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Rating: 
Summary: Fuel Your Creativity
Review: Because Lynda Weinman comes from the perspective of a real designer, I find that her books always provide fuel for the reader's creativity. While these books REALLY do teach, they also encourage the reader to experiment.I am a fan of Adobe's Classroom In A Book series, but I did not find the Photoshop or Illustrator books to be geared toward the beginner. Exercises were often very layered and complex with pages of steps. The book didn't not always adequately explain the purpose of all the steps. The risk of presenting such long exercises is that if the learner makes a mistake and doesn't achieve the intended results of the book, the source of the mistake isn't always easy to trace. In contrast, Kabili and Weinman provide short, simple exercises, adhering to the proven fact that learners absorb information in bit-sized chunks. The exercises in this book are paced so that the reader can take breaks and try what was just learned. Don't mistake this brevity for lack of information, however. The authors are very thorough and wise about choosing what's practical. Best of all, there's lots of good advice. Photoshop is presented as a tool for web design, and the authors remind us about the Web's capabilities and limitations. We also get honest advice about small Photoshop annoyances (thankfully there are few!) and how to design around them. I politely disagree that this book is "not focused." On the contrary, its purpose is obvious from Chapter One: how to set up Photoshop to work as a web design tool. We are taught how to deal with color and color settings and how to optimize graphics early on so that we can concentrate on more fun tasks. I believe Lynda Weinman is a born teacher, as are all the co-authors with whom she associates. This is my third HOT book, and I use them when I need to absorb an application's features and capability quickly. I encourage you to try this book and see if it doesn't spark your creative fires.
Rating: 
Summary: good book, but should be more focused..
Review: don't get me wrong; this is a good book to focus in on in producing web graphics....(after you have read the adobe photoshop classroom - a book i consider "the world standard" for learning photoshop), and i think these HOT books in general are good(particularly the DW 4 HOT book). but it could have been more focused/concentrated. 600 pages for instruction on web graphics is no good; the length of the book should be evidence enough that it isn't as focused as it can be. i don't think a book of this nature should try to serve as to expanding one's creativity - stick to the point; let us practice further with cookbooks at our disposal on the positive side, it does give u a good idea on narrowing in on web graphics for the complex photoshop application(minus the efficiency). there aren't too many photoshop books that focus in on producing web graphics... WARNING - ADOBE PHOTOSHOP 6 WEB DESIGN is not a web design book... more of a WORK DEMONSTRATION of professionals and underlying lessons of the web, such as information architechure(which is somewhat important) OUT of all i've searched, the only venerable web graphics books on photoshop were: this book and PHOTOSHOP WEB GRAPHICS by corolius group. but in my opinion, the photoshop web graphics is the better book. WHY? haha.. more focused if you are a newbie to photoshop, trying to learn photoshop for the web and not as a graphic designer, here's your itinerary: 1) adobe photoshop 6 classroom in a book(beginner)
2) photoshop web graphics - corolius group(intermediate)
3) the photoshop 6 wow! book(cookbook for learning specific tasks; kills 2 birds with one stone.. you can practice photoshop while impressing your clients/competitors) there are other good cookbooks out there... most by new riders, but they are pretty much a copycat of this ORIGINAL COOKBOOK.
DON"T WORRY, instead of getting other cookbooks, just get this one... more than enough to keep you busy and feeling confident and if you're [fussy] ...and need a reference that will answer any photoshop question in the world..
4) INSIDE PHOTOSHOP 6 by new riders
(photoshop 6 bible doesn't even come close to the calibre of this book) good luck grasshoppers
Rating:
Summary: Good Book
Review: I have recommended this book for my students. It is one of the few that covers ImageReady issues. My beginner and intermediate students seem to like it and find it easy to understand.
Rating:
Summary: Good Book
Review: I have recommended this book for my students. It is one of the few that covers ImageReady issues. My beginner and intermediate students seem to like it and find it easy to understand.
Rating:
Summary: Great for beginners - this is worth every penny
Review: I researched several books on Photoshop 6 and had trouble finding one that was not either a dull reference book or was geared towards experienced Photoshop users. When I ordered this book, I knew nothing of the basics. Thanks to the many hands-on examples and the breakdown of (what I thought to be) complicated terms, I'm well on my way to being able to use both Imageready and Photoshop without paranoia. If you're just starting out, and have gotten frustrated with other manuals who seem to not take the term 'beginner' seriously, I highly recommend this book. I'm looking forward to using more of the lynda.com books in the future.
Rating:
Summary: Really good hands-on-training
Review: I've used many training/exercise books for learning programs (it's my favorite way of learning computer programs). This book is well-organized, thorough, and leaves no gaps (that is, if I encounter something unexpected, the author--Jan Kabili--has generally anticipated it and has a note on why that occurred). Also, it goes deeply into Photoshop/Imageready for the web like no other books I've seen. Unlike many other very good Photoshop books (that hardly touch on Imageready), this one is the one to have if you want to know everything about Photoshop/Imageready and the web.
Rating:
Summary: Okay, now we're getting somewhere!
Review: Okay, I'll be the first to adnit I'm not the fastest chip on the board, but with Jan and Lynda's good efforts, I'm finally making some progress! In fact, I've progressed farther with this book than I have with eight others I've purchased in the past year.
Unlike most other manuals which just throw the information at you in big, indigestible chunks, the information provided here is easy to comprehend. Largely because you're encouraged to play around with the exercises and try lots of different things. One cannot help but learn. Just got through doing some layer masks...piece of cake! I now understand transforming type, shape layers, layer styles, backgrounds, not to mention slicing and rollovers.
The physical layout of the book is clean, tight, and has lots of color. The language is precise and to the point.
One small criticism: please, please, please, keep the silly cartoons and pictures out of the text. The grinning monkeys and the cute kids, (at least I hope she's cute, how can I tell?) making stupid faces. I have trouble enough trying to make sense of everything, and I don't need the silly distractions. All the writers do this, by the way.
Nonetheless, this is an excellent book, and I highly recommend it to all my wannbe, newby, frustrated Photoshop guru friends.
Now, if only Lynda would do a GoLive 6 book (hint, hint)
Rating:
Summary: Deep ImageReady
Review: The most comprehensive tutorial you're likely to find covering PhotoShop's "little web sister", leave it to Lynda.com to come up with THE ImageReady book. Don't let the title mislead you, especially if you're already a long-time P-Shop veteran. The information contained in these pages, accompanied by outstanding tutorials and full color illustrations, is NOT a rehash of stuff you already know; it is a means of making the transition from traditional publishing to creating full-blown web pages with minimal compromise. Even seasoned users of Adobe's cornerstone image editing tool may find some new and useful tips in streamlining graphics production - I certainly did. Instructor Jan Kabili makes the journey such a pleasure (not to mention a productive use of time), one could actually become converted to working in lo-res art! As in other titles by this publisher, the exercises are straighforward, economical and plentiful - the reader is presented with a great deal of material in relatively short order, yet in a way that is not at all difficult to retain practical information. Granted, Adobe ImageReady is not a web management tool ..... that's Macromedia Dreamweaver's job, and though it may not integrate with that program as closely as, say, Fireworks, it contains no shortage of tools for fully preparing, creating, optimizing and animating raster images for web use. This entry in the highly-praised Hands-On-Training series is as good an introduction as you'll find on making full use of ImageReady in a short time, and a genuinely enjoyable one at that. Acquire, read, and get thyself web-ready.
Rating:
Summary: The Best Photoshop for the Web Book There Is
Review: This is one of those very rare computer manuals that actually achieves, patiently and systematically, everything it sets out to do. The goal of this book is to teach you the fundamentals of using Photoshop and ImageReady to develop Web content (perhaps that should have been stated on the cover; it's not a book about developing print material). I haven't found another book -- and I have about half a dozen on PS/IR -- that even comes close to explaining such Web basics as optimization, backgrounds, transparent GIFs, image mapping, slicing, and rollovers (I haven't got to the animation part yet) as well. When you get through these tutorials, you will understand not only which buttons to push in order to get the result you want, but why. I was very new to Photoshop when I began this book, but I was able to produce a large-ish Web site thanks to the lessons I learned. One note: if you are buying this book used, make sure that the CD is included -- it contains the exercises on which the book is based.
I wish all computer manuals were as good as this.
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