Official Microsoft Image Composer Book [With *]

I am a novice, self taught web page designer for my own site. I was fighting with the program trying to learn it with current web page design books. This book is well written and is easy to follow. I liked the effects and some of the practice work it takes you through. I think that if you really want to learn this program and you have a good idea on what your page should look like this is a great book. I highly recomend this book along with "Microsoft Front Page Inside Out". You will be able to do whatever you want provided the program is able to do it. You have to use it and understand some web design, but the book does take your through the web graphics part and you will understand how to make sprites and where to save them and how to size them for the web page as well. This is invaluable if you are trying to create your own buttons and banners, ect. There are minimal books written for Composer, so far I have only found 3 available and this one is the best. Composer is great for tweaking pictures and making web graphics from them, there are many ways to alter them and use them for design. My computer experience is varied since I do use the internet but I am not a graphic design artist or a computer specialist in any way and I have never had a class on any type of program I have learned. If you need that kind of learning enviornment you can still benifit from this book.

A very well done book. It has many examples, with ample screen shots, of useful techniques. I have used MIC for almost 2 years now, I'm an active participant in the MIC newsgroup, but even I learned a lot of new techniques from this book. Tait and Sagman show how to use a very powerful tool, MIC, and make it deliver in very practical ways; with a short learning curve to boot! With MIC, this book, and a little time invested, anyone can turn out professional caliber work for the web that will rival almost anything the other image programs can produce - all at a lower investment in money and time. Buy this book!