Final Cut Express 4 - Visual Quickstart Guide 

by Lisa Brenneis

Review by Gary Estes

Since Apple has changed their editing technique in the newest iMovie 08, it has been suggested by many that an alternative course of action for those who want more out of movie editing is to upgrade to Final Cut Express. I have done some work in FCE, and I was thinking of doing a SIG on Final Cut Express for those interested in upgrading. I was hoping to find a book that would be simple enough to follow that would be a good course text. This was not that book.

As I was reading this book, I kept turning over to recheck the title. “Yup, still says ‘Quickstart Guide’ “. This is a very informative book and a book filled with lots of illustrations that explains the author’s intentions. But it is, in a word, linear. A “Quickstart Guide”, to me, suggests giving you the bare boned tools to get one started quickly working with the program. This book took 118 pages just to explain terms and set preferences. It took another 109 pages to explain how the interface works. Someone trying to upgrade from iMovie would be lost and overwhelmed by the time they got to the basic editing portion in Chapter Nine. It goes from Point A to Point Z very methodically and seems to exclude nothing.

However, having said all that, I think this book would make an excellent reference guide to have by your computer after you have learned enough about FCE to really start working in it. Because it is linear and methodical, it should be easy to look up some procedure or trick you might want to use as you explore the program and want to learn it’s finer points and shortcuts.

Other than the book not being what I expected, I think that the only real criticism I have is that the illustrations could have used a little journey through a photo editing program before being published. Since these are black & white photos of color screenshots, they tend to be very low contrast and a bit dark. I found myself having to take extra time to really stare at a lot of the illustrations to discern what was being represented.

Final advice: I would buy this book as quite good reference material after I found a really good starter book.

Review of Automator for Mac OS X.5 Leopard: Learn Automator the Quick and Easy Way, A Visual Quickstart Guide

by Ben Waldie.

Computers are supposed to make things easier, right? Well that's the theory anyway. But how often do we end up performing repetitive tasks, boring repetitive tasks like renaming your new photos with something meaningful rather than DSCN0121.JPG? There is a better way.

Enter Automator, Apple's automation tool for the rest of us. We got a tease of what Automator could do with OS X.4. With the release of OS X.5 or Leopard, Automator has matured into a useful and pretty flexible tool. What's Automator, you ask? And, isn't it hard to use?

Ben Waldie has your answer in his new book, Automator for Mac OS X. 5 Leopard: Learn Automator the Quick and Easy Way! a Visual Quickstart Guide from Peachpit Press.

Learning Web Design: A Beginner's Guide to (X)HTML, StyleSheets, and Web Graphics [ILLUSTRATED] (Paperback)
by Jennifer Niederst Robbins (Author), Aaron Gustafson (Technical Editor)
O'Reilly Publishing, 2007 

a review by Michael McKee 

Learning Web Design by Jennifer Niederest Robbins is billed as "A Beginners Guide to (X)HTML, Style Sheets and Web Graphics." It lives up to its billing. It is structured as a text book, building a knowledge base chapter by chapter. For those working through the book as a tutorial, there are plenty of exercises that reinforce the skills you've acquired. Each chapter includes appropriate exercises and a "Test Yourself" section. Extra material is offered through the book's accompanying website.

A Review by Bob Snow

With the arrival of iPhoto 6 the digital photographer now has a wide range of editing tools to improve snapshots. Basic tools such as red-eye removal, cropping, simple retouching, one-click enhancements, straightening and basic photo editing. iPhoto's major strength continues to be its ability to organize photo library and make slide shows. However, when it comes to advanced editing and special effects most photographers look to Photoshop and increasingly Photoshop Elements.

The newest version of Photoshop Elements offers most photographers all the tools they need to so some serious photo editing. I have used Photoshop for years, but more and more I find myself taking photos into Photoshop Elements for most of my photo editing work. PTSLUG recently received a review copy of PE Version 4, which I have had available for about a month and have found it even more useful than version 3.

If you are using iPhoto 5 or 6 and need more advanced editing tools I can strongly recommend Elements 4. If you already have Elements 3 I personally found Photoshop Elements 4 well worth the upgrade price of $60. As of this writing there was no demo version to try out on the Mac as there is for the PC platform. However, you can visit the Adobe web site and get more information about this new Elements version. Check out the downloadable PDF document (Printable Overview) for many more details and also follow the link to the new features page, especially if you are an Elements 3 user and are considering an upgrade. Here is the url:

www.adobe.com/products/photoshopelmac/overview.html

Please click on the MORE link to get the detailed, complete review.

Head First HTML with CSS and XHTML

By Elisabeth Freeman, Eric Freeman

First Edition December 2005
Pages: 694
Price: $34.95

This book is one of four in the O'Reilly digital studio series which we recently received for review from the publisher. These are not all encompassing doorstop books on Adobe Photoshop, rather they focus on specific aspects of a more limited use of Photoshop. While the book covers all 109 filters in Photoshop CS2, it will be just as useful for users of earlier versions of Photoshop or Photoshop Elements, which have most of the same filters. he book has hundreds of full-color photographs, clearly written instructions and practical tips.

Photoshop Retouching Cookbook for Digital Photographers : 113 Easy-to-Follow Recipes to Improve Your Photos and Create Special Effects by Barry Huggins

As the title indicates this is a "cookbook." There are 113 recipes divided into 11 groupings with names like: Exposure Correction, Color Correction, Focus Manipulation, Lighting Effects, Photo Restoration, Traditional Darkroom Techniques and Photo compositing Techniques. Each of the groupings contains some recipes.

iPhoto 2 incorporates many powerful new features and improvements that the earlier version of iPhoto lacked. These include better picture editing that let users enhance color or touchup photos within the iPhoto application, better slide shows, new printing templates, the ability to send photo attachments with a variety of email programs, burning directly to CDs and DVDs from within iPhoto, and much more.