Total
Training's Creating Web Graphics with Adobe Photoshop 6
Software
training for Adobe Photoshop
by
David Nagel
Executive
Producer
dnagel@digitalmedianet.com
Regular
readers of Digital Media Designer should be pretty familiar
by now with the work of Total Training. They supply us with
the bulk of our QuickTime-based video tutorials, which always
prove popular with our readers and are always loaded with handy
tidbits that you're not going to find in your manuals.
The hosts
of Total Training's educational pieces are some of the most
respected professionals in their fields, including Deke McClelland,
author of several standards on Photoshop, and Brian Maffitt,
recognized expert in all things editing and compositing. More
than these, they're also solid educators. When they share their
expertise with us, they're not just running down a list of topics
to cover; they're showing you how, in their careers, they've
solved the same problems you face when working with creative
software.
Of course,
watching snippets of these training pieces on our sites gives
you only a slight hint at what the Total Training experience
offers. The series for Photoshop 6, for example, comprises 18
hours of lessons spanning 12 VHS tapes. But if you're anything
like me, VHS is a bit of an inconvenience, particularly for
training pieces, which you need to pause and rewind often to
be able to follow along. Plus there's the problem of locating
a particular segment you want to view that might be somewhere
in the middle of the tape. While Total Training does provide
an index of the segments, you still have to fast forward to
get there, which takes time.
Well, of
course, Total Training realizes that some people prefer to watch
in a digital medium, so they're coming out with their series
on DVD as well. Their first DVD release is called Creating
Web Graphics with Adobe Photoshop 6. This is a completely
original piece that had not been previously published in VHS
form. It spans seven hours focused solely on creating and optimizing
graphics in Photoshop for the Web. It includes two DVDs and
one CD-ROM that contains the source material used in the tutorials,
so users can follow along.
Host Deke
McClelland walks you through the processes of creating,
editing and compressing graphics for the Web. Here Deke shows
the Save for Web feature of Adobe Photoshop 6.
The series
is hosted by Deke McClelland, who guides the viewer not only
through the concepts involved in Web graphics, but also through
the setup of your system so that you're getting off to the right
start. Topics range from Web graphics essentials to optimizing
images to working in ImageReady and adding animation to pieces.
All around,
this is a great tool for artists working in print who need to
prepare graphics for the Web as well. It assumes a moderate
amount of experience using Photoshop and working in print, although,
at times, it dips into remedial information as well, such as
why you need to add the ".jpg" extension to your file
names. Nevertheless, when I watched these DVDs, Deke McClelland
managed to teach me a ton of stuff I didn't already know about
Photoshop—as usual.
When you
watch this series, you're going to go through everything from
setting up your color management properly to compensating for
cross-platform viewing to specific techniques for achieving
optimum file size versus image quality. And that's just the
first disc. In the second disc, you get to learn all about working
with Web graphics in Adobe ImageReady and even adding interactivity
and animation to a site from directly within ImageReady. And,
of course, the beauty of DVD is the ease with which you can
pause and review tips in case you miss anything or need to check
to see whether you did something right.
For those
who are using Photoshop and ImageReady for the Web, this series
is a must-see. It's positioned as a companion to Total Photoshop
6, though those with Photoshop experience will certainly
be at no disadvantage. (We're going to review the Total Photoshop
6 series separately; but I will note here that it is definitely
worth seeing for any user of Photoshop at any level of experience.)
For you Photoshop users, I give this series a buy recommendation.
If you'd like to get an idea of the type of approach this series
takes, be sure to visit our tutorials
section, where you will find a number of examples from several
Total Training series.
Creating
Web Graphics with Adobe Photoshop 6 is available for $149.
It includes two DVDs (or four VHS tapes) and one CD-ROM, as
well as a printed index of the content for easy reference. For
more information, visit http://www.totaltraining.com.
