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Photoshop for the Web

AUTHOR: Mikkel Aaland
ISBN: 1565923502
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Editorial Review

Photoshop for the Web
- Book Review, by Mikkel Aaland

Amazon.com
This clear, helpful guide to using Photoshop for producing Web images focuses on Photoshop 4, with reference to version 3, and targets users who already know Photoshop fairly well. There's lots of thorough discussion, large screen shots, and a full-color insert illustrating several examples in the book. You first learn how to set preferences that decrease file size and how to load a browser-safe palette. Next you clean up and resize photos destined for Web output, adjust contrast levels, and improve images that you've output from video files and digital cameras. In helping you turn your existing images into Web images, the author discusses GIF and JPEG file formats, indexing, dithering, and browser-safe colors. He teaches you how to create GIFs from scratch and work with transparencies to create special effects. He also teaches you how to create JPEG images, fine-tune compression settings, work with gray-scale images, and convert GIF images to JPEG. In subsequent chapters you learn how to create backgrounds; add interesting, readable type; design buttons and other navigational elements; convert raster images to vector images; and use Photoshop to perfect Web-page layouts. Appendices discuss the Portable Network Graphics (PNG) file format and present information on third-party software programs that complement Photoshop and aid Web-image production. --Kathleen Caster

From Book News, Inc.
Focuses on using Adobe Photoshop for professional web production. The second edition is updated to cover Photoshop 5.5 and its companion product, ImageReady 2.0.Book News, Inc.®, Portland, OR

Book Description
Photoshop for the Web shows you how to use the world's most popular imaging software to create Web graphics and images that look great and download blazingly fast. The book is crammed full of step-by-step examples and real-world solutions from some of the country's hottest Web producers, including HotWired, c|net,Discovery Online, Second Story, SFGate, and more than 20 others. Topics include:Creating Photoshop Actions to automate Web productionUsing Photoshop as a Web layout toolMaking graphics and images leap from the screenTechniques for optimizing GIFs and JPEGsAvoiding the dreaded "halo" effectImproving digital photographs Working with browser-safe colors to create stunning images regardless of platform or hardwareQuickly building Web backgrounds, buttons, and graphical typeAvoiding color shifts when importing vector images

Book Info
Offers in-depth coverage of Photoshops 5.5. Includes the powerful Save for Web plug-in, improved color palettes for managing browser-safe colors and also covers Adobe's ImageReady 2.0 web graphics production software, part of the Photoshop 5.5 package. Softcover.

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Book Review

Photoshop for the Web
- Book Reviews, by Mikkel Aaland

Photoshop for the Web

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Photoshop for the Web shows you how to use the world's most popular imaging software to create web graphics and images that look great and download blazingly fast. The book is crammed full of step-by-step examples and real-world solutions from some of the world's hottest web sites, including HotWired, c|net, Discovery Online, National Geographic Online, SFGate, and many more.

FROM THE CRITICS

Ray Duncan

A Murky Guide to Clearer Images

Photoshop for the Web is an odd piece of work. On the surface, it's a tutorial in how to use Adobe Photoshop to prepare graphics for the web. But Aaland appears to be befuddled about the book's audience, and this severely limits the book's usefulness. The "cookbook" instructions for processing images are mostly unaccompanied by rationales or explanations of what is actually going on, so only a Photoshop expert would be able to generalize the instructions to other situations. On the other hand, a Photoshop expert probably wouldn't need this book in the first place.

Here's an example from page 13: "In the first photo, the colors are washed out. The background is full of electronic 'noise' and there is a glare in the glasses caused by the digital camera's flash.

"To fix it, I adjusted the curves (Image:Adjust:Curves) by clicking on the Auto button. I used the Clone tool to spot the glasses to reduce the glare. Then I applied an Unsharp Mask (Filter:Sharpen:Unsharp Mask) set at a radius of .4 pixels and 100%. Then I applied the Dust and Scratches (Filter:Noise:Dust & Scratches) filter with a 1-pixel radius to the selected background. I applied a Gaussian blur (Filter:Blur:Gaussian Blur) with a 5-pixel radius to the blue channel. And finally I applied an Unsharp Mask with a .3-pixel radius to the entire image."

After reading this, I was shaking my head and wondering to myself what "used the Clone tool to spot the glasses" actually means, or how the heck the author knew to pick a radius of .4 pixels in one place and .3 pixels in another, but comforted myself with the expectation that this would all be made clear eventually. Well, it wasn't.

I was also disappointed to find that Photoshop for the Web did not benefit from O'Reilly's usual impeccable editing. For example, "compliment" is confused with "complement," and one section begins and ends with a virtually identical sentence (p. 50-52). Of course, this merely brings the book partway down toward the industry standard -- most computer book publishers don't bother with manuscript editing in the traditional sense at all.

There are better books on PhotoShop, and there are books on preparing web graphics that are considerably more clearly written. You can pass this one by.--Dr. Dobb's Electronic Review of Computer Books

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