Customer Reviews

Adobe(R) Photoshop(R) 7 Web Design with GoLive(TM) 6

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I finally found out how PhotoShop is used to create all of those graphically beautiful Web pages you see online these days. Now I know. The author has an excellent follow-along tutorial along with additional information, tips & tricks. Michael Baumgardt left NO questions unanswered.

Before reading this book I had a working knowledge of PhotoShop, GoLive, Illustrator but there were so many missing pieces when I tried to create Web designs. This book filled in the blanks and I now have rebuilt our company's intranet, a friend's club's home page, another's consulting page and my own personal home page. Buy this book, you won't be disappointed.

Adobe Photoshop 7 Web Design by Michael Baumgardt is a very comprehensive study in Web design. Pages are beautifully illustrated with colorful samples and diagrams. The author goes into great detail explaining many nuances of this craft that the most of us tend to ignore.

The book starts with design basics and concepts, which include interviews with professionals in the trade, plus many examples of successful designs in practice. The middle of the content gets into some Photoshop and ImageReady techniques that have application in Web design. There are a few tutorials that some readers may find helpful in reinforcing concepts.

Maybe my expectations were confused by the title, but I found Adobe Photoshop 7 Web Design to be disappointing in its treatment of Photoshop as a Web design tool. The focus of the book's substance seems to be on the left brain area, to the detriment of any creative potential that might otherwise be discovered.

When I want to educate myself in the technical areas, I'll buy a book devoted to that subject; to pursue the potential that Photoshop offers in Web design I'll search for a book that focus on the creative. There is really very little in this volume that does that and there are other books that do it better.

If your basic desire is to understand, for example, color depth, information architecture, content authoring, image compression, the LZW algorithm, and similar topics, Adobe Photoshop 7 Web Design should probably be in your library. They are important matters but ones I don't want to deal with when I'm in a creative mode.

So therein lies the reason for a negative evaluation. What I expected from this book, based on its title, was 300 pages of Photoshop techniques geared to the artistic Web designer. Instead, I found more of an overview of Photoshop fundamentals sandwiched between lots of technical information.

There is no accompanying CD so any images needed for tutorials or experimentation must be downloaded. Nor is there any demo of GoLive software, which would have been helpful, since a good portion of Adobe Photoshop 7 Web Design with GoLive 6 deals with this application. There are portions of the book that are very well explained and others that are labored and awkward.

Because of these disappointments it would be hard to recommend this book to any serious or aspiring graphic artist other than for the purpose of acquiring a broad perspective on Web design. Those who want a more creative approach would be better served elsewhere.

Attractively presented but lacking in important content
MacMice Rating: 2 out of 5

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Wynne Stevens ...

Was I ever happy to find this title! I bought it instantly. When I started to try to make some sense of where to start, I found myself jumping all around the chapters to try to get going with my first Photoshop/Go Live project. Today, I'm still stuck and can't find anything to tell me how to get from finished Photoshop layers to a finished Go Live site. Obviously I'm extremely disappointed with this book. The author seems to gloat over having done mega dollar sites and has friends in that club whom he quotes and shows samples from. I'm not there yet and perhaps the bigger problem is that Adobe never could make GoLive as user friendly as Dreamweaver (which they recently BOUGHT).
Do yourself a favor. Unless you want to pay for a beautiful, almost coffee table book, find something that gets to the nuts & bolts of building a site and give this book to your grandma.

I am always extremely suspicious of any book where the author does a review of his own book and gives himself 5 stars in an attempt to influence buying behavior. Also note that there is another "name" that repeatedly assigns this book 5 stars 3 different times. Kinda makes you wonder about the book deosnt it?

After looking at this book I recommend you should review this book yourself carefully before making a buy decision and not rely on the positive "reviews" you see here.

I bought this book on the basis of Scott Kelby's glowing recommendations. Having gone through the book, either Kelby's taste differs from mine or he was doing another author a favor.
There is very little on using Photoshop as a web design tool. The book, while extremely well illustrated and designed, is nothing more than another cookbook of Photoshop hints and tips. It is not particularly well written and is often sparse on detail. Many of the tecchniques are taken from others (some with appropriate attribution provided). The substantial number of pages devoted to Adobe GoLive are wasted -- unless you are a GoLive user.
Overall, not a book I would recommend and one that I am strongly considering returning while I can.

Jerry

This type of book is invariably rushed to print to coincide with the release of new software versions.

This book is no exception, very poorly organized with no cohesive thread from beginning to end.

This is supposed to be book on using photoshop 7 and go-live 6 together to create web pages, yet there are 20 pages on doing just that and dozens of pages of pretty color wheels and charts meant to fill up space.

I'm interested in web design and Baumgardt's book provided me with some good introductory information on the subject. He starts out at the begining lwith subjects like HTML code and different types of web images like JPEG, GIF and PNG. He also covers topics like pop up windows, hyperlinks as well as adding music and sound to your website.

Overall it's a pretty good introduction into the topic of web design.

I am the author of this book and if you are looking for the most advanced book on the subject, this is it. There is no other book out there that covers Web Design with Photoshop to that level. For people who look for an easy how-to book, this might not be the right choice, but for anyone who wants to be an expert in Web Design with Photoshop, you simply have to buy this one because the information that you get in this book is not available in anywhere else. For example, the information on image compression is unsurpassed and this book has many gems in it that you won't find when browsing quickly through the book. I can only encourage you to compare this book to others before you make a buying decision (it is also the most beautifully designed book on the market which in my opinion is important. After all, this is a book for designers). But the main reason for me writing a review here is to inform you that THERE WILL BE NO UPDATE OF THE BOOK FOR CS! My publisher and I decided a long time ago that we were going to skip this software release simply because it didn't have enough new web features to justify the time and cost to print a new edition (plus I was working hard on my QuarkXPress 6 book). If you own Photoshop CS and are looking for a Photoshop Web Design book, you can buy this book without having to worry about if the content still applies. It does! The only two things that have changed in CS is that you have now Layer Comps (allowing you to save a layer combination) and a different HTML export when using the slicing tool. I probably will post some updates on my web site ... Very truly yours, Michael

So you know HTML, script programming, and maybe databases, too. Now you're interested in taking your web sites to the next level, snazzing them up with a bit more visual a presentation, but you don't know where to start. Everyone talks about Photoshop, but you can't tell up from down inside it and have yet to make a graphic that looks like it wasn't drawn in crayon by a three-year-old.

Enter Adobe Press' book on web design. For it's size (about an inch thick) it may seem pricey, the interior reveals glossy, full-color, full-bleed pages with examples on everything from basic web design and layout to the specifics of creating buttons with rollover states, textured sidebars, and more.

Rather than reading it through, msot readers will find themselves skimming to the points that are their weakest for tips and instructions. At times I wish the book were a bit more detailed on some of its steps, but overall most web designers lacking in graphic design skills will find the book an invaluable first step toward creating web graphics and sites that work visually.

I read several books about photoshop 7. This book is a gem. There are a lot of wonderful tips and techniques focus on web design-using photoshop. The instruction is clear and straight forward, the examples are easy to folow, no need to download anything. I like the way the author represented this subject- you learn a concept, see its illustration and then do practice. You are not just following step 1 to step 10; the important lesson is you understand WHY, HOW and WHEN to use a command.I think it is the most valuable thing. I read almost all books about this subject, this book is the best one in its category (as at 11/05/2002).
If you are new to photoshop, I recommend you to read this book also: Inside Photoshop 7. Another gem!