Amazon.com Review
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
Product Description
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
