January 1999

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	Photoshop 5 Artistry: A Master Class for Photographers, Artists, and Production Artists, by Barry Haynes and Wendy Crumpler, New Riders, $55 with CD-ROM (Macintosh and Windows) In this absolutely glorious book, learn how to master the more important Photoshop tools such as Adjustment Layers, Levels and Curves, as well as how to use the new magnetic tools to work more efficiently in Photoshop. Don't let the title scare you; this book can be used successfully by beginners who have never used anything more complicated than a throwaway camera as well as by professional photographers working in digital media. The section on color correction not only makes sense, but its step-by-step approach will make it work for you. Tucked inside the lessons is information on performing frequent Photoshop tasks such as correcting a color cast or creating a composite image. The accompanying CD-ROM includes a demo version of Photoshop 5 as well as tool settings for greater productivity.
	Macworld Photoshop 5 Bible by Deke McClelland, IDG Books, $49.99 w/CD-ROM. Macintosh and Windows The best thing about this book is Deke McClelland who knows everything about anything you can image on a computer. In this massive compendium of Photoshop information, he covers not only Photoshop fundamentals needed to make images work, but also the commands and functions that make images spectacular. In easy to read lessons, many with exercises to help you learn the technique, the book takes you through all the features and functions of this massive application. Techniques are liberally illustrated and explained, teaching you how to produce glorious images for print, multimedia, and Internet distribution. You may not need every chapter right away, but you'll be glad to have this book on your shelf when things aren't looking "picture perfect."
	Search Engines for the WWW, Palm III and Palm Pilot, FileMaker Pro for Windows and Macintosh, Excel 98 for Macintosh, Peachpit Press For anyone who needs to get up and running with hardware or software that showed up this holiday season, these books in the acclaimed Visual QuickStart series will do the trick. Heavily illustrated reference books with all the information you need intelligently organized and explained in human terms, these books should have you doing wonderful things without ever reading the manuals that came with the packages. And at under $18, they're a lot cheaper than training.
	The Official Adobe Print Publishing Guide, Adobe Press, $35. This is an absolutely critical book for anyone publishing in print or on the Internet with color text and/or graphics. Adobe Press takes all the guesswork out of specifying color by clearly organizing the principles of color applications and supporting that information with highly informative images. It covers everything you need to know from describing color, computer graphics, image resolution and line screen values, the new print technology and concludes with a real-world project and an invaluable glossary. How color relates to paper, managing linked graphics, and importing these images into a page layout program are also discussed in language that is clear and informative. It even includes process color charts, a condensed reference for CMYK colors which you should use instead of the screen representation in the various color libraries. And if you're baffled by PostScript error numbers, check them out in this book which is an excellent and invaluable guide in the wild world of color.