nearly ten years, and have often been frustrated when trying to explain to people that it is not just for video and sound any more. The frustration stems from the lack of examples and explanations to use these powerful features for non-programmers. This book changes that. It explains clearly and wittily how to use QuickTime to enhance your website or CD-ROM, and take advantage of over 10 years of cutting-edge digital media technology for free.

[Full disclosure - I work for Apple on the QuickTime Engineering team, and know the author - believe me I wouldn't endorse this book if it wasn't great]

This book is a must have if you plan on working with QuickTime to make multimedia content available! I call this book 'a rare find', as it is great for beginner through master, leaving few questions unanswered or stones unturned. The text is a good mix of "how to" information combined with "tips and tricks" to get your implementations to work.

I purchased this book for its material regarding steaming content over the Internet, and learned a great deal in the process. The chapter on QuickTime VR answered my "how do they do that?" questions, and has led me to explore the use of this technique for my upcoming projects.

The QuickTime VR chapter is a good example of the depth of knowledge used to develop this text, as it gives in-depth information on photography techniques that only a mid- to experienced photographer would know.

My only criticism of the book is that it only begins to explore about half of the knowledge needed to set up your own streaming web server, but I can hardly fault the authors for that -- it says right on the cover "A Hands-On Guide for Webmasters, Site Designers, and HTML Authors." It says nothing about being aimed at System or Network Administrators. If your main interest in this book is the setup of streaming servers, you might want to consider another book (or better yet, purchase this book along with another to round out your knowledge).

With the ... QuickTime Pro included, I can say without reservation that this is one of the best computer book values I have ever purchased. The book paid for the rest of the cost by showing me how to trick Microsoft Internet Explorer / Windows Media Player in such a way that it will not try to open your .mov files (great in a Windows-dominated environment)!

Highly recommended, even if you have only a passing interest in QuickTime.

This is an important resource for anyone who is serious about maximizing the potential of Quicktime. At Rayhawk.com we have been using this book to enhance our web productions and the results have been noticable, not only to us, but to our clients (KFC, Taco Bell, BMW, Porsche).

The book is full of useful info and the author is fun and helpful. He assumes we have little prior knowledge with either QuickTime or HTML and by the end of the book, he teaches us how to produce some amazing content.

Mastering QuickTime is essential to quickly and easily building exciting, dymamic and interactive web sites. This book (QuickTime for the Web) is essential to mastering QuickTime for the web. It has saved me more time and energy than any book I've bought in the last two years.

This book is a must have! From how to create VR with interactive sounds and sprites - to getting your video or photos streaming on the web - this book shows you how. As a web master of a site with over 100 different Virtual Reality and QT movies, I found this book (and the free tools and interactive sprites for my use) to be invaluable. I reccommend it without hestitation. Luke Wonderly, Web master - vrbakersfield.com