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Resources - Book Bytes |
| by Stephen M.H. Braitman - NBMA Director of Communications Book Bytes announces new publications of interest to our members and community in multimedia, technology, business, and culture. First appearance of each Book Bytes column is in the NBMA email events newsletter. To subscribe, send a blank email message to: nbmaevents-subscribe@yahoogroups.com. If you have a recommendation for review — and, especially, if you have published a book — send the information to . |
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March 2004 COMMERCIAL PHOTOSHOP Bert Monroy 270 pages, $45 New Riders www.newriders.com The author of the world's first Photoshop handbook has applied his savvy business knowledge to a new book geared to the most important aspect of any digital artist's career: Satisfying the customer. COMMERCIAL PHOTOSHOP is a beautiful survey of Photoshop techniques and artistic potential used to answer critical customer needs in digital illustration. For instance, I was quite taken by Monroy's explanation of the process it took to "fix" a client's photograph of a wine cabinet in a living room. "No chance of a reshoot, just Photoshop it," was the request. Monroy shows exactly what he did to remove unfocused flowers, create an alpha channel for a chair to give it a new look, "pop" out the wine glass, darken the rug to make it look more expensive. Using the Pen, Clone, Paintbrush, and Gradient tools resulted in a pleasing final, retouched image that gave the customer exactly what was needed. Such is just one example of many real-world practical solutions offered here. If you make digital illustrations and pictures for others to use, this book is a good career move for you. RED HAT: THE COMPLETE REFERENCE - ENTERPRISE LINUX & FEDORA EDITION Richard L. Petersen and Ibrahim Haddad 797 pages, $49.99 McGraw-Hill Osborne www.osborne.com The powerful, eminently flexible "PC Unix" called Linux has an equally powerful application partner in Red Hat, who have developed the free Open Source initiative in Fedora and a set of commercial enterprise products for servers and workstations. This COMPLETE REFERENCE is a master compendium of background material and practical implementation processes for deploying Linux in servers and networks, leveraging the adaptability and customization advantages of the kernel. "Install, manage, secure, and administer" are the key words of this book, and nearly every topic you're certain to encounter, from special desktop functions to mail and news clients, to firewalls to RAID and LVM. A DVD includes the most recent version of Fedora. DEGUNKING WINDOWS Joli Ballew and Jeff Duntemann 310 pages, $24.99 Paraglyph Press www.paraglyphpress.com Here's a light-hearted but serious guide to cleaning out a balky, sluggish PC of its extraneous files, clunky registry, bloated virtual memory, needless Windows components, and disorganized files. Think of it as a housecleaning for your computer. There are many easy maintenance procedures you can do that won't mean major overhaul, and ultimately won't mean major repair. While you're "degunking," you can also optimize your hard drive, improve security, get rid of hidden spam, and avoid the need to buy a new computer. At least for awhile. HOW TO DO EVERYTHING WITH FLASH MX 2004 Bonnie Blake and Doug Sahlin 435 pages, $24.99 McGraw-Hill Osborne www.osborne.com The latest version of Flash adds even more power and the usual bells and whistles to the most popular animation and motion graphic program for the Web. Blak and Sahlin know their stuff, and they know how to get across the more abstract concepts with clear, concise understanding. Current expert Flash users will appreciate referring to this book for the detailed technical insights. (Do you really know all you need about applying shape hints to your morph?) Folks new to Flash will be taught at the basic level and quickly brought up to speed. The only suggestion I would make to the authors would be to better sketch what's new in Flash for those who mostly need a quick summary of what they need to add to their knowledge base. MAC OS X PANTHER EDITION: THE MISSING MANUAL David Pogue 763 pages, $29.95 O'Reilly www.oreilly.com As soon as I can get OS X 10.3 installed on my aging PowerBook, this is the manual I'm going to use to make sense of Apple's Brave New World. As a 9X denizen, leaping to X is a bit trepidatious for me. David Pogue, however, has solid experience in taking we faint of heart by the hand and guiding us through the sea change in UI and functions of the new system. His engaging writing manner makes even the most abstruse concepts - uh, directory services? keychain? and, really, what can I set up, easily, with AppleScript - if not come alive at least appear less threatening to master. The book like others is comprehensive of the basic OS as well as all the "i" tools. When it comes down to it, an OS guide is chosen mostly for personality and style. Both of which Pogue's got in spades. TWISTY LITTLE PASSAGES: An Approach To Interactive FictionR Nick Montfort 286 pages, $29.95 The MIT Press mitpress.mit.edu Anyone interested in the use of technology for artistic and cultural purposes should crack open TWISTY LITTLE PASSAGES. Here is a thorough history of interactive fiction as an outgrowth of the computer's capacity for text management. With the advent of the Internet, community-based interactive writing gained both audience and sophistication, with fantasy and adventure-based worlds careening through cyberspace. Montfort analyzes the impact of such collaborative, organic storytelling on the larger trends of literature. There is much to be learned from anyone developing interactive environments, and TWISTY LITTLE PASSAGES serves as a cautionary tale for those who dream big dreams and can't possible conceive that those dreams could be radically different from what others are dreaming. MICROSOFT VISUAL C# .NET 2003 DEVELOPER'S COOKBOOK Mark Schmidt and Simon Robinson 787 pages, $49.99 Developer's Library www.developers-library.com No-nonsense action-oriented programmer-focused compendium of essential-plus C# code recipes for .NET programming. The publisher calls this a "task-oriented" manual, with efficient organization of topics and a schematic approach to outlining specific functions; Technique and Comment sections work through tools and grammar then consequences and deeper understanding. Beyond the essentials, advanced topics include threading and synchronization, reflection, COM interoperability, custom attributes, and smart device extensions. If you understand what I'm saying here, then you'll already know how essential this book is to your continued mastery of C# and .NET programming. |
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