Web Design Essentials (Professional Studio Techniques) [Paperback]

Maria Giudice (Author)

Book Description

Series: Professional Studio Techniques | Publication Date: December 17, 1999

This text offers readers a practical guide to using their growing toolbox of Adobe Web graphics tools.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Web Design Essentials is part of Adobe's Professional Studio Techniques series, which features wide-format books that lie flat on your desk as you work through step-by-step instructions and peruse tips on using Adobe's popular software titles. Books in this series are very well written and illustrated. They tend to stay on the front of the bookshelf for many years, long after version upgrades, often remaining invaluable.

This book concentrates on using Photoshop 5.5, Illustrator 8.0 and GoLive 4.0 to create Web sites, pages, rollovers, batched icons, animations, and many other useful, creative, and up-to-date elements. These tips will not only add spark to your Web design, it will also speed up production time. The techniques are contributed by several professionals using examples from their own projects. This "many chefs" style ensures that the ideas are fresh, clever, and fairly simple, yet still yield big results.

For example, Jason Kottke of kottke.org shows a step-and-repeat trick in Photoshop for building 3-D text without any fancy plug-ins. Florian Fangohr of hotstudio.com explains how to use ImageReady to create droplets: batch-processing drag and drop actions. He also gives a short tutorial on how to create "remote" rollovers (also known as "pointer" rollovers) in GoLive.

Some techniques have uses outside the realm of Web design. For example, Noreen Santini (hotstudio.com) charts out Photoshop's blending modes, and Sandra Kelch (theispot.com) offers a demonstration on using the Magic Wand tool to select and replace colors.

The book organizes tasks into three categories of difficulty, though none should prove troubling to beginners. And some of the tips, especially the animations, aren't clear. These caveats aside, Web Design Essentials makes a handy addition to any studio library. --Angelynn Grant

Topics covered: Selected techniques for using Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, and GoLive for Web design, including tips on site planning and management, preparing Web graphics and typography, using tables, frames, animations, and rollovers.

From the Back Cover

Part of the Adobe Essentials series, Web Design Essentials, 2nd Edition showcases the very best in professional Web design techniques in practical detail. Web designers will learn how to combine Adobe Photoshop, LiveMotion, GoLive, ImageReady, and Illustrator to create eye-catching, “sticky” Web sites and graphics, using an assortment of step-by-step tips that can help you take full advantage of all of Adobe’s tools. Laid out in a glossy, 4-color format, readers will learn how to plan and manage site content, prepare graphics, manage type, animations, rollovers, and more.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 128 pages
• Publisher: Adobe Press (December 17, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0201700115
• ISBN-13: 978-0201700114
• Product Dimensions: 11.9 x 9 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,215,658 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Probably Not What You're Looking For, July 13, 2001

By A Customer

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Web Design Essentials (2nd Edition) (Adobe Design Essentials) (Paperback)

I recently purchased the Adobe web package that includes GoLive, Photoshop, Illustrator, and LiveMotion. I happened across this book and though by the title, "Web Design Essentials", that it would be a good introduction to how these four software titles integrate. However, I think a better title for this book would be "Tips & Tricks for Very Experienced Users of Photoshop, Illustrator, etc..." The book is directed at Web Design professionals that perhaps don't understand everything about the software they are using every day. The reason is, I believe, put very well in the introduction in this book that I will transcribe here:

"Now that we've told you what this book has to offer, it's also important to share what it doesn't. This book won't teach you: how to design - what makes a good layout, how to compose color, and so on - and it's not a tutorial for the various applications we cover. Rather, [this book] will teach you how to use Adobe's tools to implement your creative vision..."

So the book doesn't help you to get familar with the software at all. It assumes that you are very well familar with these products already and are looking to optimize your work style. And to be truthful, it doesn't even do *that* very well in my opinion. The book is full of a bunch of disjoined lessons on various topics that are covered in Adobe's help files or in the User Guides that came with the software. It seems that if you are not familiar with industry terms (what is a 'comp' anyway?) then this book might provide a good glossary for you, but the lessons, well, I can't see them helping TOO much.

So, in closing, if you are looking for a book that shows you how the four software titles are connected, if you are looking for a book that will take you through the web site creation project using specifically Adobe software titles, then this is not the book for you.

To the author (if you all read this): I believe that you will find a wider audience if you created a sample web site (download Macromedia's Dreamweaver and check out the tutorial, it's amazing!) from start to finish using all the common, and perhaps a few not so common, elements present in mainstream websites today. In this manner, you'll show your readers how to use the software and from chapter to chapter, lesson to lesson, it will make SENSE. Disjoined non-related lesson after lesson won't help people learn the software. I realize you didn't aim this book at newbies such as myself, but unfortunately there was no review for me to see before I bought the book. I gave the book two stars instead of one because while I found the content to be not applicable to me, the book itself is quite beautiful, although oddly sized.

Here is a list of the major topics and most of the chapters that follow them:

1. Creating Web Graphics
Tiling a Background
Selecting and Replacing Colors
Using Select Color Range
Dithering Part of an Image
Expanding on the Web-safe Palette
Managing Page Elements with Layer Styles
Mapping Made Easy
Previewing Rasterized Graphics
Creating Artwork with Transparency
Background Transparency in Web Grpahics
Drawing a Navigational System
Creating Flexible Drop Shadows

2. Managing Type
Formatting Type for Comps
Previewing HTML Text in Comps
Designing Images with Type
Transforming Type Using Vectors
Preserving Type in Bitmaps
Enhancing Type wtih Layer Effects
Spedifying Fonts for Web Sites
Understanding System Fonts

3. Web Page Layout
Slicing Images for HTML Tables
Optimizing Slices
Making Image Maps
Creating Image maps in GoLive
Designing Forms
Creating Framed Web Pages
etc...

4. Active Elements
Animating GIFs
Creating Complex Animations
Importing Artwork for Animation
Creating Animation Styles
Animating with DHTML

Animating Rollovers
etc.

5. Management Techniques
Using Actions to Automate Tasks
Using Droplets to Automate Tasks
Using Layer Sets to Mange Files
Using PDF's to Proof Comps

6. Reference
Understanding Color Palettes
Creating a Master Palette
Understanding Blending Modes
Understanding Channels
etc..

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Educational Presentation of this Book is Phenomenal!, June 21, 2000

By 

Jim Moran - See all my reviews

This review is from: Web Design Essentials (Professional Studio Techniques) (Paperback)

Web Design Essentials introduces readers to some of the more advanced features of Adobe's Photoshop, Illustrator, and GoLive programs, and brings together the talents and advice of a number of seasoned contributors.

Readers will receive an advanced education in planning Websites through the use of flowcharting, optimizing graphics images for the Web, designing Web navigational graphics and interfaces, creating animated GIF images and DHTML animations, producing sensational rollovers, and learning a number of enhanced table, frames, and cascading style sheet effects.

The educational presentation of this book is phenomenal. Readers are treated to high quality graphic image illustrations, clear and easy-to-read text, high-resolution screen shots, and excellent layout that bring out in rich detail the special effects that Photoshop and other professional-grade programs are capable of producing.

This book is ideally suited for Web savvy professionals and those persons already capable of handling Photoshop. The work in this book is stunning and represents the best in the industry. Readers who come to grips with the programs featured in the book should be able to match them after some practice!

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Web Design Essentials: yep, it's essential..., April 2, 2000

By 

Tammy R. Rao (Boston, MA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Web Design Essentials (Professional Studio Techniques) (Paperback)

A logical flow with tips and techniques from preparing graphics to animations and image maps, this book provides a user-friendly yet thorough introduction to website design. The book is laid out in something of a lesson format similar to the Adobe Classroom in a Book series, and is a perfect reference to those "how do I..?" questions. Many Web experts provide the techniques, which are labeled as easy/intermediate/advanced. For the beginner, Web Design Essentials is not a huge, intimidating manual, yet it shows techniques that produce high-quality websites. For expert codeheads, this book is simply the icing on the cake. In all, an essential book to improve a web designer's technique.