Photoshop 5 Web Magic (Magic Series) [Paperback]

Michael Ninness (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1998 | Series: Magic Series

This book contains 36 new and exciting techniques to spice up your Web pages. You'll learn how to create great buttons, edge effects, animations, textures for backgrounds and borders, as well as text effects. Michael Ninness, a recognized Photoshop expert who has spoken at MacWorld, the Photoshop Conference and the Web Design Conference was one of 5 alpha testers for Photoshop 5 and has done a fantastic job of creating exciting new effects that will make your Web site viewers say "Wow! How'd they do that?" Many of the animations make use of Extensis PhotoAnimator, but most of the concepts can also be created using your preferred GIF animation program. All other techniques use only Photoshop native tools.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

This book contains 36 new and exciting techniques to spice up your Web pages. You'll learn how to create great buttons, edge effects, animations, textures for backgrounds and borders, as well as text effects. Michael Ninness, a recognized Photoshop expert who has spoken at MacWorld, the Photoshop Conference and the Web Design Conference was one of 5 alpha testers for Photoshop 5 and has done a fantastic job of creating exciting new effects that will make your Web site viewers say "Wow! How'd they do that?" Many of the animations make use of Extensis PhotoAnimator, but most of the concepts can also be created using your preferred GIF animation program. All other techniques use only Photoshop native tools.

About the Author

Michael Ninness is a Senior Product Manager at Adobe Systems, and is the author of Photoshop 5 Web Magic and the first edition of Photoshop Power Shortcuts. He has a BFA in Graphic Design from the University of Washington and has spent the last eleven years as a graphic designer, teacher, and conference speaker. Michael is a regular speaker at Macworld, as well as the national Photoshop, Web Design, QuarkXPress, and PageMaker conferences produced by Thunder Lizard Productions.

Product Details

• Paperback: 228 pages
• Publisher: Hayden Books (August 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1562059130
• ISBN-13: 978-1562059132
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.8 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,676,538 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Buyer Beware, November 6, 1999

By 

Carmen Carter "Interface developer" (Northern Virginia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Photoshop 5 Web Magic (Magic Series) (Paperback)

If I hadn't gotten this book for free, as a gift, I'd be asking for my money back. Even though it's labeled as a Photoshop 5 book, which implies that it will describe techniques that can be created in PhotoShop, in reality the book relies very heavily on Extensis plug-ins. This is the case even when certain effects (like bevels) CAN be created in PhotoShop if only the author had bothered to describe the method. Of course, the promo descriptions carefully avoid mentioning this fact, which leads me to think the author and/or publishers don't have enough faith in the Extensis software to sell it directly and have decided to hitch a ride on Adobe's reputation instead. And I'm sure it's only a coincidence that the author works for Extensis.

To add insult to injury, the book is poorly copy-edited, with typos that confuse and incorrect procedures that cannot duplicate the illustrated results. And the CD Rom was defective, managing to crash my computer several times when I tried to open certain folders.

Unless you have money to burn in order to pick up a few new fancy tricks, spend your money elsewhere.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Not what the title implies, October 5, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Photoshop 5 Web Magic (Magic Series) (Paperback)

The beginning of this book has an intro to some common Photoshop commands used throughout the book. Fine, but no magic. The next 1/3 of the book's examples are on animated gifs and special effects using the DEMO software on the CD! Still no photoshop "magic." The last parts of the book actually leave off using the DEMO software on the CD, but a few pop in there here and there. There were probably 5 official Photoshop effects in here that I liked. Really not worth the full price I paid at the book store, and since I didn't crack open the CD since I read that it was Demo software and really wasn't interested in annoying animated gif's, I'm probablybringing it back. BTW, the author works for a software comapany and he was just using this book to push his own stuff. He calls it "magic" I call it dishonest.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Interesting but flawed, August 11, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Photoshop 5 Web Magic (Magic Series) (Paperback)

I bought the book at a discount dealer for half the list price, and I believe I may have still overpaid for it. The major problem is that I haven't been able to get many of the examples to work. It seems there are either steps left out in the example such as 'filter edges' starting on p. 140, or else the writer has not proofed the book to prevent abundant errors. Some of the examples do work, but the ones that don't create much frustration. Perhaps a Photoshop expert could easily detect the errors, but intermediate users such as I can't. Another problem is the abundant use of commercial plugins rather than simply emphasing Photoshop 5 techniques. It would help if there was a web site correcting the book errors.