Instant beveled buttons! Images that dance off a Web page in fiery flames! Astonishing 3D effects! Eye-catching fractal textures! Glistening liquid droplets! High-tech chrome rules and frames! Webmasters are always looking to make their sites stand out, and crave graphics effects like these but don't know how easily they can be achieved using products like Kai's PowerTools and other Photoshop-compatible plug-ins. This book focuses on creative ways to transform ordinary Web pages into triumphant prize-winners with inexpensive software add-ons and clever techniques. It demonstrates how to use the highly successful Kai's PowerTools graphics software for adding professional-looking graphics to a Web page through step-by-step examples. The author explores the use of filters and other plug-ins, and how they can be used to create Web images. Concise, focused, and complete, this book fills an important need by bypassing boring, basic tutorials in favor of sublimely useful how-to information. Comes with one CD-ROM and features 32 pages of high resolution color.
Key Features * Teaches how to create 3D type with shadows, cut-outs, and perspective * Teaches how to add a metallic sheen or a neon glow * Make Web graphics out of images using KPT's enhanced filters, or advanced plug-ins like those from Andromeda, Alien Skin Software, Extensis, and others * Learn how to create impressive Web images from scratch * Includes step-by-step examples, many featured in a 32-page section in high resolution color * CD-ROM includes all the images in the book, plus a wealth of buttons, rules, backgrounds, textures, and custom filters
In this guide, photographer and computer graphics expert David Busch teaches aspiring designers how to create eye-catching Web images using filters. Throughout the book, Busch uses Photoshop 4 and 5 as his image editor. For filters, he uses Photoshop's built-in tools, Kai's Power Tools, Extensis, and other third-party plug-ins. (You can also use any other image editor that supports these filters, but it might be hard to adapt Photoshop instructions to, say, Corel Photo-Paint.)
Busch first explains how filters work and what kinds of filters are available. Then, in the heart of the book, he challenges you with hands-on tasks in which you use filters to produce Web-page elements such as backgrounds, buttons, 3-D effects, rules, image maps, and text. Next, you learn how to optimize your graphics for the Web, taking size, format, and other issues into consideration. Finally, you design filters of your own and learn about using plug-ins to create painterly effects. Full-color sections with images from the book's projects, an effects gallery, and a glossary round out the book. The included CD-ROM has project files for working along with the book's exercises and demo versions of plug-ins from Alien Skin, Andromeda, and Extensis. --Kathleen Caster
About the Author
A former commercial photographer and author of numerous articles on photographic topics for magazines like Petersen's PhotoGraphic, Professional Photographer, and The Rangefinder, David D. Busch is also a leading demystifyer of computer technology. The first to win top category honors twice from The Computer Press Association (for both Macintosh and PC-oriented books), David has written 56 books.
With nearly 1.5 million books in print, David D. Busch is the world's #1 selling author of camera-specific guidebooks, and the originator of popular series like David Busch's Pro Secrets, David Busch's Compact Field Guides, David Busch's Guides to Digital SLR Photography, and David Busch's Quick Snap Guides.
Most of his hugely successful books for Nikon, Canon, Sony, Pentax, Olympus, and Panasonic digital cameras are the top-selling guidebooks for their respective camera models. His advice has been featured on NPR's "All Tech Considered."
Busch's dozens of other books devoted to digital photography include David Busch's Digital Infrared Pro Secrets and Mastering Digital SLR Photography. As a roving photojournalist for more than 20 years, he has illustrated his books, magazine articles, and newspaper reports with award-winning images. Busch has operated his own commercial studio, suffocated in formal dress while shooting weddings-for-hire, and shot sports for a daily newspaper and upstate New York college. His photographs and articles have been published in magazines as diverse as PhotoGraphic, Popular Photography & Imaging, The Rangefinder, The Professional Photographer, and hundreds of other publications. He's also reviewed digital cameras for CNet Networks and Computer Shopper.
As a writer, photographer, and contributing editor for ten magazines, he has more than 130 books and 2500 articles to his credit. A PR consultant for Eastman Kodak Company's photography divisions for nearly 20 years, Busch has published photography articles under his by-line in Popular Photography & Imaging, PhotoGraphic, The Rangefinder, The Professional Photographer and other photo magazines. His photos have appeared on the covers of magazines, and in both print and television advertising.
The graduate of Kent State University operated his own photo studio and was a principal in CCS/PR, Inc., one of the largest public relations firms based in San Diego, working on press conferences, press kits, media tours, and sponsored photo trade magazine articles. In addition to Kodak, CCS photography clients included Hewlett-Packard. He sold his interest in CCS in 1992 to become a full-time author, photographer, and reporter.
Since then, Busch has become one of the leading photojournalist/authors in the United States. He has had as many as five books appear simultaneously in the Amazon.com Top 25 Digital Photography Books, and when Michael Carr of About.com named the top five digital photography books for beginners, the #1 and #2 choices were his Digital Photography All-in-One Desk Reference for Dummies and Mastering Digital Photography. Several of his digital imaging books have sold in excess of 50,000 copies.
Busch was a featured guest speaking on digital photography on Toronto's Breakfast Television show in 2005, was the keynote speaker at the Dayton Computerfest, and has been a call-in guest for 22 different radio shows nationally and in major markets, including WTOP-AM (Washington), KYW-AM (Philadelphia), USA Network (Daybreak USA), WPHM-AM (Detroit), KMJE-FM (Sacramento), CJAD-AM (Montreal), WBIX-AM (Boston), ABC Radio Network (Jonathan & Mary Show).
His work has been translated into Arabic, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Portuguese, Bulgarian, German, Italian, French, and other languages. his web site is http://www.dbusch.com.
4.0 out of 5 starsWell worth the money, August 23, 1999
By A Customer
This review is from: Astonishing Web Graphics with Kai's PowerTools and Plug-Ins (Paperback)
I've been a KPT user for a long time, and loved the way this book showed me new ways to use it. I was also pleased to find that the author covered many other plug-ins and filters. Most of the filters from other vendors do different things from Kai's PowerTools, so it's good to have coverage of other products. Many of the examples used Alien Skin's Eye Candy, and there was a whole chapter on Extensis's line. Ulead's filters are not widely known, but they were covered here. The many pages of color really helped me visualize how the effects would look. The writing was clear and easy to understand, and the step by step instructions simple to follow. I'll look for other books by this author.
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1.0 out of 5 starsSorry, but nothing astonishing here, May 20, 1999
By A Customer
This review is from: Astonishing Web Graphics with Kai's PowerTools and Plug-Ins (Paperback)
I was hoping for a thorough treatment of Kai's tools but only got a very cursory discussion of basic web graphics design tools and techniques. Pass on this one.
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