Photoshop for the Web: Covers Photoshop 5.5 and ImageReady 2.0

Photoshop for the Web: Covers Photoshop 5.5 and ImageReady 2.0
Mikkel Aaland | 1999-11-01 00:00:00 | O'Reilly Media | 244 | How-to
In this second edition, author Mikkel Aaland updatesPhotoshop for the Web to include important new techniques and workarounds for the latest release of Photoshop--version 5.5. The first edition was loaded with step-by-step examples and real-world solutions from some of the world's hottest Web sites. The second edition adds coverage of Photoshop 5.5's newest features, including a compression tool that ultimately leads to faster download times and higher quality Web graphics. This edition also details features new to version 5.0, including the changeable type tool, color profiling, and the history palette. If that's not enough, Photoshop for the Web, 2nd Edition also covers Adobe's ImageReady 2.0 Web graphics production software, and includes 64 pages of color inserts. Photoshop for the Web, 2nd Edition shows you how to use the latest version of Photoshop to create Web graphics that look great and download blazingly fast.
Photoshop for the Web is the second edition of Mikkel Aaland's excellent instructional text on Adobe's powerful image manipulation program. This time, the book focuses on version 5.5, as well as ImageReady 2, which accompanies it. Aaland's 10 years in new media production, combined with the book's added contributions from different Web designers, results in confident and clear guidance on topics ranging from how to configure Photoshop's preferences specifically for the Web to using ImageReady to create quick rollover buttons.

The opening chapters deal with tuning Photoshop appropriately for Web production (for example, optioning out of image previews for JPEG images) and adjusting photos for the Web (including using the new Web Photo Gallery feature). The middle chapters detail working with GIF and JPEG images. The last section of the book helps resolve specific problems like creating tiled and nontiled background images and navigational icons (for example, beveled buttons and bullet balls with light effects). And there is an excellent chapter on using ImageReady to create GIF animations and rollovers. Black-and-white screen shots and illustrations appear on every page, not to mention 160 color illustrations throughout the text. Appendices discuss the PNG file format and complementary third-party software.

This would be an excellent choice for beginners; a lot of the instruction is very basic. But intermediate-level users and anyone just upgrading to version 5.5 will also find that hopping around within the book can be a fast way to get acquainted with the new features of both applications. --Angelynn Grant

Topics covered: Instruction on using Adobe Photoshop 5.5 and ImageReady 2 for Web image production, including adjusting preferences appropriately, preparing photos for viewing on the Web, saving images as GIFs or JPEGs, creating background images, working with type as image, creating navigational icons, GIF animations, rollovers importing vector files into Photoshop, and using Photoshop to design Web pages.
Reviews
I noticed that this book was on the Bargain book page. Obviously with the release and already widespread acceptance of Photoshop 7, buying this book which focusses on version 4 is completely out of date. Now that Photoshop has ImageReady, using Photoshop to develop web graphics is easy and intuitive. If you are new to the graphics world, don't let the bargain price trick you.
Reviews
Simple and Short!

Buy it! Why?

The techniques showed inside will save you tremendous time developing and will help you design better websites and graphics.

I've been doing websites for 5 years, and I found some really nice tricks inside.
Reviews
Photoshop for the Web is not 'just another Photoshop book of shortcut commands and tool tips. It IS an invaluable collection of insider techniques that the experts use everyday in their combined art and occupation to exploit the usefulness of this truly amazing program. I love how this software has been so widely adopted and used in ways never imagined in its conception. The question rapidly becomes what can't Photoshop do? Mikkel does a great job of showing you this tool's versatility in an easy to follow text.
Reviews
First of all, this is not a book for beginners. I had to buy a more basic instruction manual to cover the details that this one takes for granted. But once you get past that, there's some great material here. The attention here is not on the mechanics of graphics creation (hence the need for prior knowledge), but on how to make graphics look good. As such, the author uses extensive examples from his own and others' experience. The 160 full-color glossy illustrations are nice, too. And if you don't like the examples themselves, they do provide plenty of ideas for things you can do on your own. There's also a lot of material on how to use graphics to improve Web sites, which was useful as well. My main problem was that it could have been a bit longer.
Reviews
This book has great real world examples. It has easy to follow examples and case studies from real web preofessionals. I found it easy to follow and very helpful in day to day production. I would recommend this book to anybody interested in producing images for the web.

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