Wow! eBook – Blog

Book Description

In just 24 lessons of one hour or less, you can learn how to design, create, and deploy high-impact graphics and animation with Adobe Flash CS4 Professional.

Using this book’s straightforward, step-by-step approach, you’ll master the skills and technologies you need, from creating interactivity and animation to optimizing and publishing your Flash movies on the Web.

Each lesson builds on what you’ve already learned, giving you a rock-solid foundation for real-world success!

Full-color figures and clear step-by-step instructions visually show you how to use Flash.
Quizzes and Exercises at the end of each chapter help you test your knowledge.
Notes, Tips, and Cautions provide related information, advice, and warnings.

Learn how to…

• Make the most of the updated Flash interface, including its new Motion tools
• Draw and paint original art in Flash
• Use layers and the Library to efficiently organize your content
• Build animations using shape tweening, Flash CS4’s new motion tweening, and advanced inverse kinematics Download Now »

Book Description

If you’re familiar with the basics of Flash, then The Essential Guide to Flash CS4 will take you further in all aspects of the application, animation, sound, 3D, Inverse Kinematics, the drawing tools, ActionScript, and much more. This book takes all the good bits of Flash CS4 and demonstrates them in methodical and intuitive exercises full of hints and tips for streamlining the creative process. Jump straight into Flash CS4 and start working on real life examples that you can customize to suit your needs.

• Demystifies Flash CS4explaining new features deep diving through old favorites
• Streamlines the production of cutting edge Flash CS4 animations and applications
• Provides a unique commercial perspective in compelling Flash productions.

This book is for intermediate Flash CS4 users as well as the more advanced user who wants to learn about using Flash CS4′s awesome new capabilities, such as motion tweening and kinematics poses.

Each chapter has a number of exercises that contribute to an overall project. The exercises are fun and compelling and allow you to place your own creative stamp on them, while still following the steps to completion.

The final chapter focuses on bringing the exercise output together in an overall campaign consisting of a website featuring advanced flash components and advertising banners. Download Now »

Book Description

Tap into the far-reaching potential of InDesign styles—from simple drop cap formatting to cross-media export to XHTML. Styles have the power to transform how design and production professionals approach and accomplish any project. Adopting a style-centric workflow can reduce tasks that would normally take days to mere hours, and tasks that would take hours to minutes or even seconds. Less time spent on repetitive tasks means more time for creating your best work.

This book explores every InDesign style to reveal its full potential. Throughout each chapter, you’ll pick up many tips and best practices gleaned from real-world experience. Two bonus chapters, “Stroke Styles” and “Project Planning with Styles in Mind” are available for download.

For “figure it out as I go” designers, embracing styles still allow you to work intuitively on the page. And this guide helps break preconceptions and bad habits transferred from less powerful page layout applications that keep new InDesign users from working in far more satisfying and productive ways.

Where InDesign is concerned, styles truly do equal substance. Download Now »

Book Description

This thorough, self-paced guide to Adobe Creative Suite 4 is ideal for users who want to learn the key features of Adobe’s stellar collection of professional design tools. Readers are first given a brief program overview of the Design Suite that highlights common features and includes a section on cross-media workflows. Then readers will get up to speed with each software application using step-by-step, project-based lessons, with the lessons in each chapter building upon the reader’s growing knowledge of the programs. Projects include designing a logo and creating basic assets, creating a brochure, prototyping a basic Website, creating interactive Flash and PDF documents, communicating through mobile devices, and submitting work for collaborative reviews. Review questions at the end of each chapter wrap up each lesson to help reinforce the skills learned in each chapter.

About the Author
The Adobe Creative Team of designers, writers, and editors has extensive, real-world knowledge of and expertise in using Adobe products. They work closely with the Adobe product development teams and Adobe’s Instructional Communications team to come up with creative, challenging, and visually appealing projects to help both new and experienced users get upto speed quickly on Adobe software products. Download Now »

Book Description

This is the only book in the After Effects market to focus exclusively on the creation of visual effects, and is a one-stop resource for anyone who wants in-depth explanations that demystify the realm of visual effects and how they were created, thanks to veteran author Mark Christiansen’s friendly and accessible style. A thoroughly packed, informative read, this masterful guide focuses on explaining the essential concepts, features, and techniques that are key to creating seamless movie-quality visual effects. Users who are comfortable with After Effects will find a helpful review of After Effects fundamentals—managing footage, viewing and editing layers, animating type, and more—so they can learn how to work smarter and more efficiently. Readers of all levels will learn core techniques for effects compositing including color matching, keying, rotoscoping, motion tracking, emulating the camera, and concluding with using expressions in After Effects, written by contributor and expert Dan Ebberts. The final section of the book delves into creative explorations, demonstrating professional effects that readers might want to re-create.

Readers will also find comprehensive coverage of all that’s new and makes this version of Adobe’s effects program such a boon to video pros of all stripes: searchable timelines and projects, Photoshop 3D layers import, the Cartoon effect, Imagineer Systems’ Mocha for Adobe After Effects, improved workflow for mobile devices, and more.

Throughout the book, beautiful full-color examples demonstrate what’s possible, while the companion DVD offers demos of After Effects CS4, sample footage, and software plug-ins. Download Now »

Book Description

Photoshop is the foundation of every digital career. It is the most pervasive technology on the market. Many users think they know it, but in truth they have gaping holes. This book covers what a professional truly needs to know about Photoshop to be employable. For students (whether in formal programs, certified training centers, or self-paced) this book offers a chance to explore the many aspects of the program interactively.  The book cuts though the clutter and is unique in that it focuses not just on digital photography, but Internet, graphic design, multimedia, and video uses.

Readers will learn the basics in correcting, editing, sharpening, retouching, and presenting photos as well as work on specific projects/exercises, including: digital painting; preparing images for newsprint; designing a CD/DVD label, magazine cover, and advertisements; and building an electronic portfolio.

The full-color book includes a CD-ROM with hand-on exercises and practice images, access to a reader’s only Web site for bonus downloads and files, and access to the popular video tutorial Podcasts (150 at time of publication).

About the Author
Richard Harrington is the founder of RHED Pixel, a visual communications company based in Washington, D.C. A graphic design and new media expert, he is certified by Adobe, Apple, and Avid, and is a member of the National Association of Photoshop Professionals Instructor Dream Team. Harrington has also served as an instructor at the Art Institute of Washington and The American University. He has authored several books including Photoshop for Video and Aperture 2 for the Apple Pro Training Series. Harrington also produces the weekly show Understanding Adobe Photoshop available on both iTunes and the Adobe Media Player. Download Now »