Wow! eBook – Blog

Book Description

Photoshop CS6 is truly amazing, but it can also be overwhelming if you’re just getting started. This book makes learning Photoshop a breeze by explaining things in a friendly, conversational style—without technical jargon. After a thorough introduction to the program, you’ll delve deep into Photoshop’s secrets with expert tips and practical advice you can use every day.

The important stuff you need to know:

• Learn your way around. Get a guided tour of Photoshop’s beautiful new workspace.
• Unlock the magic. Discover the most practical ways to use layers, channels, masks, paths, and other tools.
• Fine-tune your images. Learn techniques for cropping, retouching, and combining photos.
• Play with color. Drain, change, and add color; and create gorgeous black-and-whites and duotones.
• Be artistic. Create original illustrations and paintings, use text and filters effectively, and edit video clips.
• Share your work. Produce great-looking images for print and the Web.
• Work smarter and faster. Automate common chores and install plug-ins for complex tasks.

Table of Contents
Part I: The Basics
Chapter 1. Photoshop CS6 Guided Tour Download Now »

Book Description

GIMP for Absolute Beginners gives us an easy way to use the power of GIMP, and enjoy digital photography and graphics without worrying about application features.

GIMP is a powerful open source graphics and digital imaging application with almost all the features of its proprietary counterpart, Photoshop. But many of us are photographers and artists first, and we like to use our tools without having to think about them too much. GIMP for Absolute Beginners gets us to this stage without patronising users who haven’t used GIMP before.

But what can we actually do with photos and graphical images? These questions are answered in a photo projects chapter as well as a chapter on digital painting: Starting with making small changes to photos and adding information to them to creating paintings and drawings without photographic input.

What you’ll learn

• Learn how to install GIMP and navigate its interface
• Improve image quality with GIMP
• Increase your design prowess
• Have fun with digital painting projects

Who this book is for
Hobbyists, occasional designers, enthusiastic photographers Download Now »

Book Description

OpenSceneGraph is an open source 3D graphics application programming interface, used by application developers in fields such as visual simulation, computer games, virtual reality, scientific visualization, and modeling. Familiar with its concepts and APIs, and need to improve your knowledge? This book is here to help. With exactly 100 recipes, it will enrich your experience and take you to the next level.

OpenSceneGraph 3 Cookbook will escort you into the world of real-time 3D development with OpenSceneGraph, the world famous 3D graphics engine. The book assumes that you are already familiar with some basic concepts, and provides 100 vivid recipes to demonstrate how to utilize the API flexibly and how to implement some practical aspects.

The book is divided into 10 chapters, each of which focuses on one topic. Readers may start from any topic they are interested in.

The book includes customizing OpenSceneGraph, designing scene graph, geometry, scene navigation, animations, effects using fixed pipeline and shaders, managing mass data, and miscellaneous discussions. Every recipe will prove to be useful in a practical way or in research.

OpenSceneGraph 3 Cookbook gives you a wide insight about 3D programming using OpenSceneGraph, with a set of meaningful and interesting examples. Download Now »

Book Description

gnuplot is the world’s finest technical plotting software, used by scientists, engineers, and others for many years. It is in constant development and runs on practically every operating system, and can produce output in almost any format. The quality of its 3d plots is unmatched and its ability to be incorporated into computer programs and document preparation systems is excellent.

gnuplot Cookbook – it will help you master gnuplot. Start using gnuplot immediately to solve your problems in data analysis and presentation. Quickly find a visual example of the graph you want to make and see a complete, working script for producing it. Learn how to use the new features in gnuplot 4.4. Find clearly explained, working examples of using gnuplot with LaTeX and with your own computer programming language.

You will master all the ins and outs of gnuplot through gnuplot Cookbook.

You will learn to plot basic 2d to complex 3d plots, annotate from simple labels to equations, integrate from simple scripts to full documents and computer progams. You will be taught to annotate graphs with equations and symbols that match the style of the rest of your text, thus creating a seamless, professional document. You will be guided to create a web page with an interactive graph, and add graphical output to your simulation or numerical analysis program.

Start using all of gnuplot’s simple to complex features to suit your needs, without studying its 200 page manual through this Cookbook. Download Now »

Book Description

UDK is a free, world class game editing tool and being so powerful it can be daunting to learn. This guide offers an excellent set of targeted recipes to help game artists get up to speed with game designing in UDK.

Unreal Development Kit Game Design Cookbook contains everything you need to jumpstart your game design efforts. The lessons are aimed squarely at the artist’s field of production, with recipes on asset handling, creating content within the editor, animation and visual scripting to get the content working in gameplay.

Unreal Game Development Kit Game Design Cookbook exposes how real-time environments are built using UDK tools. Key features are examined – assets, animation, light, materials, game controls, user interface, special effects, and game interactivity – with the view of making UDK technically accessible so users can transcend technique and focus on their creative design process. The book has well prepared recipes for level designers and artists of all levels. It covers core design tools and processes in the editor, particularly setting up characters, UI approaches, configuration and scripting gameplay. It is a technical guide that allows game artists to go beyond just creating assets, and it includes creative, extensive demonstrations that extend on mere functionality.

What you will learn from this book

• Insights on essential editor functionality
• Handling of custom assets
• Assigning properties to level content Download Now »

Book Description

Cinema 4D is becoming the most popular 3D design program in the world and learning it now will only help you become a better and more valuable designer in the 3D design industry

This book provides all the Cinema 4D knowledge you need to become well-versed with the software in the form of short recipes, which get straight to the point about what you need to know to start designing great 3D projects.

Cinema 4D R13 Cookbook will guide you towards becoming an adept 3D designer, giving you all the tools to succeed in the field of 3D graphics. The book is set up to gradually introduce more sophisticated topics the deeper you go, and by the end of it you’ll have a great working knowledge on the program. Early on you’ll learn the basics of the program, and then jump right into how to start creating your own 3D objects to use in your designs. Along the way you’ll learn how to set up lights, cameras, and materials to turn your work into something that feels more like art and design. Towards the end of the book you will be introduced to powerful tools like Xpresso, Mograph, and Dynamics to take your work to the next level. You’ll be impressed by how easy it is to design top quality work once you lay the foundation for the entire program through this book. By the end of this book, you’ll have opened new creative doors and given yourself the opportunity to be a more successful and versatile designer.

What you will learn from this book

• Get started using Maxon’s powerful 3D design application.
• Learn useful tools and methods for creating your own 3D objects. Download Now »