General Books - Page 6

Adobe Photoshop CS3 One-On-One

Deke McClelland

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Total reviews: 43 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Click here for the complete DVD content that accompanies this title.

Pioneering computer graphics author Deke McClelland updates his bestselling hands-on tutorial for Adobe Photoshop CS3, the latest version of this industry-standard image editing and production program. As with previous editions, Photoshop CS3 One-on-One guides readers step by step through the program's features and functionality. A key appeal of the One-on-One series is the two hours of DVD-video material included. Once you read about a particular technique, you can see how it's done first hand in the video. The combination is uniquely effective. And hugely popular.

Whether you're a first-timer looking to learn Photoshop, or a seasoned user interested in the groundbreaking features of CS3, Deke's conversational style and carefully structured lessons guide you through everything you need to know to get up and running, and then takes you well into mastery. You'll learn to:

• Grasp fundamental and advanced concepts and theory
• Use best practices, and techniques for making the most of Photoshop CS3
• Build relevant, real-world projects
• Use Photoshop's workflow and file handling features
• Use the combined power of Bridge + Camera Raw to process your digital photos
• Choose the right technique for converting your images to black & white
• Create beautiful multilayered documents including posters and flyers
• And much more

A Photoshop expert, sought-after computer graphics and design lecturer and author of over 70 books, Deke creates a classroom environment in Photoshop CS3 One-on-One with written instruction and video training -- except that you get one-on-one attention as you proceed from lesson to lesson at your own pace. It's like having private lessons with the author.

Whether you're an enthusiast, prosumer, creative pro, technical pro, or newcomer, Deke's book will have you speaking fluent Photoshop CS3 in no time.

Adobe Illustrator CS4 Classroom in a Book

Adobe Creative Team

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Editorial Review:

The fastest, easiest, most comprehensive way to learn Adobe Illustrator CS4

Adobe Illustrator CS4 Classroom in a Book contains 15 lessons. The book covers the basics of learning Illustrator and provides countless tips and techniques to help you become more productive with the program. You can follow the book from start to finish or choose only those lessons that interest you.

Learn how to create artwork for illustrations, logos, stationery, page layouts, posters, and integrate with Adobe Flash® movies, Adobe InDesign® layouts, and more!

“The Classroom in a Book series is by far the best training material on the market. Everything you need to master the software is included: clear explanations of each lesson, step-by-step instructions, and the project files for the students.” —Barbara Binder, Adobe Certified Instructor, Rocky Mountain Training

Classroom in a Book®, the best-selling series of hands-on software training workbooks, helps you learn the features of Adobe software quickly and easily. Classroom in a Book offers what no other book or training program does—an official training series from Adobe Systems Incorporated, developed with the support of Adobe product experts.

Adobe InDesign CS3 Classroom in a Book

Adobe Creative Team

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Total reviews: 15 Average rating: 3.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

This thorough, self-paced guide to Adobe InDesign CS3 is ideal for beginning users who want to master the key features of this program, while readers who already have some experience with InDesign can use this book to familiarize themselves with InDesign CS3's newest features. Using step-by-step, project-based lessons, each chapter contains a project that builds upon the reader's growing knowledge of the program, while review questions at the end of each chapter reinforce the most important skills learned in each lesson. The companion CD contains all the assets readers will need to work through each project in the book. Adobe InDesign CS3, Adobe's page layout and design software, has been updated to accelerate user productivity with loads of new features: new Photoshop effects--including gradient feathering, inner shadows, and glows--that you can apply to objects on a page; finer transparency controls, which let you apply transparency settings independently to an object's fill, stroke, and content for more complex visual looks; numerous productivity enhancements; advanced find/change features; new table and cell styles; export to XHTML, and more.

Educational instructor notes—created to help teachers plan, organize, and time their lessons—are available for this book (and for other Classroom in a Book titles) at www.peachpit.com/instructorresources.

SPECIAL NOTE: Before starting the lessons in the book, visit www.peachpit.com/indesigncs3cib for important lesson and project file updates. 

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The Game Maker's Apprentice: Game Development for Beginners (Technology in Action)

Jacob Habgood, Mark Overmars

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Total reviews: 35 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

The Game Makers Apprentice shows you how to create nine exciting games using the wildly popular Game Maker game creation tool. This book covers a range of genres, including action, adventure, and puzzle gamescomplete with professional quality sound effects and visuals. It discusses game design theory and features practical examples of how this can be applied to making games that are more fun to play.

Game Maker allows games to be created using a simple drag-and-drop interface, so you dont need to have any prior coding experience. It includes an optional programming language for adding advanced features to your games, when you feel ready to do so. You can obtain more information by visiting book.gamemaker.nl.

The authors include the creator of the Game Maker tool and a former professional game programmer, so youll glean understanding from their expertise. The book also includes a CD containing Game Maker software and all of the game projects that are created in the bookplus a host of professional-quality graphics and sound effects that you can use in your own games.

Learning Web Design: A Beginner's Guide to (X)HTML, StyleSheets, and Web Graphics

Jennifer Niederst Robbins

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Total reviews: 36 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Everything you need to know to create professional web sites is right here. Learning Web Design starts from the beginning -- defining how the Web and web pages work -- and builds from there. By the end of the book, you'll have the skills to create multi-column CSS layouts with optimized graphic files, and you'll know how to get your pages up on the Web.

This thoroughly revised edition teaches you how to build web sites according to modern design practices and professional standards. Learning Web Design explains:

• How to create a simple (X)HTML page, how to add links and images
• Everything you need to know about web standards -- (X)HTML, DTDs, and more
• Cascading Style Sheets -- formatting text, colors and backgrounds, using the box model, page layout, and more
• All about web graphics, and how to make them lean and mean through optimization
• The site development process, from start to finish
• Getting your pages on the Web -- hosting, domain names, and FTP

The book includes exercises to help you to learn various techniques, and short quizzes to make sure you're up to speed with key concepts. If you're interested in web design, Learning Web Design is the place to start.

Silverlight 2 in Action

Chad Campbell, John Stockton

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Total reviews: 5 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

***When you purchase the Print book, you can download a PDF copy from Manning Publications at no additional charge***

Microsoft describes Silverlight as a "cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering the next generation of .NET based media experiences and rich interactive applications for the Web." That's a really boring description for a really exciting new technology. Anyone who has looked at the demos and gotten a taste of what Silverlight can do knows that Silverlight represents an entirely new level of rich web interface technology for Microsoft developers.

With Silverlight 2, developers can use JavaScript, VB, C#, Python, and Ruby to build user-friendly, interactive, and visually-dazzling web applications that work in most major browsers.

Silverlight 2 in Action covers Silverlight 2, a far more robust implementation of Silverlight than the Silverlight 1 release that supports only JavaScript. The much-anticipated 2 release adds powerful new features along with the ability to code in multiple languages and integrate your work with Visual Studio and the new Expression suite of tools.

This book delivers real-world examples and in-depth walkthroughs to help you confidently enhance your web applications using Silverlight 2.

Silverlight 2 in Action devotes extensive coverage to flexible layout components, the extensible control model, the communication framework, and the data-binding features "all cornerstones of software development. Author and Microsoft MVP Chad Campbell also describes rich media and vivid graphical and animation features. The final chapters include a variety of Silverlight deployment scenarios.

In addition to the fundamentals of Silverlight, you'll be introduced to architectural components such as the Silverlight object model. The book addresses the developer/designer collaboration model Silverlight enables, showing the developer how to include the designer effectively in the project workflow. This model is illustrated throughout the examples.

For ongoing reader support, the author will maintain a dedicated book-support website providing up-to-the-minute working examples, complete with source code, all in Silverlight.

The Ultimate Guide to Video Game Writing and Design

Flint Dille, John Zuur Platten

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Total reviews: 14 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

The Ultimate Guide to Video Game Writing and Design 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

The Ultimate Guide to Video Game Writing and Design balances the artistic and the technical sides of writing smoothly. The incorporation of writing exercises throughout coupled with examples in the back allows the fledgling writer to evaluate their own writing compared to the author's. The Ultimate Guide to Video Game Writing and Design starts with basics for an beginning writer, continues with the nitty gritty of game specific writing, and finishes with a valuable look into the business aspects of writing for video games. Over all The Ultimate Guide to Video Game Writing and Design is a comprehensive, easy-to-use tool for the first time writer and a great resource for the veteran as well.

Editorial Review:

• Authors are top game designers
• Aspiring game writers and designers must have this complete bible

There are other books about creating video games out there. Sure, they cover the basics. But The Ultimate Guide to Video Game Writing and Design goes way beyond the basics. The authors, top game designers, focus on creating games that are an involving, emotional experience for the gamer. Topics include integrating story into the game, writing the game script, putting together the game bible, creating the design document, and working on original intellectual property versus working with licenses. Finally, there’s complete information on how to present a visionary new idea to developers and publishers. Got game? Get The Ultimate Guide to Video Game Writing and Design.

The Photoshop Lightroom Workbook: Workflow not Workslow in Lightroom 2

Seth Resnick, Jamie Spritzer

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Photoshop Lightroom is the new software from Adobe aimed specifically at photographers and it's taking the photography world by storm. This no-nonsense guide to setting up an efficient workflow in Lightroom offers all the advice you need to master Adobe's clever workflow tool and make it work for you.
As co-founders of the renowned and hugely popular photography training and consultancy company D-65 (D-65.com), Seth Resnick and Jamie Spritzer are the perfect guides to lead you through the maze technical problems and practical challenges that stand between you and a seamless digital workflow with Lightroom at the core. Keep the lens cap on until you've read the essential pro tips in this new Lightroom book from Focal Press!

* The essential guide to setting up an efficient workflow with Photoshop Lightroom from two of the industry's most respected photography trainers
* Insider tips and tricks explain not only how to use Lightroom but also how best to work pre-capture to ensure you get the best out of Lightroom post-capture
* Packed with essential advice and stunning images to illustrate and inspire, Seth and Jamie explain technical concepts with ease in a way only pro trainers can--buy the book and see why their workshops sell out in a flash!

Beautiful Evidence

Edward R. Tufte

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Total reviews: 42 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Flawed 2 out of 5 stars.
4 of 4 people found this review helpful.

I am a big fan of Edward Tufte and his previous books. So I was excited when I was given this new book last year. Unfortunately it took a full year to work through it since it's full of bad writing, redundant graphics, boring topics, and pet jargon.

The text is just very dense, filled with lists of terms when the author wants to be sure he covers the bases: "The analysis of cause and effect, initially bivariate, quickly becomes multivariate through such necessary elaborations as the conditions under which the causal relation holds, interaction effects, multiple causes, multiple effects, causal sequences, source of bias, spurious correlation, sources of measurement error, competing variables, and whether the alleged cause is merely a proxy or a marker variable."

He also falls in love with his own jargon: depedestalization, PP, Phluff, pitch culture, economisting. The book has a few typos, which suggests that he couldn't get an editor to stomach proofreading the whole thing.

Much of the material in this book was already presented in sections of his other books and pamphlets: Minards map of the French invasion of Russia, chartjunk, loss of shuttles due to Powerpoint bullets, sparklines, cognitive styles of Powerpoint.

One really annoying habit is that when a graphic is discussed on more than one page, it is reprinted on each of those pages. The Minard map appears six times, at different scales and positions! At other times the graphics are plopped across the crease between pages.

If you've never read Tufte's other books you might learn something from this one, but most of it is presented better elsewhere.

Zag: The Number One Strategy of High-Performance Brands

Marty Neumeier

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"When everybody zigs, zag," says author Marty Neumeier in this fresh view of brand strategy. ZAG follows the ultra-clear "whiteboard overview" style of Neumeier's first book, THE BRAND GAP, but drills deeper into the question of how brands can harness the power of differentiation. The author argues that in an extremely cluttered marketplace, traditional differentiation is no longer enough—today companies need “radical differentiation” to create lasting value for their shareholders and customers. In an entertaining 3-hour read you’ll learn:

- why me-too brands are doomed to fail
- how to "read" customer feedback on new products and messages
- the 17 steps for designing “difference” into your brand
- how to turn your brand’s “onliness” into a “trueline” to drive synergy
- the secrets of naming products, services, and companies
- the four deadly dangers faced by brand portfolios
- how to “stretch” your brand without breaking it
- how to succeed at all three stages of the competition cycle

ZAG is an AIGA Design Press book, published under Peachpit's New Riders imprint in partnership with AIGA. For a quick peek inside ZAG, go to www.zagbook.com.