Design Essentials

I'm not a professional graphic designer. But as a graphics enthusiast, and webmaster by profession, i take my occasional graphic design work quite seriously. As someone who is always searching for ways to use PhotoShop in better, more efficient ways, I found this book to be both helpful and inspiring.Design Essentials is a very hands-on book, providing basic, short instructions, which familiarize the beginner and novice PhotoShop user with all the little tricks that transform an image from "nice" to "great", as well as providing the necessary explanations and "how-to" information on those tools beginners like myself still need to discover and maximize the full potential of.Personally, i had a lot of fun both reading the book, and experimenting with its tutorials. I just wish I had a copy of Adobe Illustrator, since it seems like a wonderful tool.

This book, along with its companion book, Web Design Essentials, is amazingly good at showing you what can be done with the program. While some of the descriptions are a little sparse, it opens the program up for exploration. True, not everything is spoon-fed to you, but it allows you to make decisions and go your own way. I use several of the techniques described almost daily in my own work, while others are just waiting to be explored and put to good use. A must read for almost anyone.

Luanne Cohen has a gift for making difficult Photoshop and Illustrator concepts easy to understand. This lavishly illustrated book will make you aware of a wide variety of fantastic techniques you would NEVER stumble into otherwise. And as a bonus, it's completely reworked from previous versions.

This book is a great sidekick to Adobe vis. software users. It offers quick reference to some great ideas and useful tips while you work away at that digital project. Bravo!

The book goes through different techniques suchs as Cast Shadows, Texture patterns, and 3-D packages. There is not too much reading involved; you could just look and the pictures and read the one line step of what to do next. This book is a perfect supplement to other Photoshop/Illustrator books.