Macromedia Fireworks 8 By Dave Nagel Fireworks was once the absolute ruler of the Web graphics universe. Nothing could touch it for its mix of vector and raster tools, its interactive features and even its compression engine. It's still a leader in some respects, but its rule is no longer absolute. To put it bluntly, nothing much has changed in Fireworks over the last five years. Where this program was once one of the more innovative tools out there, it hasn't been given the attention it deserves in order to continue leading a changing Web graphics marketplace. ...Read More »

Commercial Photoshop Retouching in the Studio By John Virata Commercial Photoshop Retouching in the Studio is a 257 page book that covers the use of Adobe Photoshop, and specifically retouching digital images with Photoshop in commercial settings. The application is used in virtually all aspects of professional digital media, ranging from digital video and film making, to print and advertising work. This book covers the use of Photoshop in print work in such fields as advertising, photography and graphic design. ...Read More »

IconBuilder 8 By Ko Maruyama For almost a decade, Corey Marion, Talos Tsui and Gedeon Maheux have been providing Mac users with creative icons. Now, with IconBuilder 8, just about anyone can create simple or elaborate icons for their Mac or PC with a few easy clicks. ...Read More »

Adobe Creative Suite 2: Classroom in a Book By David James Rockingham III Adobe Creative Suite 2 introduced a number of new features across the number of products. If you don’t keep up to date on the latest releases of these products, you may find yourself falling quickly behind the times. That’s why Adobe Press published Adobe Creative Suite 2: Classroom in a Book. ...Read More »

Digital Imaging Essential Skills Third Edition By John Virata Digital Imaging Essential Skills Third Edition is a tricky title given that the essential skills are devoted to the use of Photoshop CS, CS2, and Photoshop Elements. Nowhere on the front cover is the application mentioned. However, given that Adobe's Photoshop tools dominate the landscape for image editing, the authors maintain that the book is not an Adobe manual. And it isn't. It is a well thought out guide on the digital imaging process. . . using Photoshop CS, CS2 and Elements. ...Read More »

Wacom Graphire4 By Dave Nagel More often than not, devices categorized as "entry-level" aren't worth the plastic from which they're made--and that applies to just about everything, from cameras to sound systems to telescopes. "Entry-level" is, generally, a euphemism for "junk." One of the few exceptions to this rule, however, is Wacom's Graphire line of pressure-sensitive graphics tablets, for which the "entry-level" tag really refers to a useful, high-quality device at an affordable price. ...Read More »

ColorVision Spyder2 Pro Studio By John Virata Computer displays are the first place that digital media is viewed. It is created and viewed via the display, and if the display's color is off, usually the color of the final output of that art is also off. If you work in the print world, color calibration of your display is essential, because if what you see on screen is what you don't get at the service bureau, you are going to spend unnecessary time fixing it until you get it right. Same can go with your digital image output. That is where color calibration tools come in. ...Read More »

Wacom Graphire4 Pen Tablet By John Virata With the popularity of digital cameras and digital photography, many folks are eager to put their own finishing touches on their digital images. Some have, however, quickly found out that sketching or painting with a mouse is like trying to draw with a bar of soap. ...Read More »

Cyberlink's Medi@Show By John Virata Medi@Show 3 is multimedia presentation software that enables you to create a multitude of presentations that incorporate text, audio, and still images. While many entry level video editing and image editing applications include presentation tools as features, as does Cyberlink's Power Producer application, Medi@Show is a standalone application that is focused on just one task; creating multimedia presentations ...Read More »

Lenovo X41 Tablet PC By John Virata The Tablet PC form factor can be adapted to a variety of uses, from having a digital canvas to paint directly on with the various paint programs that work well with Tablet PCs, to using a Tablet PC for other, more enterprise focused tasks such as inventory, taking orders and other mundane tasks. ...Read More »

The Digital Photography Pocket Guide By John Virata The Digital Photography Pocket Guide by Derrick Story is a 172 page guide on digital photography and how to get the most out of your digital camera. The guide, which is designed to fit in your camera bag or your back pocket is just three chapters long but is full of a lot of valuable information, information that you can easily take with you. ...Read More »

ACDSee 8 Photo Manager By John Virata ACDSee 8 Photo Manager is a media management application that enables you to organize your digital images and other media in a fashion that makes it easier to retrieve images. The application, now in version 8, has been updated with several new features to further ease the media management process. Within this first look, we'll take a look at some of the new features that ACD Systems has built into this latest release. ...Read More »

Access by Design By David James Rockingham III You surf the internet day and night and you’ve finally come to the moment that you want to share a portion of your life or a brilliant new business idea with the rest of the world. You realize the power of the internet and its global reach and you want to create your own website. The motivation is there but you don’t know where to start. ...Read More »

First Look: MotionArtist 2.0 new Flash Wizards By John Virata MotionArtist 2.0 is a flash animation tool that e frontier says is the most popular Flash creation tool in use in Japan. While you can create sophisticated Flash animations with the provided tools, some folks don't want to wait to learn an application and just want to create some quick projects with Flash animations in the background. MotionArtist 2.0 makes it easy with its new Flash Wizard. ...Read More »

Painter IX for Photographers By John Virata Corel Painter is one of the most widely used applications for creating painterly images. No other application can touch it when it comes to painterly effects. While the application has always had a following among the art set, it has been coming into its own as a tool for photographers as well. Martin Addison's Painter IX for Photographers helps photographers to get the most out of Painter, with tips and tricks and extensive tutorials in the book and accompanying CD-ROM. ...Read More »

Verbatim 2GB Store 'n' Go Pro USB Drive By John Virata Back in the mid 1990s, the Iomega Zip drive was king of the removable storage market. Highly reliable when compared to the SyQuest drives that it quickly replaced, and sporting a huge 100MB capacity, the Zip became the go to sneakernet solution for portable media storage. Fast forward to today and the media storage of choice has got to be the flash based USB thumb drives. ...Read More »

New Tech Infosystems Shadow 2.0 By Don Lee Backing up your computer’s data is probably the most important thing you can do but most people continue to operate without a backup figuring that nothing will ever happen to them. Then the system mysteriously fails to boot up and now you’re in a panic that you’re about to lose all of your important data. Without a backup of your hard drive, your precious data could be lost forever or you can pay a recovery service hundreds of dollars to save your files. ...Read More »

Adobe Creative Suite 2 All in One By David James Rockingham III When Adobe released their Creative Suite 2 applications, there were a number of new features that new and experienced users would have to learn. Luckily, author Mordy Golding and Sams Publishing released their Adobe Creative Suite 2 All in One book. This 726 page book is broken down into 17 chapters to help you learn the latest improvements to the CS 2 versions of Photoshop, Illustrator, GoLive, InDesign, Acrobat, ImageReady and Version Cue. ...Read More »

Lowepro Top Load Zoom I Camera Bag By John Virata Digital SLR cameras can be expensive. These cameras start at around $799 and go up from there. The nice thing about them is the fact that they are SLRs, so you get all the benefits of a traditional SLR in a digital format. Keeping them safe and secure might be an afterthought, but for the price that you pay to buy one, you should protect it as best as you can. ...Read More »

Stylin with CSS By David James Rockingham III The eight chapter, 288 page book begins with some of the beginning issues of CSS. From the beginnings of the CSS to the useful techniques like creating the no scrolling, static background image, Wyke-Smith provides some easy to learn techniques with plenty of examples to test your CSS skills. ...Read More »