Customer Reviews

Creating Great Web Graphics

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

With McCanna's 1996 book, I was able to create a drop shadow and many other effects before they were macros on later versions of Corel Photo Paint. This is an excellent book for learning the princibles of setting a color transparent and creating tiled background images. Despite the limitations imposed by print matter when teaching Web graphics, this book overcomes that with its completeness and friendly, conversational writing style. A winner!

If you are a newbie to web graphics, are willing to invest in a serious bitmap graphics tool for the Windows environment but not double the price for the premiere tool then go out and get Corel PhotoPaint 7 or 8, read and practice the tutorials and a used copy of this book. The book serves as a recipe book of various techniques applicable to the creation of Web graphics. The book emphasizes 1st generation web graphics which are now outdated but the techniques are an excellent springboard to more advanced methods. A beginners book for sure but well-written; pass it along to other novices if you have outgrown it.

Laurie's book is tailored for people who are new to creating web graphics. As such, her book is friendly, inspiring, and very well thought out, and exceptionally easy to learn from.
I've had this book for many years now, and constantly refer back to it when I can't recall exactly how to create a seamless tile so that it looks just right. :) 5 Stars and Kudos to Laurie for a job well done for those of us who are graphically challenged.

This book not only covers Photoshop, but it also covers Paintshop. The first thing which made me buy McCanna's book was her web page... which is excellent. McCanna is easy to follow as he gives step by step instructions, and there are recipies for great graphics at the end of each chapter! For those new to Photoshop, or somewhat familiar with it, this book is excellent. For those in need of ideas or just wanting to know how to make good looking, professional web graphics easily, this book is also for you! The book also covers important web lessons like graphic size, anti-aliasing, .JPG and .GIF (when to use which), dithering, and many other things... and EVERYTHING in the book is in color! Great book.

Apologies to those who already KNOW all this stuff, but as a beginner hobbyist in CG, I found this book to be a real treasure! Especially since a) it's for the Windows community (instead of only for MacHeads); and b) it gives equal time to Corel PhotoPaint, instead of assuming Adobe PhotoShop is the only tool anyone would use. As a member of both of these minorities, I really appreciated having my tools (Corel on Windows) receiving a fair shake

I picked up a couple ideas from this book, but it really doesn't offer much practical information for the intermediate or advanced Web designer. Of course, if you don't understand the difference between a GIF and a JPEG then perhaps this book is a good place to start. One thing I thought was annoying was the fact that the book splits its time (and pages) explaining how to make graphics with Photoshop and PhotoPaint so, unless you use both, there's a lot of useless info

I found this book to be well organized and highly informative - a great introduction to writing Graphics for the Web. I particularly enjoyed the step by step instructions (cookbook style) for creating effects. I'd like to see Laurie follow this one up with an advanced book as well!

Unless you're a complete beginner to web graphics or your goal is to make cookie-cutter websites, don't bother with this book. For Photoshop tips and tricks, I recommend the Photoshop Wow! Book; for ideas on how to make your websites more interesting, pick up Creating Killer Websites. Basically, Creating Great Web Graphics shows you how to make buttons and balls. (Yawn.)

OK, I'll admit it: I'm an untrained novice looking for guidance, particularly from non-judgemental sources. I found it engaging, helpful, almost inspirational. It was well woth the money and will pay for itself. But what do I know, I'm just a novice yearning to learn. I know art when I see it and this is it

A really nice piece of work, but if you ar used to using photoshop or photopaint, you will probably not benefit much from this book. For beginners - its exelent!